


Kingdom Hearts - Destiny Vault

by WilyGryphon



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Chi taken in broad strokes, Gen, Keyblade Warriors, Lots of Different Worlds, No Re:Coded 3D or III, OC Antagonist, Post-Kingdom Hearts II, Some major characters have not appeared yet, Villains of a Sort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 134
Words: 517,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilyGryphon/pseuds/WilyGryphon
Summary: Sora and his friends have returned home from their adventures and are finally settling down to spend time with their loved ones. However, when a new threat looms on the horizon as an old enemy allies with a mysterious new foe, they are brought together once again on a quest across even more worlds than ever before to determine the fate of all of Creation.My first fic, first posted on FanFiction.Net, being carried over to AO3 to expand its audience.
Relationships: Donald Duck & Goofy & Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck & Goofy & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Naminé (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas & Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 83
Kudos: 24





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This prologue chapter builds up the new villain, though for the most part it is a recap of the story by repeating certain scenes. If you want, you can skim past the italicized sections.

The figure passed rows of bookshelves. He strolled up the staircase, which curved to the right as it went up. When he reached the top, he stepped off onto the green-tiled floor and perused the bookshelf to his right. His eyes rested on a book with an ornately-designed black cover. On the spine read a Latin title: “ _Historia Omnia_ ”— “The History of All”. He used two fingers to slide the flanking books to the side, then grabbed the black book and pulled it off of the shelf. He sat down at the reading table, placed the book in front of him and turned on the reading lamp. Placing his index finger on the underside, he tipped the book up at an angle so he can get a look at the open end where he can see the pages. He smirked at what he saw.

There was a latch pinning the last section of pages to the back cover, preventing him from opening to that section.

The man had read through to the end of the book years ago, and had checked again several times since, finding the latch newly sealed every few years, sometimes even months after he last unlocked it. A locked section of the book indicated that a new chapter had been written in history. The last time he had to unlock a new chapter was more than one year ago, and he checked the book four times since.

He had been listening to the affairs in his own world in between those intervals of time. The last time a new chapter appeared, it was shortly after the shadows were driven out.

_Ah, that was an exceptional day…_ he mused.

* * *

It was in the old guard tower when he first saw it. Looking up into the morning sky, he saw a fuzzy silhouette appear, floating high above. A light emitted from the silhouette and shot down to a position not far from his base. That was when he knew that the chapter was coming to a close.

Nearly a decade before then, the shadows had overtaken the castle, so even the scholarly hermit who studied there beneath the noses of the wise man and his disciples had to flee. For years, he studied the stars from an old guard tower, one of the few still standing after the invasion, one which overlooked the area where the water rose up the surrounding cliff and proceeded a more natural course out into the world. Sometimes he looked up at night to find that the picture above was shy a few crystals of warmth, while other times he saw one or two of the dots twinkle brighter than usual and then wink out. He did not worry about the state of the universe. Whatever those stars were, they were insignificant in the grand scheme of this era of the universe. It was the stars that still shone that defined the course of events, as there were a few individuals who lived there that would come to shape history.

If one looked closely enough, he might see that some stars are slightly brighter than others at times. Of course, the light of each individual star always shone with equal brightness, it was the light of its inhabitants that made the difference. The scholar wondered what his world would look like to the others, how bright its star would shine.

One fateful night, he looked up at the night sky and saw one of the brighter stars begin to twinkle brighter than before. He was prepared to mark it down as another casualty to the shadows as the force of nature spread across the worlds, but took interest when he saw a thin dart of light shoot out from the star and soar through the sky, following a straight path right into a different star. A moment later, the first star’s light died down until it was gone.

The scholar, bewildered, ran over to his table and studied his star chart. He came to conclude which world had just had its light snuffed out: it was called _Destiny Islands_ , at least according to the Book. He then drew a line on the chart with his finger to locate the star that the strange dart went to. He was intrigued, as this was a star that had not been on the map until nine years ago, shortly after the shadows came to this world. He had concluded that this new world may have come into existence because several worlds were being compromised by the shadows, their stars being extinguished and the worlds themselves fading into the darkness. As a result, what was left of these worlds came together to create a new one, a refugee camp for those who survived the destruction of their worlds.

On that day, he examined his book and found that the latch had reappeared, closing off the last section of pages.

The chapter in which the worlds were being extinguished had ended, and a new chapter was beginning.

He looked up into the night sky, deciding that perhaps the world that had just been snuffed out may have been the most important one in the sky.

Now, as the mass above the world sent down its beam, he noticed three figures materializing on a platform within the Rising Falls. The two standing on either side were inconsequential, as he saw it, but the one in the middle had such a strong light. He was shorter than he might have expected from a hero, but that detail merely confirmed his suspicions about the world from which he came: few worlds have a food supply that is satisfactory for the well-being of their inhabitants while stunting their ultimate height, and the island world with the star-shaped fruit tree was one of them. He saw the spiky-haired boy’s strength of heart, and also sensed that he possessed a power that stood separate but went hand in hand with it, and he knew for sure that he was the one who was sent to the refugee world, the one whose introduction to the plot marked the beginning of a new chapter.

Yes, whatever happened that day would bring about the end of this chapter in history, and the scholar will be able to learn exactly what transpired over the last few months.

* * *

That was the day when the Hero of Light arrived on his world, and a few days later the castle was liberated, as the former refugees of this world returned to restore what the shadows destroyed. The man had decided to wait out a few more days while the returning soldiers explored the castle, and he ultimately returned to his hideout in the castle after all citizens, save for the wise man and his disciples, returned on the same day that the stars blinked back into existence. That was the day when he checked the Book to read that latest chapter.

Now, there was another chapter to open.

He decided to reread the previous chapter to refresh his memory before delving into the new one, as he was certain that the new chapter was influenced by the same boy that influenced the last one.

He opened the book, using the thumb of his left hand as an anchor point off of which he pushed up every page in front of the latch. He opened the palm of his right hand and placed it flat in the middle of the open book. The text shimmered with the colors of the rainbow, then the individual letters launched themselves off of the pages, accompanied by a mighty gust of wind that caused the sleeve of the man’s robe to flutter. The letters shaped into individual words and then rearranged themselves several more times as they swirled around the man. White mist spewed from the book, filling the room and blotting out everything from his view. Images appeared in the mist, depicting events from the previous chapter.

He saw a trio of teenagers sitting on the horizontal trunk of a tree bearing star-shaped fruit:

* * *

_“But how far will a raft take us?”_

_“Who knows? If we have to, we’ll think of something else.”_

_“So, suppose you get to another world. What would you do there?”_

_“Well I haven’t really thought about it. It’s just, I’ve always wondered why we’re here on this island. If there are any other worlds out there, why did we end up on this one? And suppose there are other worlds… Then ours is just a little piece of something much greater. So, we could have just as easily ended up somewhere else, right?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Exactly. That’s why we need to go out there and find out. Just sitting here won’t change a thing. It’s the same old stuff. So let’s go.”_

* * *

A cave filled with chalk drawings, with an odd wooden door in the back corner:

* * *

_“This world has been connected.”_

_“Wh-What are you talking about?”_

_“Tied to the darkness… soon to be completely eclipsed.”_

_“Well, whoever you are, stop freaking me out like this. Huh? Where did you come from?”_

_“You do not yet know what lies beyond the door.”_

_“So you’re from another world!”_

_“There is so very much to learn. You understand so little.”_

_“Oh yeah? Well you’ll see. I’m gonna get out and learn what’s out there!”_

_“A meaningless effort. One who knows nothing can understand nothing.”_

* * *

A jungle cave where one could hear the sound of waterfalls reverberating through the cavern.

_The far wall is covered in butterflies, which flutter away as six figures approach, revealing a keyhole-shaped indentation in the wall. The spiky-haired boy in front summons what appeared to be a giant key and holds it up, pointing it at the keyhole. A beam of light emits from the tip and goes straight into the keyhole, causing the indentation to be consumed in a bright light. A piece of a strange material shaped like one quarter of a sphere pops out of the hole. The light dies down, but instead of revealing the hole again, the space is occupied by nothing but rock wall._

* * *

An underground cave with ornately-carved columns and monkey-shaped statues holding large colorful gems. In a crevasse in the far wall, a platform leads up to a specially-carved wall with another keyhole in the middle. Standing on that platform are a horned witch wearing black robes and a dignified-looking man wearing robes with a cape and a staff that resembles a snake. A young woman in a light blue outfit is lying unconscious on the floor. Not far off, a large blue figure with a wispy tail floats dejectedly. The three heroes that arrived that day more than a year ago charge in to confront them, joined by a young man wearing a purple vest, a red fez hat and white pants that become baggy toward the bottom before closing back up at the ankles.

* * *

_“Wait a second. Are you- Maleficent?”_

_The witch conjures a portal of shrouded darkness and steps through. The portal closes up, and the witch is gone._

_“Jafar, let Jasmine go!”_

_“Not a chance. You see, she’s a princess—one of seven who somehow hold the key to opening the door.”_

* * *

On the deck of a pirate ship, the spiky-haired hero stands at the end of the plank hanging off of the ship, egged on to jump by the shadows taking the form of pirates, accompanied by an older human who appears to be one of the pirates. In the water below the plank, a crocodile has its jaws open, eagerly awaiting its incoming treat. The hero’s companions are surrounded, standing with their hands raised in surrender.

* * *

_“Fly Sora! Just believe, and you can do it.”_

_The boy jumps backward off of the plank, and just as the crocodile is about to snap its jaws shut and consume him, he soars up and flies over the deck, landing safely._

* * *

In the grand hall of the castle in which the scholar resides, the boy approaches a girl who appears to be his age— one of his friends from his island home —who is lying catatonic. One of his companions joins him, but the other runs into an invisible barrier and falls back, dazed. Overlooking the stage that they are on is a massive structure shaped somewhat like a classic heart design, with an aura of swirling colorful energy and chaotic streams of electricity flowing within. Sitting on top of that is the boy’s other friend from the islands, this time wearing a dark blue armor meant to resemble a human muscle structure, with a design shaped exactly like the structure emblazoned on the chest and what appears to be a white-and-blue hula skirt around the waist. This young man is carrying something that vaguely resembles the hero’s weapon, though much more sinister-looking.

* * *

_“Kairi! Kairi! Open your eyes!”_

_“It’s no use. That girl has lost her heart. She cannot wake up.”_

_The boy lets the girl lie back down as he stands up to face what appears to be his friend. “What? You… You’re not Riku.”_

_“The Keyhole cannot be completed so long as the last princess of heart still sleeps.” The figure taking the form of the boy’s friend floats down to the ground._

_“The princess…? Kairi’s a princess?”_

_“Yes, and without her power, the Keyhole will remain incomplete. It is time she awakened.”_

_“Whoever you are, let Riku go! Give him back his heart!”_

_“But first, you must give the princess back her heart.”_

_Something within the boy reacts. He puts his hand to his chest in pain and collapses to his knees._

_“Sora!” The boy’s companion is concerned, checking to see if he is okay._

_“What’s--?”_

_“Don’t you see yet? The princess’s heart is responding. It has been there all along. Kairi’s heart rests within you!”_

_“Kairi… Kairi’s inside me?”_

_“I know all that there is to know.”_

_“Tell me. Who are you?”_

_“It is I, Ansem, the seeker of darkness.” He approaches the boy. The boy’s companion charges at the enemy to attack, but the enemy calmly swats him aside, knocking him off of the platform and outside the barrier. He points his weapon at the boy. “So, I shall release you now, princess. Complete the Keyhole with your power. Open the door, lead me into everlasting darkness!”_

_The enemy raises his weapon to strike the boy, but a light blinks through his chest, doubtless a cry from the princess’s heart pushing the boy to fight back, and the spiky-haired hero raises his own weapon to block his foe’s sword._

_“Forget it! There’s no way you’re taking Kairi’s heart!”_

* * *

Minutes later, the boy attempts to seal the Keyhole within the aura of energy, but there is no effect. He notices the sword left behind by his defeated foe and picks it up, points it at himself, and pulls it into his chest. He drops the weapon, which dissipates into darkness, releasing six captive hearts and returning them to their hosts. Two hearts fly out of the boy’s chest. One returns to the comatose girl, waking her up, while the other floats off into space.

* * *

_The girl stands up and sees her friend fading into the light. “Sora!” She runs up to catch him, but he dissipates just as she gets to him._

_“Sora! Come back, Sora!” The boy’s companions mourn his loss as the light particles that once made up his body float off._

* * *

A twisted landscape that appears to have been what is left of the boy’s island home which fell into darkness. The blue water has turned purple, as have the leaves on some of the larger trees in the back. The smaller islet and the bridge connecting to it have vanished completely. The boy and his two companions in adventure stand on the beach, their gaze directed at the form of the boy’s childhood friend, still wearing the armor of their enemy.

* * *

_“Take a look at this tiny place. To the heart seeking freedom, this island is a prison surrounded by water. And so this boy sought out to escape from his prison. He sought a way to cross over into other worlds. And he opened his heart to darkness.” The young man’s form shifts into a taller man with darker skin and an imposing silver jacket. Floating perhaps an inch from his chest was the insignia of the shadows._

_“Riku!”_

_“Don’t bother. Your voice can no longer reach him where he is. His heart belongs again to darkness. All worlds begin in darkness, and all so end. The heart is no different. Darkness sprouts within it, it grows, consumes it. Such is its nature. In the end, every heart returns to the darkness whence it came.” He now teleports behind the spiky-haired boy and his companions, taking the boy by surprise. “You see, darkness is the heart’s true essence.”_

_“That’s not true! The heart may be weak. And sometimes, it may even give in. But I’ve learned that deep down, there’s a light that never goes out!”_

_“So you have come this far and still you understand nothing. Every light must fade, every heart return to darkness!”_

* * *

In a dark expanse, there is a landing upon which a massive door rests. The boy and his companions float in the expanse, having just fought a great battle with their enemy, who is still floating there, not ready to give in just yet.

* * *

_“It is futile. The Keyblade alone cannot seal the door to darkness. Kingdom Hearts! Fill me with the power of darkness…” The doors crack open, and dark smoke begins to pour out. “Supreme darkness.”_

_“You’re wrong. I know now, without a doubt, Kingdom Hearts… is light!”_

_The doors open further and a jet of blinding light shoots out, striking the villain, who is clearly in pain at this._

_“L-Light! But… But why…” The villain explodes from the overload of light power._

_“Come on!” The boy and his friends immediately run up to push the doors closed, with great difficulty._

_One of the companions looks through the opening and gasps in horror._

_“Stop staring and keep pushing!” the other one scolds him, but then looks to see what his friend has seen and is horrified as well, as shadow monsters are marching toward the door from the other side._

_“The Heartless!”_

_“Hurry!”_

_“I can’t…”_

_“Don’t give up!” Suddenly, the boy’s friend, whose body the villain had been controlling before, appears to help him finish the job. “Come on, Sora! Together, we can do it!”_

_“Okay!” The boy keeps pushing the door while his friend pulls from the other side._

_Just then, two giant shadow monsters rise up._

_“It’s hopeless!”_

_Someone destroys both monsters in one strike each. The hero and his companions look through the door, and a silhouetted figure with a round head and two circles for ears leaps into view._

_“Your Majesty!”_

_The new ally pulls out his own weapon, which resembles a palette swap of the boy’s weapon. “Now, Sora, let’s close this door for good!”_

_“Close it, quick!”_

_“But—”_

_“Don’t worry. There will always be a door to the light.”_

_“Sora, you can trust King Mickey.”_

_“Now! They’re coming!”_

_“Donald, Goofy, thank you.”_

_The heroes close the Door. The boy’s friend turns to say his parting words to him. “Take care of her.” The boy nods in agreement._

_The Door is closed. The boy and the king raise their weapons and each send out a magic beam. The Door disappears into light._

* * *

The scholar removes his hand from the book, and the mist and images dissipate. _Yes,_ he mused, _that was the first adventure of the Keyblade wielder. But he vanished shortly after. I have heard that he returned recently. I wonder what sort of stories this new chapter has for him…_

He pulled a red crystal from his pocket. The crystal was three inches long with a half-inch diameter. At each end, the cylinder was capped with a cone-shape. He held it up so it glistened in the light. He then put one end of the crystal into a circular hole in the latch and turned it clockwise. There was a popping sound and the latch disappeared.

He turned the next page, the first one to be unlocked, and found that instead of text, there was an image covering both pages:

The boy sleeping in a large device that resembles a flower that has yet to bloom. Below that, the scenery is replaced with a town filled with brown and orange buildings, the atmosphere washed with the warm radiance of the setting sun. There is a clock tower, with appendages on the roof holding bells at the ends. Right above the clock face, which is made up of a large circle that creates the space where the clock would be, only for the actual clock to be much smaller than the opening and attached to the upper-left edge of the opening, three characters sit on the ledge. The figures are wearing matching black coats with hoods. Each of them is holding a stick with a block of light-blue ice cream. The man on the left has red hair which is even spikier than the hero’s hair. The girl on the right has black hair, and somewhat resembles the hero’s female friend. The scholar noticed that she appeared to be transparent. He doubted that she was always a phantom. _What happened to the girl?_ he wondered. Putting that question aside, he turned his attention to the boy in the middle. His left eyebrow shot up.

The boy in the middle was the spitting image of the hero from the previous chapter. He was not an exact clone, but the similarities were unmistakable. The scholar could tell that this boy had his own legend to tell, but it would merely be a side-story to set up this great chapter in history.

Much like the tale of how and why the hero of light went to sleep.

The scholar placed two fingers on the top image, and the room was once again filled with mist, and he saw the events that transpired in a mysterious castle.

* * *

One scene stuck in his mind. The spiky-haired boy and his two companions converse with a blond-haired girl. The girl is wearing a one-piece sleeveless dress that goes partway down her thighs, as well as a pair of light-blue sandals. They are standing outside of the sleeping pod that the boy is to be sleeping in.

* * *

_“To remember again, we have to sleep in that?”_

_“Yes. It’s going to take a little time, but I’ll take care of you.”_

_“Gawrsh, when we wake up, we won’t remember who you are anymore…”_

_A small green creature wearing a well-kept suit climbed out of the boy’s hood and stood up on his shoulder. He was carrying a book that seemed small to humans but normal-sized to him. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll just make a big note in my journal. And it will say, ‘Thank Naminé’.”_

_“Oh, good. That makes me feel better.”_

_“Well, good night then, Naminé.”_

_“Good night, Goofy.” With that, the boy’s companions leave to find their own sleeping chambers. “You too, Sora.”_

_“Okay.”_

_“All of this may have started with a lie… but I really am glad that I can meet you, Sora.”_

_“Yeah, me too. When I finally found you, and even when I remembered your name, I was happy. The way I felt then— that was no lie.”_

_“Goodbye.”_

_“No, not goodbye! When I wake up, I’ll find you. And then there will be no lies. We’re gonna be friends for real. Promise me, Naminé.”_

_“You’re going to forget making that promise.”_

_“If the chain of memories comes apart, the links will still be there, right? So the memory of our promise will always be inside me somewhere. I’m sure of it.”_

_“Yeah, you’re right. Okay, it’s a promise.”_

_“Good. Until later.”_

_They step up to each other, link pinky fingers, and shake on it. The boy waves goodbye and jumps into the sleeping pod._

_“A promise… Huh… Sora, some of your memories’ links are deep in the shadows of your heart and I won’t be able to find them. But don’t worry. You made another promise to someone who you could never replace.” The pod’s “petals” begin to close. “She is your light. The light within the darkness. Remember her, and all the memories lost in the shadows of your heart will come into the light.”_

_“Another promise…”_

_“Look at the good luck charm. I changed its shape when I changed your memory— But when you thought of her just once, it went back to the way it was.”_

_The boy removes a star-shaped trinket from his pocket. It is constructed from shells and stitched together with string. A piece of paper cut into the shape of a crown is stuck into the middle between the five shells. There is a sketch at the tip of one of the shells: a smiling face with bits of brown at the very tip, signifying hair. A length of string loops around off of that end. The boy studies it, working to remember the friend who gave it to him._

_Just then, the pod closes shut. The boy holds his trinket close to his heart as memories of his friends begin to come back into focus._

* * *

Yes, that was why the hero went to sleep. His memories had been taken apart due to a villainous plot, but he was put to sleep to repair the memories when the villain was defeated.

However, by the scholar’s calculations, the restoration process should have only taken a few months at most. So why did it take the better part of a year? He looked down at the picture of the three figures on the clock tower. _Perhaps,_ he thought, _their tale might hold the answer._ He placed his fingers on the bottom image, and he was shown images from their story.

* * *

In that same town, in front of a train station to which the clock tower is attached, the young man in the coat is stumbling, exhausted and dazed, while his female friend collapses to her knees and stares at the ground, weak.

* * *

_“Who are you… again? It’s weird. I feel like I’m forgetting something really important.”_

_“You’ll be… better off now… Roxas.” She collapses, but the boy stoops down to catch her. Her body begins to dissolve into crystal flakes, fluttering up toward the sky._

_“Am I… the one who did this to you?”_

_“No… It was my choice… to go away now. Better than, than do nothing… and let Xemnas have his way. I belong with Sora. And now, I am going back… to be with him. Roxas… I need you… to do me a favor. All those hearts that I’ve captured… Kingdom Hearts… Set them free.”_

_“Kingdom Hearts… Free them?”_

_The girl’s feet begin to be covered in ice, the frost crystallizing around her boots and up her legs. “It’s too late… for me to undo my mistakes. But you can’t let Xemnas… have Kingdom Hearts… You can’t. Good-bye, Roxas. See you again. I’m glad… I got to meet you. Oh… and of course, Axel, too. You’re both my best friends. Never forget. That’s the truth.”_

_The boy’s eyes turn from confusion and uncertainty to recognition, and he remembers who the girl is. “No! Xion… Who else will I have ice cream with?”_

_The girl freezes up completely, with spikes of ice growing out of her body, before it all dissolves into specks of light which float away. When she is gone, the boy sees a single shell, much like the ones in the hero’s good luck charm. He picks it up, and a tear runs down his cheek._

_“Xion…”_

* * *

Next, the scholar saw a city enveloped in darkness, the night sky shrouding everything. The only light comes from massive projector screens attached to the top of a skyscraper. Rain is pouring down, sparing nothing from the sheets of water droplets. The streets are overrun with shadow monsters, each one the size of a human, with pulsing veins running along their arms, legs and head. Two long horns extend from the back of each head, then turn down at a sharp angle near the tips. A figure steps out of an alleyway. He is wearing a black coat, with the hood pulled up so the shadows conceal his face. In each hand he holds one of the unique weapons, one looking different than the other. As he treads along, more shadow monsters materialize and climb out of the ground behind him. Soon enough, he is surrounded. Another figure stands on top of the skyscraper. He also wears a black coat, but the hood is left down. The figure has long silver hair. He wears a black felt blindfold over his eyes, but is nonetheless aware of the other character’s arrival. The shadows take notice of the hooded newcomer and run toward him. The first to reach him raises its clawed hand to strike, but the newcomer cuts it down with his black weapon. The monster explodes into a cloud of shadow, which dissipates into oblivion within one second. Next, the warrior cleaves through three shadow creatures with his white weapon, then proceeds to slay each and every one of the creatures.

The hooded figure looks up and notices the blindfolded man. Dodging the lunging shadows, he dashes up to the skyscraper, jumps up past the entrance threshold, and runs vertically up the front of the building. He throws the black weapon in his right hand up to the blindfolded man, who leaps off of the top of the skyscraper and catches the sword. The man gasps as he is overcome with memories of the black-haired girl. The hooded warrior senses the man’s recognition. As he runs up and the other falls down, they cross paths in front of the building’s primary screen. He lands on top of the skyscraper while the other man lands on his feet in the street. The blindfolded man is almost immediately surrounded by the shadow monsters. The hooded man jumps down to join him and together they vanquish all of the shadows. They then take notice of each other and jump backwards to create some distance between them.

* * *

_“Who are you?”_

_“What does it matter? I’m here for you.”_

_“Why are you trying to stop me?”_

_“Because I want back the rest of Sora’s memories.”_

_“Sora!? Enough about Sora!”_

_“Do you have some kind of plan?”_

_“I’ll set Kingdom Hearts free! Then everything can be the way it was! She’ll come back… and the three of us can be together again!”_

_“You mean Xion. It’s a struggle just to remember the name now… Either way, I can’t let you go do anything crazy.”_

_“I’m freeing Kingdom Hearts, and I’m going to find Sora! I want Xion back. I want my life back!”_

_“If you try and make contact with Kingdom Hearts, the last thing you’ll get is your life back. The Organization will destroy you!”_

_“Enough!”_

_The hooded man with the white weapon charges toward the blindfolded man with the black weapon. They fight fiercely, but the hooded man is able to knock his opponent down. The blindfolded man drops his weapon beside him when he lands on his back. He pushes himself up so he is in a sitting position, facing his adversary._

_“Why? Why do you have the Keyblade?”_

_“Shut up!” The hooded man strikes at his foe, but the blindfolded man picks up his weapon and deflects the blow, tossing the hooded man backwards. The warrior’s hood falls down, exposing the face of the boy who resembles the hero. He lands on his back, stunned._

_The blindfolded man approaches him. He throws his weapon at the ground next to the boy’s head, embedding it a few inches into the asphalt._

_The boy awakens and grabs the black weapon out of the ground. He charges at his foe. The blindfolded man conjures an orb of bluish-black fire and throws it, but the boy deflects it and swings his weapon at his enemy, who jumps out of the way._

_“Why don’t you quit?”_

_After a pause, the blindfolded man smirks and taunts the boy. “Come on, Sora. I thought you were stronger than that.”_

_Confused by the quip, the boy replies. “Get real. Look which one of us is winning.” He gasps in surprise, wondering where that came from._

_“So it’s true. You really are his Nobody. Guess DiZ was right after all.”_

_“What are you talking about? I am me! Nobody else!” He calls forth his white weapon into his left hand to wield alongside the black weapon, and runs toward his foe, enraged. He strikes. The blindfolded man conjures an energy shield to block him, but the boy’s attack is so strong that he is pushed backward, causing him to groan in irritation and fall to one knee. “How many times do I have to beat you?”_

_“All right. You’ve left me with no other choice.”_

_“What?”_

_“I have to release the power in my heart— the dark power that I’ve been holding back.” The man unties and drops his blindfold. “Even… if it changes me forever.”_

_The man calls forth a great pillar of dark power to envelop him. He levitates a few inches off of the ground as the transformation occurs. When the aura dissipates, a larger man with darker skin floats in his place. He is still wearing the black coat and he retained his blue eyes, but otherwise he looks like the enemy that the hero and his companions fought months before. A hulking black monster with horns sticking out of its head horizontally floats behind him. The monster is covered in long streams of bandages._

_The man and the monster teleport and reappear immediately in front of the boy. The monster grabs the boy with one massive hand and lifts him up, squeezing. The boy screams in agony and drops his weapons, which dematerialize upon hitting the ground._

_“I have accepted it.” The monster drops the unconscious young man, letting him lie on the ground._

* * *

The scholar removed his fingers from the book, and the mist and images dissipated. Now he understood why the hero had been out of action for a year, why nobody had heard anything from him. These episodes with the castle and the boy in the black coat answered his questions.

Now it was time to read the rest of this new chapter.

He turned the page and placed his hand upon the open pages. Just like before, the text came to life and swirled around him, and mist filled the library. Moving images materialized, and he studied them intently.

* * *

A blank white room. Its walls are covered with crayon drawings. In the middle of the room is a plain white table with a chair at either end. A young man, the boy who fought in the dark city, stands at the door, looking around at the drawings. He is no longer wearing his black coat, but rather two layers of zip-up tee-shirts, the black shirt zipped up all the way and the white shirt with a red collar and a two-row checkered pattern across the chest and shoulders on top left open, slacks that are black at the top but tan in the legs, and a pair of grey sneakers with red straps. A blond girl in a white dress, taller than she was in the earlier vision but otherwise unchanged, is standing next to the chair on the right. The boy notices a sketch, hung directly to the left of the window, of a young man in a black coat with light-brown hair— depicting him —and a similarly-dressed taller man with spiky red hair, together on the right side of the page, with two other figures, drawn to be further away, with their details hard to make out, standing on the left side.

* * *

_“This is… me? And Axel’s here too.”_

_“You ARE best friends.”_

_“Very funny.”_

_“Don’t you want to know the truth about who you really are?”_

_“No one knows me better than me.”_

_“Of course…”_

_“But… I don’t get what’s been happening lately.” He walks to the other side of the window and examines a sketch of a spiky-haired boy standing next to two people with odd-looking faces, one of which is taller than the boy and dressed in green and yellow while the other is shorter than the boy and dressed in blue._

_“You know these three, don’t you?”_

_“Yeah. Sora, Donald, and Goofy. They’re from the dreams.”_

_“About a year ago… some things happened, and I had to take apart the memories chained together in Sora’s heart. But now… I’m putting them all back exactly the way they were. It’s taken me a long time, but pretty soon Sora will be his old self again. The process has been affecting you too, Roxas.”_

_“You mean… the dreams?”_

_“Yes… You and Sora are connected. And… in order for Sora to become completely whole again…” the girl gestures to a back-view sketch of the spiky-haired boy and the boy in the black coat standing next to each other. “He needs you.”_

_“Me? What for?”_

_“You hold half of what he is… He needs you, Roxas.”_

_“Naminé?”_

_The girl gestures for him to sit in the nearby chair. He complies, and she then walks over to sit in the opposite chair._

_“Naminé, who are you?”_

_“I’m a witch with power over Sora’s memories and those around him.”_

_“A witch?”_

_“That’s what DiZ called me. But I don’t know why I have this power… I just do. I’m not even sure there’s a right way for me to use it.”_

_“Hmm… I can’t help you there. It’s funny… Suddenly I feel like I don’t know myself at all… I guess I would like to know. What do you know about me… that I don’t?”_

_“You… you were never supposed to exist, Roxas.”_

_“What…? How could you even say such a thing… even if it were true?”_

_“I’m sorry. I guess some things… really are better left unsaid.”_

* * *

A blank white room with the hero’s sleeping pod in the center. The young man enters the room and begins to approach the pod. A man in red and black robes with bandages covering his face stands between him and the pod. His arms are crossed behind his back.

* * *

_“At last, the Keyblade’s chosen one.”_

_“Who are you talking to? Me? Or Sora?”_

_“To half of Sora, of course. You reside in darkness. What I need is someone who can move about the realm of light and destroy Organization XIII.”_

_“Why? Who are you?”_

_“I am a servant of the world.” He laughed to himself. “And if I’m a servant, then you should consider yourself a tool, at best.”_

_“Was that… Was that supposed to be a joke? 'Cause I’m not laughing!” He summoned the special weapon, this time resembling the one that the hero used, and charged at the bandaged man. He sliced through him while still running, but he passed right through him. The image of the bandaged man flickered briefly with glowing white rectangles floating around it. The boy looked back at the image, not hiding his surprise, but he quickly reverted to an expression of rage._

_“My apologies. This is only a data-based projection.”_

_The boy turned his head upward and screamed in anger, then continued to slash right through the hologram until he was too tired to keep attacking. The hologram disappeared in a swirling field of glowing digits and reappeared a few feet behind him._

_“Come, over here.”_

_The boy turned to glare at the figure. “I hate you so much!”_

_“You should share some of that hatred with Sora. He’s far too nice for his own good.”_

_“No! My heart belongs to me!” He struck out at the hologram, but it disappeared as he got to it._

_The boy looked up at the pod as it lit up and opened. Steam poured out from the machine as the “petals” in front came to a halt, exposing what was inside. The boy could see a sleeping figure floating inside the pod. The hero had certainly grown a few inches since he went to sleep._

_“Sora… You’re lucky. Looks like my summer vacation is… over.”_

* * *

A cliff of purple and black stone, overlooking a large canyon. In the middle of that canyon stands a fortress of seven stone towers lined with machinery. On the outer face of the tower in front, there is an image of the insignia that can be seen on many of the shadow monsters. A grey-haired man in a black coat stands at the edge of the cliff. The hero and his companions, along with a short character with two large circles for ears wearing clothes similar to the hero’s first costume and wielding a differently-colored version of the hero’s special weapon, approach the man.

* * *

_The shorter character addresses the grey-haired man. “Xehanort!”_

_“How long has it been since I abandoned that name?”_

_“Out with it, Nobody! Where’s Kairi? Where’s Riku!?”_

_“I know nothing of any Kairi. As for Riku… perhaps you should ask your King.”_

_The hero looks to the small king in confusion, but he is preoccupied with the man conjuring a dark portal to escape. “Stop!” The king chases after him and disappears into the portal along with him. The portal disappears, much to the hero’s dismay._

_“He’s gone.” The hero falls back onto his rear and starts punching at the ground in grief. His taller companion places a supporting hand on his shoulder._

_“Sora, Goofy.”_

_“Way to fall right into their trap.” The hero and his friends turn to see where the voice came from and find a man with spiky red hair leaning against a rock wall. He is wearing a black coat similar to the mysterious man that the king pursued into the darkness. Beneath each green eye is a purple tattoo in the shape of an upside-down teardrop. The trio steps up to the man and gets into a fighting stance._

_“C’mon, it’s a set-up by Organization XIII. Xemnas is using you to destroy the Heartless— that’s his big master plan.”_

_“Xemnas?”_

_“The guy you just saw. He’s their leader. Got it memorized? X-E-M, N-A-S.”_

_“Organization XIII wants to get rid of the Heartless?”_

_“Man, you’re slow. Every Heartless slain with that Keyblade releases a captive heart. That is what the Organization is after.”_

_“So what are those guys gonna do with the hearts?”_

_“I’m not telling.”_

_“Tell us!”_

_“You… you’re the one who kidnapped Kairi!”_

_“Bingo. The name’s Axel. Got it memorized?”_

_“Where is Kairi?” At this, the stranger’s confidence falters, and his expression betrays a sense of guilt. “Please. Just tell me!”_

_“Look, about Kairi… I’m sorry.”_

_“Axel.” The red-headed man’s guard goes up upon hearing the new voice. A blue-haired man with an X-shaped scar on his face materializes in front of him. He is also wearing a black coat._

_“Uh-oh!” The redhead teleports away. The hero runs up to stop him, but the blue-haired man puts his arm out as a gesture telling him to stop._

_“We’ll ensure he receives the maximum punishment,” the newcomer informs the hero._

_“I don’t care about any of that! Just let me into the realm of darkness, okay!?”_

_“If it’s Kairi you’re worried about, don’t. We’re taking very good care of her.”_

_“Take me to her.”_

_“Is she that important to you?”_

_“Yeah. More than anything.”_

_“Show me how important.”_

_The hero dejectedly gets down on his knees and plants his hands on the ground, much to his companions’ shock. “Please.”_

_“So you really do care for her. In that case— the answer’s no.”_

_The hero immediately jumps back up onto his feet. His fists are clenched in rage. “You rotten…!”_

_“Are you angry? Do you hate me? Then take that rage and direct it at the Heartless.” The blue-haired man snaps his fingers, causing four of the shadow monsters, resembling armor-clad knights, to appear behind him. The hero and his companions bare their weapons, ready for a fight. “Pitiful Heartless, mindlessly collecting hearts. And yet they know not the true power of what they hold. The rage of the Keyblade releases those hearts. They gather in darkness, masterless and free… until they weave together to make Kingdom Hearts. And when that time comes we can truly, finally exist.”_

_A new voice joins the conversation. “What in the world do you think you’re prattling on about?” The horned witch in the black robe materializes in a flare of green fire. “Kingdom Hearts belongs to me! The heart of all kingdoms, the heart of all that lives. A dominion fit to be called Kingdom Hearts must be MY dominion!”_

_“Maleficent, no! No more Heartless!”_

_“I do not take orders from you!” With a wave of her scepter, five smaller shadow monsters appear around the blue-haired man._

_“Fool.” The man snaps his fingers and summons a five white, semi-humanoid monsters which immediately strike down the shadow monsters. The white monsters turn toward the hero, but the witch teleports in front of him and conjures up a wall of green flame to separate the heroes from the man and the monsters._

_“While I keep these creatures at bay, you devise a way to vanquish them—forever!”_

_“Maleficent!”_

_Two of the white monsters jump on the witch, wrapping themselves around her._

_“Do not misunderstand me. I shall have my revenge on you yet.” More of the monsters lunge at her, tackling her to the ground._

_“Maleficent!”_

_“Leave! Now!”_

_“I don’t take orders from you!” The hero starts to run to the witch’s aid but his smaller companion grabs him by the wrist to stop him._

_“Sora, c’mon!”_

_“But… what about…” But when he looks back, the witch has disappeared under a pile of monsters. Her wall of fire dies down._

_“Now then. Where did we leave off?” The blue-haired man snaps his fingers, and the white monsters disappear, instead replaced by knight-type shadows and shadows that resemble floating robots with guns for hands._

_“Which side are you guys on anyway?”_

_“The Heartless ally with whoever’s the strongest.” To demonstrate, he throws his hand out, bidding the monsters to attack._

_The hero strikes down two of the monsters, but stops when he notices two glowing hearts floating up into the sky._

_“Yes, Sora. Extract more hearts.” The blue-haired man conjures a dark portal around himself and disappears._

_The hero watches as the two freed hearts are enveloped in shadows and vanish. “No! The hearts!”_

* * *

An open-air skyway made of some kind of white-silver metal. Lines running along the floor light up with a white color scrolling down the line. The skyway looks out onto a night sky, in which a massive heart-shaped moon floats. The moon does not appear to be too far off into the distance. A tall man wearing red and black robes is hunched over a complex machine halfway up the skyway. The machine stands on three legs and has a laser gun-type apparatus attached to the top, and is firing a green beam of light into the center of the moon. The mouse king is standing beside the man. The laser beam starts crackling, unstable. The machine also begins to shake uncontrollably in the man’s grip.

* * *

_“Ansem?”_

_The man chuckles. “I’m a fool. I’ve spent years studying the workings of the heart. Yet it seems I still haven’t learned a thing!”_

_“What d’ya mean?”_

_“The process of encoding hearts is incalculable. The inhabitants of my Twilight Town were data created from real hearts. I was convinced that they would think and behave the way I had envisioned— but I couldn’t have been more wrong. A heart is so much more than any system. I saw it when Roxas and Kairi crossed paths. I knew. But I was too stubborn to accept it. It’s always the same. I try to wrap my mind around things my heart already knows, only to fail. While I was trying to bring Sora back, I had so many plans in store. But once Sora was an acting force, they fell apart. All my research amounted to nothing, compared to that one boy’s heart.”_

_The machine begins to emit sparks of uncontrollable electricity. “Ansem! The machine!”_

_“All the more proof that hearts cannot be contained by data. Run, my friend! It’s going to self-destruct, and anything could happen.”_

_“But…”_

_“Your Majesty!” The hero, followed by his anthropomorphic animal companions, the dark-skinned and blue-eyed man in the black coat, and the hero’s female friend, runs up the skyway ramp, approaching the man and the mouse king._

_The man turns to face the hero. “Sora, the rest is up to you. And Roxas— I doubt you can hear me— but… I am sorry.”_

_“Ansem!”_

_“My heart is telling me what I must do. Please allow me to do what it says!”_

_“No!” The dark-skinned man approaches the mouse king and reaches down to tap him on the arm. The mouse king turns to face him. “Riku!”_

_“His heart’s decided. We can’t change that.”_

_They both turn in the direction of a newcomer, materializing in a dark portal. It is the grey-haired man whom the hero had confronted on the cliff. The man was facing toward the heart-shaped moon._

_“I was wondering who would dare interfere with my Kingdom Hearts. And look— Here you all are. How convenient for me. Ansem the Wise… You look pathetic.”_

_“Have your laugh. I deserve as much for failing to see you for the fool you are.”_

_“Students do take after their teachers. Only a fool would be your apprentice. After all, none of this would have happened without you. YOU are the source of all Heartless. It was your research that inspired me to go further than you ever dared.”_

_“I admit… My disregard brought chaos to more worlds than one. But what were YOU seeking? You erased me from the world, only to take my name and continue research better left forgotten… Is this the answer you’ve been looking for?”_

_“All that and more. I’m carrying on what you yourself began, and I’m creating a brand new world, one heart at a time. I thought you’d praise me, but all you ever do is hold me back. I understand though. Unlike me, you have a heart. And you’re powerless to control it. Consumed, by the jealousy you feel toward the student who surpassed you.”_

_“Xehanort. Foolish apprentice of a foolish man. You have surpassed nothing— only proved how little we both know. We may profess to know the heart, but its essence is beyond our reach. We’re both ignorant— as oblivious as when we began. I’m afraid that any world that you try to create…” The man turns back to glare at the grey-haired man in the eyes. “Any world of yours… would be an empire of ignorance. That is why you and your creation are destined to fall!_

_“We’ve said enough! Riku, you know what to do! King Mickey, my friend, forgive me! Farewell!”_

_A blinding light bursts from the device. The hero runs to the man’s aid, but his transformed friend blocks his path and shields him and the others from the blast. The machine explodes, sending up a pillar of light. Another blinding light envelops the skyway._

_The heart-shaped moon was broken, a large part of the front face having exploded off, exposing a vortex of black and purple energy. Hearts descend through the air. As they approach the ground, many of the white monsters wave their arms about like children surrounded by fluttering confetti, as if attempting to catch them. As the hearts touch the ground, they disappear into orbs of darkness, from which shadow monsters form._

_The six heroes lie on the ground, dazed. The silver-haired villain has already vanished. Five of them come to, and the hero sees that his best friend, still unmoving, looks different from the way he was a moment ago. He runs over to check on him as he starts to get back up. The hero is relieved to see that his friend has somehow regained his true form. He is still wearing the black coat, but he also is wearing a black blindfold. His other friends take notice and surround him in awe. The friend realizes that his vision is obscured by the blindfold, and he understands what just happened._

_“Ansem did say ‘anything could happen’…”_

_The hero notices that his friend has not touched his blindfold. “Riku, you gonna take that off?”_

_“Oh.” With one hand tugging on the front, the silver-haired young man removes his blindfold and opens his eyes._

_“What was that?”_

_The mouse king approaches them and joins the conversation. “His eyes couldn’t lie.”_

_“Lie? And who were you trying to fool? Huh? Huhhh?”_

_“Myself.”_

_“Riku… C’mon, man! Why did you try to do so much on your own?” The hero runs towards their four other friends, turns around, and spreads his arms out, gesturing to the assembled group. “You’ve got friends… like us!” All five of them grinned in agreement._

_“Have you forgotten? I’ll tell you why. 'Cause I’m not a total sap like you!”_

_“Say that again!”_

_The cheerful conversation is interrupted when they all notice the broken moon. They then look down off the balcony and see a legion of shadows on the lower platform, crawling up the castle at surprising speed._

_“What should we do, Riku?”_

_“We must defeat Xemnas. He’s the Organization’s last survivor.”_

_“Right!”_

_The silver-haired man tears off his black coat and threw it to the wind, revealing his white-and-yellow short-sleeved zip-up shirt, black undershirt and blue jeans underneath. The black color of his shoes burns away, turning them into grey sneakers. All six heroes march up the skyway to confront their foe._

* * *

At the highest point of the castle, on a circular platform where the grey-haired man in the black coat stands.

* * *

_“Ohh…my Kingdom Hearts…ruined. Now I’ll have to start all over again. Warriors of the Keyblade! Go forth and bring me more hearts!”_

_“No!” The hero, his silver-haired friend and the mouse king summon their weapons and point them at the grey-haired man._

_“Denizens of light, answer this: Why do you hate the darkness?”_

_“Aw, we don’t hate it. It’s just kinda… scary. But the world’s made of light AND darkness. You can’t have one without the other, 'cause darkness is half of everything. Sorta makes you wonder why we’re scared of the dark.”_

_“It’s because of who’s lurking inside it.”_

_“Then allow me another question. You accept darkness, yet choose to live in the light. So why is it that you loathe us who teeter on the edge of nothing? We who were turned away by both light and dark— never given a choice?”_

_“That’s simple. It’s because you mess up our worlds.”_

_“That may be… However, what other choice might we have had?”_

_“Just give it a rest! You’re Nobodies! You don’t even exist! You’re not sad about anything!”_

_“The man in the coat laughs. “Very good. You don’t miss a thing. I cannot feel—sorrow… No matter what misery befalls the worlds. No matter what you think, no matter what you feel, or how you exist.” He raises his arms and calls up an aura of energy, conjuring a blinding light. The hero covers his eyes, and when he can see once again, he is in what appears to be the square in front of the skyscraper in the dark city below. However, when he looks around he sees a floating gray aura encircling the area, and he realizes that he is in an illusion created by his opponent._

_The man stands in front of the hero to taunt him before disappearing to the top of the skyscraper. The hero summons his weapon and runs up to the door, vaulting over the porch and jumping up to the wall above the entrance. His feet connect with the side of the building and he makes a vertical dash up to meet his enemy. The man in the coat reveals a pair of red energy staves sticking out of his sleeves and jumps from his perch and descends upside down until he meets the hero halfway down. The hero lashes out, connecting blows with the man multiple times until he manages to land a solid hit and knocks him out of the air. The fierce duel continues, and the hero dodges blasts of energy and parries laser blade strikes as he moves in for the assault. The grey-haired man conjured an energy wall to block the charge, but the hero simply jumped over the eight-foot panel of solid light and threw his weapon down at his foe, connecting hard with his shoulder. The two fought hard, and in the end the hero won the duel, knocking his enemy onto his back. A dark aura materialized around the man and he disappeared. Moments later, the illusion fell, and the hero was once again standing on the highest point of the tower, surrounded by his friends._

* * *

But that was not the end of the final battle. First, the hero and his friends had to face their foe as he tried to appropriate the power which he had been scheming to harness, and then, when most of the party were heading home, thinking that the battle was over, the hero and his silver-haired friend had to face off against the grey-haired man, who was at that point more powerful than ever. In the end, the two friends prevailed against their enemy and they were finally allowed to return home.

The scholar smirked in satisfaction. The worlds are no longer divided by impassable barriers and there are no crises that will impede his agenda.

He closed the book and carried it back over to the bookcase, sliding it neatly back into place. He then stepped over to a bookcase against the wall. He pulled a book halfway out of the shelf, hooked his fingers into a notch carved into the cover, and pulled it to the left, sliding the "bookcase" to the side and revealing a passage in the wall. He stepped through and entered a large section open to several floors going all the way through every floor of the castle. Metal platforms are set up at every level. There are no railings, but force fields keep people from falling off. The scholar steps up to a floating spiked object floating above a spire poking out of the floor. He waved his hand in front of the object and it glowed with red electricity. A bronze platform appeared just outside of the force field. Energy bubbles surged around it and also blurred the scholar’s vision, and one second later he is standing on the circular platform, facing in the direction where he just was.

The platform began to rise, following a course set by a laser path which the platform electromagnetically follows. The scholar waited patiently, watching the floors go by, until he finally reached his destination. The energy bubbles appeared again, blurring his vision, and he is suddenly standing on the lift stop, facing the elevator platform once again. He left through the passageway directly behind him and stepped out onto the High Tower. He stared off to the horizon, watching the people of his world go about their daily tasks. The townsfolk, appearing to be smaller than ants, sell their goods, socialize, and bludgeon the occasional shadow monster with a large stick or a fancy sword. He looked even further, staring beyond the empty expanse of cliffs and ravines until his eyes settled on a series of decrepit towers standing in a circle.

One thing which the scholar has learned from _Historia Omnia_ is that there are many who desire power, and are willing to use dark means to achieve it. Perhaps they will be easy to draw to his side, and they will follow him to the end.

He turned his head up to the sky and stares in what he knows to be the general direction of a certain world.

_What a noble and brave young man,_ he thought to himself. _Such determination to fight for what he believes in. I have a feeling that we may have had much in common. It is a shame that we must meet as enemies._

The scholar turned back around to return to his study.


	2. Chapter One- Destiny Islands

The light shining through the window drew Sora out of his slumber. Opening his eyes by a crack, he looked over at the clock on his bedside table and realized that it was time to get up. He climbed out of bed and, still wearing his pajamas, walked downstairs to the kitchen. He prepared breakfast, pouring himself a bowl of cereal and filling it up with milk.

As he ate his breakfast, he stared out the window, admiring the view of daybreak. He saw the sun and wondered which world its light represented.

Sora had never had the chance to explore the worlds in the same sector as his islands. He had not even been in the space surrounding his world during the year when he was adventuring with…

Sora was bringing a spoonful of cereal to his mouth, but as his mind wandered he stopped midway, holding the spoon unmoving halfway between the bowl and his mouth.

It had been several weeks since he had last seen those two. They had a rough start, with Sora butting heads repeatedly with the loud, short one, while the tall, cheerful one kept order between them. Over time, they had come to work together like a well-oiled machine, acting perfectly in synchronization.

_Perhaps too “in synchronization”, where all attempts to heal my bruises were concerned,_ Sora mused wistfully.

They had become two of Sora’s closest friends and most trusted companions. But now that the threat was over and the worlds were safe, their adventure had to come to an end. Sora returned to his world and they returned to theirs.

He missed the adventure. He missed them. He was glad to be back on the islands, but he could not help but long for the good old days.

“You better eat that before it gets soggy.” The voice startled Sora out of his nostalgia, and he turned to see who had spoken. Sora’s mother, Suta, had just come down the stairs to greet him. She was in her early forties, and was two inches shorter than Sora. She had blue eyes and dark brown hair which went down to her shoulders. Like his own, her hair naturally plaited itself into spikes, which despite however much she combed it jutted out every which way. She wore a red nightgown with blue stripes and white sleeves. Size-16 black slippers. She gave him a warm smile.

“Morning, Mom,” Sora greeted back.

“Oh, Sora!” She pointed at his leg. Sora looked down and realized that he spilled the cereal and milk from his spoon all over his lap. He quickly put the spoon down on the table and grabbed several napkins to collect the cereal pieces and dab at his drenched pants.

“Sorry. I was just…” Sora began, but he was not sure how to put it to words.

“Reminiscing? Remembering the old days? Recalling nostalgically the two years you were off on your own sailing between the stars without having to worry about parental supervision while your father and I were left worried sick, not sure if you were even still alive?” Suta finished for him as she took the napkins that he had already used and dropped them into the trash bucket.

“Technically, I was asleep for one of those years, and I had been taken out of your memory during that time. And you were also in suspended animation for a few months before that.” Sora touched his pants in the wet spot to make sure that he had gotten them as dry as he was able to, and he then started to get back to eating his cereal.

Suta chuckled. “Didn’t make us feel any better when we did remember you. Or even during the days after we—how did you put it?—‘were brought back from the darkness’.” She grabbed another napkin and wiped up the drops of milk that had spilled onto the floor. “Just try to reminisce and eat at the same time next time. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am,” Sora answered, raising his hand to his forehead in a salute. He finished eating and brought the bowl and spoon to the sink to rinse out.

He then ascended the staircase to return to his room. Looking into his closet, he scanned for his school uniform among his many red one-piece jumpsuits. He found the white, short-sleeved button-down shirt, the blue slacks, the black belt, and the blue tie next to his black, red and blue jumpsuit and its corresponding small black hoodie with white trim. He put those school clothes on, then crouched down to put on his size-18 dress shoes. After tying the shoes tight, he gathered his notebooks and papers into his backpack, tied the backpack shut, and hoisted it onto his back. As he exited his room and descended the staircase again, Sora saw his father, Kumo, exiting the bathroom.

“Morning, son,” Kumo greeted. He was in his early forties and stood at equal height with his son, though his messy light brown hair did not quite stick out quite as much as the spikes in Sora’s hair. He wore a light-blue polo shirt and tan slacks. He was carrying a rolled-up newspaper in his hand, though both it and his hand were somewhat damp due to a sloppy job of washing his hands and drying. He beamed a warm smile that very much resembled his son’s own standard grin.

“Hey, dad,” Sora replied with a goofy wave.

“Have a good day at school. And try not to swing that key of yours around the gymnasium today, not unless you see some real monsters. Or lobbyists.” Kumo chuckled. Sora had been made to sit out of the previous day’s dodgeball match in gym class when a dodgeball strike to the back caused him to summon his Keyblade reflexively, tripping two of his classmates and causing a lot of confusion.

Sora rolled his eyes at that remark. “Thanks. You have a good day too. And I’ll try. Granted, usually it isn’t that trigger-happy. I’m not real sure what happened then.” He pushed the door open and gave his parents a thumbs-up as he backed out.

Sora walked down the street, and as he approached the corner he saw a silver-haired boy wearing a uniform like his and a red-haired girl in a similar uniform, but with short sleeves that just cover the shoulders as well as a skirt instead of slacks. He put in an extra boost of speed to catch up to his two best friends, Riku and Kairi.

Riku smirked, glancing down at his friend who stood half a foot shorter than him. Sora and Riku had been best friends for almost their entire lives, and that friendship was packed with a friendly rivalry. Riku was the one who devised the plan to travel to other worlds. When they were separated after Destiny Islands was swallowed by darkness two years ago, Riku allied himself with a coalition of villains controlling the Heartless so that he could save Kairi, and he allowed himself to believe that Sora had given up on them so he could run around showing off with his Keyblade. When this went downhill, Riku spent the next year fighting the darkness within him and trying to make up for his past mistakes, but found that Sora and Kairi were able to forgive him easily. Since returning home, he had gotten a haircut, so his hair only reached his neck as opposed to down his shoulders and he no longer had bangs obscuring his face.

“So, how did your parents take it?” he asked.

“Mom said to be more careful. Dad is going to be making fun of me for it for a while.” Sora laughed, causing Riku and Kairi to laugh as well.

“The principal almost lost it yesterday. He knew you had a Keyblade, but he had no idea that you could summon it on a whim like that!” Kairi remarked, a mischievous smile plastered on her face. Sora chuckled and placed his hands behind his head as he found himself lost in her violet-blue eyes.

Sora was the first person on the islands to meet Kairi when he found her washed up on the shore years ago, when they were both five years old. She had by some means escaped the world on which she was born, known as Radiant Garden, when it was invaded by dark forces, and when she arrived on Destiny Islands she claimed to have no memory of where she was from before being cast through the sea between worlds. She was adopted by the mayor, Braska, and she became close friends with Sora and Riku. Much to her amusement, Sora and Riku often competed for her attention. When the island was invaded by darkness, Kairi lost her heart, which found refuge inside of Sora. When he found out, he set her heart free, releasing his own heart in the process and nearly causing himself to be lost to the darkness. However, Kairi’s love brought him back to the light. When the islands were revived, Kairi was left at home to wait for her friends when Riku was locked in the Realm of Darkness and Sora left to find him. She was kidnapped to manipulate Sora, but she later joined him and Riku in the final battle before finally returning home together. A month after coming back, Sora worked up the courage to ask Kairi out to dinner. They have been a couple for two months now.

“Well, I hope we don’t have to let him find out about the magic,” Sora quipped. “He’ll go ballistic at that one!”

Sora, Riku and Kairi turned and began walking to school. Sora closed his eyes and breathed in the warm spring air. The three friends walked silently, until they approached the next intersection and paused at the stop sign.

“So, what did you think of the calculus homework?” Riku asked. He tried to not look nervous, so as not to expose the fact that he had trouble understanding the topic to them.

“Eh, it wasn’t too hard after I applied it to experience,” Sora answered with a shrug. “Shooting Blizzard chunks at a Rapid Thruster thirty feet off and twenty feet in the air? Bouncing a Darkball off of a wall starting at thirty meters per second and ending at ten? You learn how this stuff works as you go. Didn’t you do anything like that during your time away?”

“I saw a guy run straight up a vertical wall with no change in velocity, so I practically gave up on the laws of physics after that, and aside from our duels, card games with illusions and a giant with a hammer-thing who caused earthquakes, and running through the castle where holographic platforms literally appeared out of nowhere and where I spent half of the fights teleporting all over the place and pulling magic swords and walls out of nowhere, that was the most exciting part of the last two years,” Riku replied. “I don’t exactly have the kind of experience that you have in applying physics in live action.”

Kairi shot him a sly glance and smirked. “Well, I just had a good tutor,” she added, tapping the center of her chest with her index finger.

“I’m kind of impressed that Naminé managed to learn all that advanced math and science, considering that she spent the year on the one task of putting Sora’s memories back together,” Riku said. Naminé was Kairi’s Nobody, a shadow of herself made of the body and soul of a strong-willed person whose heart had been lost to the darkness. Naminé came into existence when Sora released her heart from his body, as an effect of her having lost her heart. Unlike Sora’s Nobody, Roxas, Naminé had not been formed from Kairi’s body elements, because, due to her being a Princess of Heart, she could not be touched by darkness even when her heart had been lost. So, while some flakes of her soul had been forced out when she was separated from her heart, the body elements that fused with the soul and dark matter to give her form was drawn from pieces of Sora’s, the rest of which fused with his soul along with dark matter to create Roxas. Naminé had the power to manipulate the chain of memories within Sora and the people connected to Sora’s heart. Born without a heart of her own and no sense of will, she had been coerced into messing with Sora’s memories to turn him into a puppet, but, inspired by Sora’s compassion and capacity to forgive, she offered to restore his memories, but he, as well as his companions whose memories had been torn apart as well, but the process took several months during which Sora and his companions were placed into a deep sleep. At the end of the second adventure, Naminé willingly fused back into Kairi. Lately, it seems that she is maintaining enough of a presence to telepathically help Kairi and her friends catch up with the schoolwork they missed.

“Well, good for you for having someone to give you the answers on a full-time basis,” Sora retorted. “So, how is your French class going?”

“ _Magnificent_ ,” Kairi answered with a flourish. Her grin began to falter when she noticed that there was a moment of silence with Sora and Riku simply staring at her blankly.

“Yeah, I just heard that in English, and I even saw your lips move in four syllables instead of three.”

“What? Really?” Kairi asked, surprised.

“Yeah. The Keyblade actually has a built-in translator, so any foreign language is heard and even read in the wielder’s first language. In mine and Riku’s case, it is translated to whichever is nearest, English or Japanese, sometimes even Hawaiian.”

“Wow. Is that why you dropped Spanish a week after you got back?”

“Yeah. As it turns out, I can’t turn the translator off, and when the teacher tried to tell us what English words translated to in Spanish, I only heard the words in English. I just gave up and figured it didn’t really matter if I learned another language if it just translated anyway.”

“Huh,” was all Kairi could say in response. Not knowing what else to talk about, the three friends remained silent as they continued walking. It was only when they were one block away from school when Kairi posited a question. “Wait. If the Keyblade is what allowed Sora to understand people speaking other languages, then how did you not have any trouble, Riku?”

Riku crossed his arms as he contemplated the subject. “Hmm… I never really thought much about it… Well, I mainly worked with that group of villains; one of them I think already spoke English on his own, judging by his accent; there was a powerful fairy person and a witch with octopus legs; there was the god who ruled the world of the dead; then there was the magic-using vizier with the talking parrot; and I don’t even know about the bag of bugs. I figured they were just using magic to help me communicate with them, and by the time the Beast who I presume spoke French showed up, I just ran with it.” He finished the last sentence with a shrug. “Maybe the Soul Eater sword was made with the same stuff that lets a Keyblade translate other languages, since it was made by Ansem—er, Xehanort’s Heartless. And it did end up becoming a Keyblade, so that would be how it covered for me afterwards.”

As soon as they stepped onto school grounds, they simultaneously decided to stop discussing their extranormal escapades. They entered the throng of students, all dressed in their school uniforms, except for a few rebellious youths who dress in plainclothes or all-black attire. Above the row of glass doors, brass letters were arranged to spell out “Nomura High School”. They stepped through the doorway and marched through the lobby. As they passed the office, the principal, carrying a folder of papers, gave Sora a stink-eye from the doorway, though Sora pretended not to notice.

Before they were all the way through the lobby, a tanned, muscled arm wrapped itself around Riku’s shoulder and pulled him into a playful and shaky embrace. At the same time, Sora felt a slap on his back. “Yo, what’s happening, man?” the student who had grabbed onto Riku greeted in a noticeable accent. Sora, Riku and Kairi turned to face Wakka and Tidus. Wakka had an athletic build and a well-earned tan. While he wore the standard school uniform, he also had a dark blue headband wrapped around his forehead, and he had his orange hair styled so that it came up together in a point which curled down to the left as it approached the tip. He stood a couple inches taller than Sora, but was not quite as tall as Riku. Tidus was two inches shorter than Sora but had a lean, toned build. His brown hair was not quite as spiky as Sora’s. He beamed his perpetual cheerful grin at his friends.

“What’s up, guys?” Tidus asked, then, before giving them a chance to answer, “Take a look here.” He guided Sora, Riku and Kairi to the trophy case for the school’s sports teams. Between the tennis and soccer trophies, there was a noticeable gap where a prize for another sport, which the school had never won, would be placed. “In just a few weeks, the Destiny Aurochs will head straight for the water polo regional finals. Then, we will stun the audience and our opponents with our strategy, skills, and our sublimely magnificent moves and come home with a solid gold trophy fit for us star players, and the entire island will be cheering our names!” He laughed at the thought.

“Yeah, and to think that just last year we were at the bottom of the barrel,” Wakka added. “But Tidus, he’s a natural, ya? And his dedication… Without him, we would never have gotten this far.” He gave Tidus a playful nudge. “You guys are coming to watch us take the cup, ya?”

Sora, Riku and Kairi nodded enthusiastically. “Wouldn’t miss it,” Sora answered.

Tidus and Wakka laughed. “Thanks, brudda. I can see it already. The team finally gets a trophy to its name. And just in time for graduation. When I’m gone, Tidus here will be running the show, ya?” He glanced up at the clock on the wall near the trophy shelf. “Whoa, man. We gotta get going. You guys have a good one.” He and Tidus waved as they walked off.

Sora, Riku and Kairi looked up at the clock as well. They nodded to each other and turned away to head to their first period classes. “See you at lunch,” Riku said, giving his friends a quick wave.

* * *

Sora’s classes were standard issue. He learned and studied material in calculus, sociology, physics, and literature. He turned in his homework and took a quiz in physics. When he first returned to school after coming home, some of his teachers were eager to remind him that he will not be earning any free passes just because he saved the world, though he managed to turn their opinion around with how quickly he was able to catch up to the rest of the class. He had excellent tutors in the form of Kairi (who had only missed a few weeks), Naminé (also through Kairi), and his classmate Selphie.

At the end of the school day, Sora, Riku and Kairi met up in the lobby to begin their walk home. As they started to walk toward the door, side-by-side, a girl ran up to them and stopped in front of them. She was fifteen years old and had green eyes and brown hair that curled up at the ends. She leaned forward coyly and gave them a cute cat smile.

“Hey, guys!” Selphie greeted. She was a sweet girl with a high-pitched voice. Outgoing and spunky, she was an active member of the Nomura High School student council. She took some flyers out of her handbag and passed one to each of them. They glanced at the sheets. At the bottom of the page was a print of a beach scene, and flowers lined the borders. The flyer read:

25th Annual Destiny Festival

Hosted by Nomura High School

Saturday, June 12

Selphie could barely stand still. Despite her small frame, she was full of energy. “Oh, I can’t believe that it’s only two months away! I can barely contain myself!”

“Sounds like it will be great,” Kairi said. “Are you going to need our help with anything?”

“Thus far, we seem to be on track. But I’ll let you guys know if something comes up. As things come along, I may ask for your opinion on things. Say, have you seen Irvine anywhere?”

“He’s probably in the gym shooting hoops with his buddies. Why? Are you going to ask him to be your date to the festival?” Riku teased, smirking.

“Oh, please. I asked him the day it was announced!” Selphie replied. Sora, Riku and Kairi snickered. “Well, I’ll see you later!” She waved back at them as she ran down the hall to the left, oblivious to the students scrambling to get out of her way. The history teacher, Mr. Leslaie, saw her pass by his classroom, and he stuck his head out of the door to shout “Ms. Tilmitt! Do not run in the crowded hallway! And look where you’re going.” Selphie broke her stride, turned around, and blurted out a quick “Sorry” before continuing on her way.

Sora, Riku and Kairi left, now unable to control their laughter at Selphie’s antics. As they walked home, they talked about their classes that day, joking about conversations among friends and between classmates and teachers, before the topic turned to what was on everybody’s mind after the meeting moments before.

“The Festival is almost here,” Kairi mused. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

“Hey, didn’t Chappu always pull some kind of prank at the festival every year?” Riku asked. Chappu was Wakka’s older brother. In his senior year of high school, he was captain of the water polo team. After graduating, he joined the police academy, and three years ago he graduated and became an officer on the force.

“Yeah,” Sora said. “Remember four years ago when he replaced the stage fireworks with paint cannons?” He brought his hands together and threw them up and out to mime the incident.

Riku laughed. “Everything was covered in paint! Everyone loved it. Kairi, what did he do last year?”

“Hmm…” Kairi paused to remember. “He and some of the other guys on the force charged in, in full police uniform, claiming that someone had snuck in contraband. They grabbed the apparent suspect and forced him to the ground, then opened his duffel bag, and while everyone was still shocked and scared they took out a boom box and some stage lights and set them up around them, then they turned on the boom box and did a dance number.” She sighed. “It was hilarious.”

Sora laughed, then sighed. “It won’t be the same without him this year.” Only a day after coming home, Sora, Riku and Kairi were informed that Chappu was killed in a shootout a few weeks before. They had their best to comfort and support Wakka through his grief. However, unexpectedly, they were simply in shock at the news. They had just come from a series of epic battles, and in Sora and Riku’s case, had almost come to take their own vulnerability and mortality for granted. They had seen two good men sacrifice their lives to help them complete their quest, but hardly had the time to process their deaths due to being forced into even more battles. Then, no sooner than they made it out of the war zone, they learned that a friend of theirs, someone who lived close to their homes, had lost his life doing something that was not too far from what they had been doing: fighting villains and protecting the innocent.

“No, it won’t,” Riku agreed. But I heard that Wakka is planning something for the festival. I guess he will be taking that job up to honor his brother.”

Kairi smiled on hearing that. “That’s nice of him. He did help Chappu out the last few years. This will be sure to make him proud.”

They turned off of the road and walked toward the shore. As they walked across the beach, the soles of their shoes left footprints in the sand. They felt the ocean breeze blowing through their hair as they approached the water. They ceased their trek just a few steps before reaching the edge of the tide. Sora clasped his hands against the back of his head. They stared silently out along the horizon, their gaze focused on the islet a mile out from the shore of the main island. Since childhood, the three of them, often accompanied by Tidus, Wakka and Selphie, would go to the islet to play together and explore. Until they were twelve, they were not allowed to take the boats and row out to the island themselves, so they were usually chaperoned by either Sora or Riku’s dad. It was on that islet where Sora, Riku and Kairi worked on constructing the raft that they intended to use to sail the sea between worlds and find the world that Kairi came from. It was also where Sora was chosen by the Keyblade, had his first fight with the Heartless, and was separated from Riku and Kairi at the start of his first adventure. The three friends still held strong memories of that islet.

“So, we’ll head on over after homework?” Sora asked his friends.

Riku gave a quick nod and Kairi responded with an “of course.” And with that, they all turned around and walked back to their respective homes.

* * *

Suta drove up the street and pulled into the driveway of her house. She shifted the car into park and climbed out, then opened the back-driver-side door to grab the four paper bags of groceries. She lifted all of them by the handles in her hands and pushed the door shut with her foot. She carried the groceries up to the door and set them down on the porch so she could open the door. She looked inside and saw Sora sitting at the kitchen table with his homework. He had changed from his school uniform to his black, red and blue garb along with a pair of black-and-yellow shoes, black fingerless gloves with white straps crossed over each other over his palms and thin metal discs on the backs, and a crown-shaped charm attached to a chain necklace.

“Sweetie, could you come help me with the groceries?” she asked. Sora shot to his feet and made his way to the door.

“Sure thing, mom,” he answered as he stepped out of the door. He grabbed two of the bags and carried them inside while Suta grabbed the other two. They carried the bags into the kitchen, and Suta leaned her back against the door to close it along the way, and they put the produce, milk and juice into the refrigerator and the rest into the pantry.

“How was your day?” Suta asked.

“It was good. People are still making jokes about yesterday. And Selphie handed this out,” Sora answered, picking up the Festival flyer and handing it to his mother.

Suta glanced over the flyer and chuckled. “That girl really is a go-getter, huh? I can hardly wait to see what she has brought to the table for this year’s festival.” She took a look at Sora’s homework. “Physics, huh? Honey, I have no idea how you managed to learn two years’ worth of this stuff in a few weeks and still be able to get this so easily.” She shook her head in bemusement, taking in all of the numbers, letters and Greek symbols in the equations.

Sora shrugged. “Well, some hands-on experience is a good way to understand how it is all implemented. For example, going up against something with dense armor is a good way to understand normal force and impulse, as well as figure out how much applied force does what.”

Suta raised an eyebrow. “Right. And I suppose you can figure out what sort of forces something like that would use?”

“Well, there is a trick that actually tells me, which I learned how to read after a while.” Sora sat down and pulled a napkin off the stack in the middle and put it next to his homework. “While I was in Wonderland, I got a weird vision when one of these”—he drew an oval on the napkin, and then added four smaller ovals around the larger oval, then topped off the figure of the Large Body Heartless with a half-circle—“appeared. At first, I thought it was due to one of the potions or flowers, but after a few fights I noticed certain patterns across all of them, and those patterns had a different frequency and density for each Heartless. I call it ‘Scan’. It’s like looking at them on a different plane, and I can see their…” he paused, trying to find the right words, “combat stats. For example, defense.” He drew a honeycomb pattern over the Large Body figure. “A grid of hexagons shows how resilient these guys are to force. A tighter grid of smaller hexagons means that they can hold up against more damage.” He drew smaller hexagons in the center of the picture to demonstrate. He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a box of crayons. “I can also tell what sort of spells it defends against, if it has hexagons of a different color.” He took red, blue and yellow crayons and drew colored hexagons over the grid in the figure.

“Huh. So, what else does it tell you?” Suta asked.

“Well, stamina, active energy, it looks like a river of green lines flowing all around the body, like blood flow.” Sora drew another Large Body figure, then grabbed a green crayon and drew lines looping all around the inside of the figure. He then looked around the table until he found a thin piece of string. He took each end between a finger and thumb, held the string to give it some slack, then wiggled his right fingers fast enough to cause the limp part of the string to spin around rapidly. “When they first pop up, the lines move very fast, but as they take damage they start to slow down. The more stamina the Heartless has, the more damage it takes to slow the lines down.” He demonstrated this by wiggling his fingers more slowly, causing the string to slow down. He dropped the string and drew another figure, this one made from a trapezoid, a circle and a triangle. I can also tell what kind of magic spells they use and which ones simply heal them by the color of the aura surrounding them.” He took a red crayon and traced the outline of the drawing. “Red means Fire, blue means Blizzard, yellow means Thunder, green means Cure, and so on. Purple indicates that they use all of the main three offensive spells, and the ones that use Cure tend to absorb all of those spells. Last, but not least, there’s this.” He drew a series of lines along the “arms” of the Large Body figure. “The red lines tell me just how much physical strength they have. They show just how much I can afford to get thrown around.” He looked back up at his mother, reading her facial expression to gauge if she understood everything she said.

Suta sighed, bemused. “Wow. I cannot imagine making sense of all that. And I’m amazed that you can do it in the heat of the moment like that. Well, I have dinner to make, so you finish your homework and I’ll get to work. 'Kay?” Sora gave her a thumbs-up while she turned on the oven.

* * *

After dinner, Sora went over to the pier. He talked to the boathouse keeper, Craig, and retrieved his father’s rowboat and two oars. He set the boat in the water, deposited his wooden sword in the boat, climbed in, and started rowing out to the islet. Back and forth, bobbing up and down, Sora kept rowing for twenty minutes before he finally reached the wooden landing at the edge of the islet. Dropping the oars and pushing against the water with his hands, he guided the boat to the landing, lining it up next to another rowboat. He tied the boat to a mooring and hopped up onto the landing. He turned and saw Kairi standing on the pier, smiling at him.

“We still waiting on Riku?” she asked. She was wearing a pink strapless mini-dress, with a white halter top underneath with a black hood, as well as a pair of lilac sneakers. She wore a black belt with a notebook-shaped bag attachment, inside of which she kept a drawing tablet.

“Guess so,” Sora replied. He smelled the ocean air and found himself admiring Kairi’s lovely face. Her beautiful eyes, her perfect smile.

“I guess it’s just us for a bit,” Kairi added. Sora walked up until he was standing next to her, and she turned around to face in the same direction as him. They stood in silence, staring at the sunset. They watched the light reflect off of the rippling water, the waves lapping against the shore, the seagulls flying overhead. Sora was content, watching the peaceful scenery, standing next to Kairi, enjoying the serenity. Her hand reached out for his, and their fingers locked together.

“Hey, guys!” Sora and Kairi quickly let go of each other’s hands and turned around at the sudden greeting. Riku was there, tying his boat up to the post. He wore a black sleeveless zip-up shirt underneath a smaller one that was white on the outside and yellow on the inside, a baggy pair of blue jeans, and a pair of white and gray sneakers. He grinned and waved to them when he noticed them looking at him, but his smile faltered when he saw their shocked expression. “Um, did I interrupt something?”

Sora and Kairi stumbled over themselves to cover up the exchange. “Oh, um, nope. You didn’t interrupt anything,” Kairi blurted. Sora chuckled and added a “yeah”, which only made Riku look sheepish.

Riku scratched the back of his head nervously. “So, erm, were you here long?” he asked. He was still getting used to the fact that the dynamic between the three of them had shifted. They were still the inseparable three caballeros, but Sora and Kairi had moved beyond friendship and were now a romantic couple, while he was left to watch that relationship blossom from the sidelines. Not only that, but a lot of Riku and Sora’s activities over the last years were fueled by a rivalry between the two of them over Kairi’s attention. And the three of them had grown completely independent of one another for the last two years, so their relationship already had to be redefined as they settled back into their home lives.

Sora shook his head. “Only a few minutes,” he answered. “You get everything done all right?”

Riku nodded. “Yeah. The homework wasn’t too much trouble. I’m starting to get the functions and equations down.” He crouched to pick up his wooden sword, then reached into Sora’s boat to grab his sword and tossed it to him. “Here,” he said while throwing the toy weapon, which Sora caught, nodding in thanks when the action was done.

Sora turned and gave Kairi a smile, then jumped off of the pier and ran out to the middle of the beach, followed by Riku. They stopped and faced each other, standing ten feet apart. Sora gripped his sword in both hands, held it out to his side, and bent his knees so he was in a squatting position. Riku let out a short laugh and raised his sword arm above and behind his head, pointing the tip of the sword in Sora’s direction, and held his left arm out in front of him.

“On my count!” Kairi called out. She saw her friends nod in comprehension. She raised her arm up and whipped it forward, pointing her index finger outward. “One…” She did so again, this time pointing her middle finger out as well. “Two…” One more time, adding her ring finger. “Three…” She whipped her arm forward again and opened her hand in a salute. “Begin!”

Sora and Riku ran toward each other, shifting their arms into a position ready to strike. They swung their swords, which clicked together. The next few hits were parried but then Sora hit Riku in the arm. Riku returned the favor and struck Sora in the shoulder. Sora stumbled, and was seemingly left open to another attack but he blocked Riku’s next hit just in time. Before Riku could reel back from the guard, Sora pushed himself back up with his legs and sprung forward, pushing Riku backward. While Riku tried to regain his balance, Sora spun around and struck him in the chest, knocking him on his back. But Riku simply drew his legs up to his chest, then kicked outward, throwing himself at Sora, who did not get out of the way in time and was hit in the abdomen and knocked backward while Riku landed on his feet.

Kairi laughed to herself. Boys will be boys, she thought. Sure, there was no romantic rivalry between them anymore, but it was still nice to watch them tussle. She pulled her drawing tablet out of her side pouch and took a pencil out of her pocket. She opened the book and saw a crayon sketch of Sora, Riku and herself, plus a blonde girl in a white dress. Naminé. Kairi turned the page and saw a sketch of a brown castle with green roofing. Kairi never understood what happened there. She felt Naminé’s shame at having messed with Sora’s heart there, but she could never get the full details from her emotions regarding the place, and Naminé did not like to talk about it. Meanwhile, Sora had no memory of the castle, and only barely remembers the image of the edifice as he approached it. From what Kairi could piece together, that was the day that Sora had been erased from everyone’s memories, including hers.

She flipped through the notebook. A small fountain flanked by a curving staircase. A few shelves in a labyrinthine library. A large Heartless emblem, a black heart-shaped symbol with a red outline and a thorny red X through the middle, in the middle of the page, surrounded by what looked to be a series of metal pipes. Sora, wearing his red one-piece that he had been wearing until a few months ago, alongside the knight and wizard who traveled with him for the past two years.

Kairi had never really gotten to strike up a friendship with them, even though while she was within Sora’s heart she had experienced everything he saw and had gotten to know the anthropomorphic animals. She had met them in person briefly twice, but there was too much excitement for them to actually sit down and talk.

Kairi kept flipping through the tablet, but most of the other sketches were unfamiliar to her. She identified a boy in a black coat standing next to Sora as Roxas, and some depicted a man who claimed to be a friend of Sora or Roxas and had then tried to kidnap her, but all of the events depicted were from after Sora’s first adventure, and Kairi had no frame of reference to understand any of what it meant.

She was glad to be home with Sora and Riku again, but she wished that she could have really been able to join them on their adventures rather than as a barely-compliant tagalong or sitting on the sidelines the whole way.

She pushed that thought to the back of her mind and flipped to a blank page. She looked up to watch Sora and Riku duel, noticing that they had gotten a few scratches but were still going at it at full energy, studied until she found a good pose to sketch, and started drawing.


	3. Chapter 2: Royal Affairs

The band concert played an upbeat fanfare, mixing nostalgic joy and military pride. The audience chamber was a full house; everyone in town had shown up to watch the ceremony. The crowd was filled with friendly faces, though none of them human. The town was populated by anthropomorphic animals, from dogs to cows to chickens to chipmunks. The society works much the same as any modern human town, save for the fact that it is led by a monarchy and royal court, which resided in the very castle in which the ceremony was taking place.

The blue platform on which the throne normally sat had been transformed into a three-foot tall stage, and the golden throne in the center had been removed and replaced with a brass lectern closer to the front. In the far back of the chamber, two enormous statues stood in alcoves on either side. The one on the left was made to resemble a duck wearing a leather robe and a conical wizard’s hat that dipped over his eyes, who carried a curled wooden rod in his right hand. The one on the right was made to resemble a dog wearing knight’s armor and holding a shield in his left hand. Hanging on the wall in the center was a large red banner emblazoned with a symbol made up of a large circle and two smaller ellipses toward the top. Beneath the symbol a long, thin banner was stretched across the larger banner. It read:

Congratulations Disney Castle Knight Academy Graduating Class

Queen Minnie Mouse stood behind the lectern, perched upon a stool so that she could be seen above the top. She was an anthropomorphic mouse, which on this world was a creature that had an almost-perfectly spherical head with two thin circles for ears, black fur covering its entire body except for the face, which had a Caucasian complexion, a very thin tail, and four-fingered hands (much like the other anthropomorphic residents of the town). She wore an elegant pink ball gown, white gloves that extend up her forearms, and a gold tiara with a ruby inset with the same shape as the symbol on the banner behind her. Next to her stood her husband, King Mickey Mouse. Mickey looked almost identical to her, except that he did not share her long eyelashes, wore no crown, and he wore a black and red jacket with white lining and two yellow straps, red pants with a zipper and a yellow pouch on each leg, a pair of large yellow shoes with grey backs and two orange, intersecting straps on the front, and a pair of white gloves which were traditionally worn by nearly everyone in town. Behind them stood a row of young men and women, dogs, cows, cats, and geese, all wearing blue leather suits and iron knight’s helmets, gauntlets, boots, and breastplates. Once the band concert had finished playing, Queen Minnie addressed the crowd. “Thank you all for coming today. I am proud to present this year’s Royal Knight Academy graduates. These disciplined individuals have braved the fiercest training regimen that this castle has to offer. They studied hard and practiced harder, never losing sight of their end goal. And most of all, they have taken to heart the sworn duty of a Disney Castle knight: aid those in need, defend those who cannot defend themselves, and always treat those around you fairly and justly.”

One twenty-one-year-old canine looked out at the crowd, feeling both nervous and excited. He had black fur, a hairless Caucasian face, long ears, and two front teeth that stuck out over his lower jaw and were separated from each other by a few inches. Max Goof scanned the faces in the crowd and found his friends standing together toward the left wall. His best friend P.J., girlfriend Roxanne, as well as Bobby, Vicki and Stacey. Seeing them gave him a boost of confidence, and he returned his attention to Queen Minnie’s speech.

“I would like to thank the instructors and officers who helped our new knights on their path to greatness. Would you all please come forward? Morton Mazur.” Max saw a tall dog with a crew cut and wearing a business suit climb onto the stage to kneel respectfully to Queen Minnie. The crowd clapped for him. Max remembered him as a stern man who encouraged hard work and learning even on leisure, and who had a rather poor sense of humor. He did not take kindly to Max’s early string of practical jokes. Max saw Mazur shake hands with the queen and king then stand at attention and salute before she dismissed him. “Launchpad McQuack,” the queen called for the next person. A tall, muscular duck wearing the uniform of an airplane pilot approached the queen and did the same thing as Mazur. “Seamus O'Hara. Floyd Gottfredson. Carl Barks…” The list went on, with the queen calling up and congratulating over two dozen knights and military instructors. Max was thankful for all of the instructors who prepared him for this day.

Finally, the queen reached the last name in the lineup. “And last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank our esteemed captain of the royal knights, Goofy.” This was met with a storm of applause and a few cheers. A tall hound stepped onto the stage, attempting to keep a neutral expression to appear professional, but he was too jovial and proud to conceal his smile. He wore an orange and black suit, a knight’s helmet that acted more like his traditional hat, a gauntlet on his left arm, a wide belt buckle with blue straps, and pointed metal shoes. He approached Queen Minnie and King Mickey and knelt before them. He shook hands with both Minnie and Mickey, then stood at attention and faced the crowd when they bade him to rise.

Max cracked a smile at the captain. Not only was Goofy the second-greatest warrior in Disney Castle (the greatest being the king himself), but he was also Max’s dad, and the friendliest and most caring guy in town. He was known at times to be clumsy and, as one might surmise, goofy. He has a history of embarrassing Max in front of his peers, albeit unintentionally, but Max has learned to go along with it. He greatly missed his dad when Goofy was out helping King Mickey and the boy he called “Sora” in protecting the worlds from the Heartless, and he was glad that he was able to come home and watch him get through his last few weeks of knight training, and then be here on this momentous occasion.

Two brooms made of wooden shafts and straw bristles that were bunched into two points walked up onto the stage. Each broom had two skinny arms with four-fingered hands. They grabbed onto the stool, which Mickey helped Minnie climb off of, and carried it away so Goofy could take his place behind the lectern.

“Thank you,” Goofy began, but realized that his voice wasn’t being amplified around the room. He leaned forward and tapped the microphone, creating a humming sound with each tap. “Uh, is this thing on?” That time he could hear his voice in the surround sound, followed by a few snickers from the crowd as well as one of the graduates behind him. He stood up straight, then realized that in that position the microphone was not close enough to him, so he adjusted it until it was closer to his mouth. “A-hyuck,” he began again. “Thank y’all for havin’ me. I am very proud to see these fellers reach the end of their training and cross the bridge into knighthood. I regret that I had to miss their last two years due to performing my duties, but I am happy that I could be here now, to welcome them into the brotherhood.” He turned around and faced the graduates. “Ten-shun!” Max and his colleagues stood at attention, their arms flat against their sides and their expressions professional. “Now when I call your name, you come forward so you can officially receive the title of a Disney Castle Royal Knight!” This was met with applause from the whole room, save for a few disgruntled canine characters standing by the door, their leader glaring bitterly at a specific graduate student.

Goofy called forth the first graduate, a cat-person named Thomas Blackstone. He bade him to place his hand over his heart, swear to a solemn oath, then drop to one knee so Queen Minnie could tap him on the shoulders with a rapier which a magic broom had brought to her. This pattern followed for each graduate down the line. With each knighting, Max’s apprehension increased, until Goofy called out “Maximilian Goof.”

Fighting past his nerves, Max stepped out of the line as a goose reclaimed his spot next to him. He stepped up to the front of the stage, hearing applause from the crowd as well as some rambunctious yells and calls from Bobby, who got strange looks from the people around him, though he did not seem to notice until Stacey tapped him on the shoulder and shook her head in disapproval. Max turned to face Goofy. Goofy withheld the urge to smile and give him a supportive wink, as he did not want to show favoritism to his son.

Goofy placed his right hand over his heart, encouraging Max to do the same. “Maximilian Goof,” he shouted with authority, beginning the same speech he gave with the others. “Do you swear to abide by the Disney Town code of citizenship?”

“I swear!” Max shouted back.

“Do you swear to uphold the dignity of the Royal Knights?”

“I swear!”

“Do you swear to do your turn in defending the people of this world from danger and menace?”

“I swear!”

“Do you swear to set a good example for future cadets and inspire goodwill among the townsfolk?”

“I swear!”

“Repeat the Knights’ sacred code of honor!”

“All for one, and one for all!” he shouted, louder than before. He heard Bobby repeat this in a cheer and in the corner of his eye he saw a few people giving him dirty looks.

Goofy gave him a quick nod and took a step back. Queen Minnie stepped forward and bade him to kneel. Max complied.

“For your dedication in maintaining the knightly order and competence in training, by the power invested in me as queen, I hereby dub thee a Disney Castle Royal Knight,” Minnie recited, tapping her rapier against each of Max’s shoulders as she did so. Despite having to repeat that line multiple times, she said it with no less enthusiasm than any other time. She shook hands with Max. This was met with applause from the entire room, save for a single glaring pair of eyes at the far back, though Max did not notice the nasty character watching him bitterly.

Max stood up and retook his place in the line of graduates, barely containing his excitement. This was it. He was now a Disney Castle Royal Knight. He shared a fist-bump with the graduate to his right, a bear named Humphrey, before the latter went up to be knighted himself.

* * *

On the opposite end of the chamber from the stage, what appeared to be a massive lilac-colored door was built into the wall. However, it was actually a decoration that was part of the wall, and the actual door was a much smaller, normal-sized board built into the outside face of the wall, facing into the colonnade hallway just beyond, leaving an alcove carved into the apparent door up to the actual door.

Three anthropomorphic dogs stood within that alcove. The one who had been giving out the evil eye for the entire ceremony, Bradley Uppercrust III, stood in the middle, still looking upon the stage with contempt. He had long brown hair and wore a purple sweater with a light blue dress shirt underneath, khaki pants, and light grey sneakers. When the cheering for Max died down, he rolled his eyes. “I _swear_ , he says. Gimme a break,” he growled.

“You know, Brad,” one of his cohorts, named Slouch, interjected, “maybe that had something to do with why you’re not up there sharing the spotlight.”

“It’s _Bradley_!” he corrected. “And shut it. Did I ask for your opinion? I just can’t stand it. That glory should be all mine. I should be the one they are all cheering for, but I get shafted back a hard-earned year while _that_ clown gets to be on top of the world.” He clenched his fists in frustration.

The other dog, named Jeff, raised his hand nervously, politely asking to talk. When Bradley saw him do this, he shrugged, which Jeff took as permission. “So, what do you suggest we do, chief?” he asked.

Bradley looked on as his old second-in-command, a giant dog named Tank, stepped up to meet Goofy at the front of the stage. “Come on, boys. We’ll show them what I— _we’re_ really made of.”

* * *

After the final graduate had been knighted and reclaimed his spot at the end of the row, the brooms returned the stool and Goofy helped Queen Minnie onto it. She waited for the cheering to die down before she began. “It is such an honor to personally welcome these noble young men and women into the knighthood, and I sincerely hope they will live up to their promise and show themselves to be defenders of the town and good citizens every day! And now…” 

She passed the rapier to King Mickey. He pointed the blade into the air and shouted: “All for one, and one for all!”

Goofy summoned a circular, gray, rounded shield, emblazoned with a darker gray Hidden Mickey logo, out of thin air, accompanied by a glow of white light, and raised it above his head. The other knights, including the newly-knighted, pumped their fists into the air, and all pitched in. “All for one, and one for all!” They were joined by everyone in the audience, enthusiastically repeating that sacred code in rhythm. Slouch and Jeff even participated cheerfully, though Bradley sneered and repeated the oath ironically. Besides the sinister outlier, the room was full of celebration and pride.

* * *

After the ceremony, the gathering went out to the garden for lunch. Afterwards, everyone dispersed to either return to their daily activities, celebrate in private, or prepare for the party for the knights planned for that evening. For King Mickey and Queen Minnie, they had no official obligations for the rest of the day, so they retired to the library. Pluto, Mickey’s pet golden bloodhound, had been curled up asleep in his doggy bed throughout the morning, but he woke up at their arrival. He stood up, stretched, and approached his master, panting cheerfully. Mickey and Minnie pet him lovingly, then Minnie went to fill up his food dish. Mickey sat down at the desk, flicked on the lamp, and began to review paperwork for town business while Minnie set up a ladder to scale the bookshelves and locate a book she was looking for. Minnie found the spot where the book was supposed to be, but noticed that the spot was empty.

“Oh, Mickey, have you seen the record book?” Minnie asked, fingering the three-inch empty slot in the shelf.

“Oh, I think Jiminy had it last night,” he answered. “You want me to send for it?” A magic broom turned to face him (figuratively) when he made the suggestion.

“No. I can review it later. Thank you, though.”

Mickey continued reading over and filling out the paperwork while Minnie pulled out a photo album from the shelf. She climbed off of the ladder, opened the book and started to flip through the pages.

“I had not realized that Jiminy had taken this with him on the journey,” Minnie commented. She remembered how, when the castle’s wards against dark entities was compromised by an invasion of the past, she had attempted to take stock when she noticed that the old photo album was nowhere to be found. When efforts were mobilized to restore order, she had not had the opportunity to resume her search. When Mickey and the others returned, along with Jiminy, Jiminy had shown her the two journal volumes, the first of which being mysteriously blank, as well as all of the photographs that he had taken during the later parts of the adventure.

“Well, you see, actually, I was the one who took it,” Mickey answered, sheepishly. Minnie looked up at him quizzically. “I set the camera to Prompt-Shot mode, and I printed the pictures I liked. Then I sealed off my section and passed it off to Sora and Jiminy when I met them in Twilight Town.”

Intrigued by this, Minnie broke the seal on the section of Mickey’s photos and started searching through them. The first one she saw was of a tropical island with palm trees bearing coconuts and star-shaped fruits. “You were on Sora’s world?” she asked, surprised.

“Yeah. I saw that it was going to be swallowed in darkness, so I figured I’d hitch a ride into the storm so I could jump into the Realm of Darkness to find the other key.”

Minnie turned to the next picture, and saw a massive cavern of black rock, which would have been pitch dark if not for the blue and purple light showing through cracks in the rock, along with the glowing yellow dots that served as the eyes of shadows and bat-like creatures. She started to turn to the next page, and had gotten a brief glimpse of a delicate human hand wearing a white fingerless glove and grasping part of an item made of blue painted acrylic and aluminum wire, but a knock on the door took away her attention before she could reveal the complete picture.

The door opened and a duck wearing a navy-blue jacket and a shorter, light blue coat, with gold trimming and adorned with large yellow buttons, zippers on either side of the buttons, and an indigo belt, as well as a dark blue witch’s hat, the uniform of the Court Wizard. The duck had white feathers and a yellow bill and flippers. He had black pupils and his sclera had a bluish tint. He inched his way into the room, but not all the way and not too quick to seem impolite, but quickly enough to convey a sense of urgency.

“What is it, Donald?” Mickey asked. He noticed that his longtime friend seemed nervous and frantic.

Donald blurted out his message in a gargling-sounding nigh-incomprehensible voice. “Yourmajestytheteenyshipsfromthegummishiparegoinghaywirechipanddaleare-indangerthegarageisinchaoshurryweneedhelp!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Donald,” Mickey interjected. “I can’t understand a word you say.”

Donald stomped his foot and groaned. He took a deep breath and decided to start again. He suddenly gave a sheepish look, as if he was embarrassed by the incident he was trying to describe. “Hehehe… Well, I was trying to help Chip and Dale do maintenance on the Gummi Ship. There seemed to be a malfunction communicating with the Teeny Ship robots, so I was inputting commands in the big Gummi Ship while Chip and Dale were working on the robots, but…” He trailed off nervously, trying to come up with a nice way to put it. “I _may_ have lost my temper and cast Thunder. Now the Teeny Ships are flying all over the place shooting lasers at everything.”

Mickey stood up at once, eyes widening. “Gosh. Then we’ve got to go help them!” He nodded to Minnie, and they followed Donald out the door, running through the colonnade, out into the garden, through the door in the middle, and down the spiral staircase to reach the Gummi Garage. Donald pushed open the door at the bottom, let out a quick scream in terror, and jumped out of the way as a laser shot in his direction, forcing Mickey and Minnie to dodge the blast as well.

Mickey and Minnie surveyed the damage. Many of the gears have been knocked loose and their axles bent out of shape. The winch holding the Gummi Ship aloft were uneven, causing the space ship to be held at a harsh angle. The ship itself was missing several pieces, the wing planes and several structural blocks blasted off of the hull and scattered on the floor. Two chipmunks, who wore yellow blacksmith’s aprons with red shoulder straps and a red Hidden Mickey logo in the center of a blue pouch on the front, were running all over the place, panicking and trying not to get hit with the wild shots of photon blasts. These energy bursts were coming from two fast-flying machines, the Teeny Ships, which resembled smaller versions of the Gummi Ship. A cricket, which looked nothing like a cricket, who wore a top hat, waistcoat and shoes, clung onto one of the Teenies for dear life.

Mickey acted fast, leaping over the railing and landing right in front of the chipmunks, Chip and Dale. He shouted an invocation for a spell: “Reflect!” A shield that appeared to be made up of transparent hexagons materialized around them. The lasers that would have hit the chipmunks instead bounced harmlessly off of the barrier. Two seconds after the lasers were deflected, the shield dissipated. Mickey turned around and crouched so as to lean closer to the tiny chipmunks. “Gosh, are you all right, fellas?” he asked.

Chip, the chipmunk with the small black nose and single front tooth, looked up at the king. “We are now, your Majesty,” he answered.

The other one, Dale, who could be distinguished from his brother by his large red nose, two buck teeth, and mohawk of fur on his head, wiped sweat from his brow and let out a sigh of relief. “Yeah. We coulda been done for. Thanks,” he said.

Mickey held out his hand, and they climbed into his palm. He then opened his right pocket and slipped them in for protection.

Inspired by his king’s quick acting, Donald snapped out of his terror, summoned his Mage’s Staff, and turned his attention to the ships’ movements. Noticing a pattern, he waited until the right moment. “Fire!” he shouted, pointing the brown wizard hat tip of his staff towards where the Teeny Ship would be. A ball of fire shot out of the tip, flew through the air, and made a direct hit at the front of the machine, destroying the guns and sending it backwards to hit the wall. With a crunch, its chassis caved in and the engine flames died down. Damaged to the point of system shutdown, the Teeny Ship fell to the ground.

Down below, Mickey saw the other Teeny Ship, with the cricket still holding on. “Jiminy! Jump!” he called.

Jiminy Cricket looked down at the mouse, far below him, while he himself was moving too fast to gauge where to let go. However, he had the utmost faith in Mickey, and he had no idea how much longer he could hold onto the ship, so he did as he asked, throwing himself off of the haywire robot.

As Jiminy fell, Mickey pointed towards him with both hands. “Zero Gravity!” He cast his spell, surrounding Jiminy in a transparent orb, whose descent slowed quickly until it came to a complete stop, with the cricket floating and rotating in the middle. Mickey ran as fast as he could, then jumped high into the air. He cupped his hands around Jiminy just as they spell wore off, and Jiminy landed safely in Mickey’s hands, seeming to suffer from no ill effects of whiplash. Mickey landed safely on the catwalk, and opened his pocket to put Jiminy inside along with Chip and Dale.

Unfortunately, the Teeny Ship had looped around, and its firing trajectory was inching ever closer to Mickey and Jiminy. Mickey detected this and turned around. He let out a yelp as he realized he was completely off guard.

“Faith!” An orb of light flew at the Teeny Ship, blasting it to smithereens. Mickey gave Minnie a wave of thanks, knowing that it was her magic spell that had saved his hide.

“Is everyone all right?” Minnie asked. Mickey had climbed back up to the ledge where he had come in, taking Jiminy, Chip and Dale out of his pocket.

“We’re all good, your Majesty,” Chip answered. He looked around and saw all the destruction that the Teeny Ships had caused. “Looks like we’re gonna have to do some clean-up.”

Minnie clapped her hands, a signal that summoned six magic brooms from around the castle. One of them carried a dustpan, with the intention that another would sweep the scattered pieces up with its “feet”.

As Chip and Dale set about replacing the demolished axle and two of the brooms lifted the fallen gear, Donald raised his hand like a student answering his teacher’s question. “I’ll help!”

“No, you won’t!” Chip retorted angrily. “You can work on picking up the pieces, but after that you won’t touch anything! Understand?”

Donald slumped a bit, feeling guilty. “Understood,” he sulked. He started walking down the stairs to reach the floor.

Mickey and Minnie remained on the top landing, watching everyone at work. They had decided to supervise the repair process. Jiminy hopped up onto Mickey’s hand. “Even when we’re not soaring the cosmos and fighting monsters, there is no shortage of excitement around here, is there?” the cricket commented.

“Not as much as out there, but hardly a dull moment, ah-ha!” Mickey agreed.

* * *

That evening, many of the townsfolk were gathering in the recreational center across town. In the gymnasium, people talked amongst each other and danced along to energetic music performed live by the pop rock star Powerline. Veteran knights, new or recent graduates and non-military citizens were present, helping themselves to refreshments, playfully sparring together, and in all having a good time at a party with all of their friends.

Goofy stood at the gym door, watching everyone enjoy themselves. His eyes were trained on Max, who was talking and laughing with his friends. He wiped a tear from his eye. He felt so much pride in all of the graduates, but especially his son. He remembered the good times they had together when Max was younger, and felt a twinge of sadness as he realized that Max wasn’t a kid anymore.

“They grow up so fast,” a raspy voice said out of nowhere. Goofy turned and looked down to see who spoke and saw Donald.

“Oh. Heya there, Donald,” Goofy greeted. “How are you?”

“Eh. Lost a few feathers this afternoon. I don’t want to talk about it. But it’s all fixed.” Donald looked past the crowd and focused on Max and his friends. “I remember how it felt when I found out that the triplets had opened up a shop in Traverse Town. I felt bad that I hadn’t paid much attention to them after I became the court wizard. But seeing them take that kind of responsibility, it warmed my heart to see they turned out all right.” He looked back up at Goofy and rested his hand reassuringly on his arm. “He’s gonna be just fine, Goofy.”

Goofy smiled. “Yeah. I know. Thanks, Donald.”

* * *

Closer to the concert stage, Max and his friends were reminiscing on the past semester. Bobby and Stacey danced along with Powerline, though a bit more erratic and eccentric than what was on stage.

“…He wanted to get to the finish line first, so he activated some sort of device that blasted apart the scaffolding of the construction crew ahead of us, hoping the wreckage would block our path while he took a detour. But we worked together to hold the structure up and get the crew down safely, and continued on our way. I managed to get across just ahead of him,” Max recounted, describing an incident that occurred at an obstacle race a month before.

“Wow. Brad really was a poor sport,” Roxanne said, amused. “And he got away with that?”

“Well, he didn’t get to become a full-on knight. But on the flipside, no one could prove it was him, so yeah.” Max shrugged, then lightened the mood with a snicker. “But it was nice seeing him take a blow to his pride when O’Hara said he needed to learn a thing about sportsmanship.”

“You know,” P.J. interjected, “I feel bad for the next batch of cadets that get stuck with him. Even my dad wouldn’t be that bad, even back when he was a scheming Musketeer captain.”

Max and Vicki nodded, understanding. They knew full well that P.J.’s father, Pete, was a longtime enemy to Goofy, King Mickey and Donald. They also knew that, although he had gone through a softer period afterwards, he had posed as a Musketeer captain on another world, kidnapped Minnie, who was a princess on that world at the time, so he could become king, and tried to kill Mickey, Donald and Goofy, who had actually been training as Musketeers under his leadership. A few years after that, he started to turn over a new leaf, however, and felt ashamed of his dishonorable deeds. Even though he remained a jerk and had eventually gone back to villainy, he had never stooped that low again after P.J. was born.

Vicki tipped her beret up. “In a structure of many pillars, the weakest beam may compromise the standing. The strong pillars must make up for that beam and secure the weaker pillars, and should shoulder the burden left by the failure of the beam,” she spoke poetically.

Bobby leaned in towards her and laughed. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, Beret Girl!” he commended. Everyone started laughing.

Just then, Roxanne noticed a commotion at the opposite end of the gym. She tapped Max on the shoulder and pointed towards it, and he saw a figure wearing black and magenta armor and a motorcycle helmet shoving his way through the crowd. Max could not figure out who was under the helmet, though the color scheme seemed familiar.

“Guys…” P.J. pointed up at the stage lights, where a masked canine was pulling at the wires, causing the spotlights that were focused on Powerline and his backup dancers to flicker out. Powerline and his crew stopped performing and looked around, trying to figure out what was going on and the music died down. P.J. squinted his eyes and focused on the culprit. “Wait, is that Slouch?”

A realization hit Max and he wheeled back around, only to find that the armored intruder had already reached him and his friends. Now that he could see him in his full height and the entirety of his armor, Max knew for sure who the intruder was. He also noticed that at his side, sheathed in a scabbard, was a sword.

“Yuh-oh, this guy’s no bueno!” Bobby called out. He stepped in front of the armored man, attempting to block his approach. Max made a mental note of how that probably was not the best idea when the other guy has a sword. “You should step on outta here, pal, 'cause you don’t want to get yo-self on Max’s bad side. You don’t realize what kind of trouble you’re—” Bobby was cut off when the man lifted him up by the neck. Everyone gasped. Some of the closest knights tried to move in to help him, but they were tripped up by some dogs who were wearing the same kind of mask as Slouch. The thugs tried to tie ropes around the knights’ ankles, but the people around them kicked them off

“Hey, back off,” Max shouted. He charged at the intruder, twisting so his shoulder would deliver the brunt of the force, and knocked him backward, causing him to release his grip on Bobby and drop him.

The enemy quickly gained his bearings and kicked Max away. He threw a punch at Max, who dodged to the side and returned a swing of his own, which was blocked. A fistfight developed between the two, each landing a few hits but returning some of their own. “Let’s see who the real champ is, clown,” the attacker taunted. He threw a punch to Max’s gut, but Max caught the fist in one hand and dragged him down by the arm, then punched his foe right in the face, breaking through his helmet’s visor. This dazed the attacker enough to allow Max to rip the helmet right off of his head. A collective gasp was heard as his identity was exposed.

Max glared at his rival. “What’s this about, Brad?” he asked angrily. “You still can’t take being pushed back?”

Bradley Uppercrust III clenched his fists and glared back at Max. “Nobody gets it!” he shouted. “I’m the strongest out of all of you! No one should win over me! I’m the hero here. I’m the champ! And yet not only do these clowns get the prize and applause while I get thrown back to the kiddy table and told I ‘need to learn what it _means_ to be a knight’, but you,” his voice rose to a scream as he pointed at Max, “get top praise, top of the class markings! This shrimp gets the first place trophy for his old man being the captain of the guard, while _my_ name and legacy get ignored!” Bradley drew out his sword. “Now I’m going to show everyone here what kind of strength makes a knight!”

He swung his sword, but Max was ready. The week before the graduation ceremony, Max and his classmates had learned the technique known to knights as well as Donald where they could summon their weapons of choice out of thin air. Bradley had not been made privy to this lesson, and was unaware that anyone other than the Captain possessed the ability, so he was caught off-guard when Max summoned his own Knight’s Shield and blocked his sword.

“Everybody run!” Max commanded. He turned his shield to the side so that the sword would fall forward and slip off harmlessly, then kicked Bradley in the side. Bradley regained his balance and swung again, but Max blocked it and the blade bounced off of the shield. While still on the recoil, Bradley kicked Max, sending him sprawling backward.

Bradley raised his sword to strike him while he was down, but one of the nearby knights wrapped a pipe around in front of it and pulled it backward. Irritated, Bradley threw his arm back, bonking the knight on the forehead with the hilt, then swung around to punch him, knocking him out. More knights came to the assist, but Bradley struck back with the techniques shared to the class but with a rabid force that his opponents were not prepared for, and they were quickly thrown off-kilter and promptly knocked down. He stabbed his sword at his next enemy, when a massive pair of hands clapped over the sides of the blade. He looked up to see who it was and saw his old cohort.

“Tank?” he exclaimed, confused at why he would be fighting against him.

“What’s going on with you, Brad? Going nuts, attacking everyone. This isn’t you,” the burly dog asked, concerned. He kept his hands tightly clamped over the sword while the knight beneath him ducked out of the way.

Bradley growled. “This was supposed to be my victory!” he shouted. “They were supposed to recognize my strength! Now they will see who the real champ is!” He pulled his sword out from between Tank’s fingers and put it back in its scabbard as his former friend stared at him, disbelieving. “And I prefer to be known by my full name, not by your silly pet names!” He grabbed Tank’s hands, turned around and threw him over his shoulder, launching him up onto the stage. Powerline and his band scrambled out of the way to avoid being hit.

Bradley turned back around and saw a Hidden Mickey symbol closing in on him. He pulled his sword up out of the scabbard, blocking the charge in the same motion. Grinning wickedly, he threw his full weight into Max, shoving him into the stage wall. He leaned his arm into Max’s neck, pinning him down, and snickered. “Now who’s the strongest?” he taunted.

He was distracted when he felt something gooey and stringy stick to the back of his head, and he saw that it also stuck to Max. Bradley turned around to see where the yellow substance came from, and saw Bobby with a canister strapped to his back, with a hose in his hands. “Cheddar Whiz-zay!” Bobby cried out, laughing. On either side of him, Stacey had her arms crossed and was glaring at him, and Vicki was snapping her fingers in rhythm with Bobby’s exclamation. P.J. then rolled a pair of metal spheres toward him, stopping at his feet. One of them popped open, letting out a bang noise and giving off a flash of light, blinding Bradley for a moment. The other sphere buzzed, and Bradley was hit with a shock of electricity through his body. Enraged, he kicked the sphere across the room, causing it to break into pieces when it hit the wall.

This impromptu assistance gave Max the opportunity to knee Bradley and throw him off of him. Bradley swung his sword at him, but Max held his shield up against it. “You just don’t get it, Brad,” Max said. “Being a knight, it’s not about physical strength, or being the best.” He tilted his shield to let Bradley fall forward again, then stuck his foot out so his opponent would trip and fall to the ground. “That may be a side-benefit, but it’s not the point. A knight is supposed to protect the innocent. Help the helpless.” Bradley swung at Max’s legs, but Max jumped over the blade without difficulty. “Knights work together and inspire people to help other, and they make the town a better place.” Bradley stood back up, not even bothering to take his sword with him, and threw himself at Max, punching wildly. Max blocked the punches with his shield, then he swung it back at Bradley, smacking him in the face. “One does not become a knight just to prove that they are better than everyone else, or just to say they can. A knight is brave, loyal, courteous, kind, thrifty. You want to know why you didn’t make the mark? It’s because you embody none of those traits!”

Bradley roared in anger. He picked up his sword, and the fight continued, with Bradley swinging with his sword and Max blocking and pushing back. After a while, Bradley noticed Roxanne was still standing nearby, and he came up with a nasty idea. He pushed Max to the side, then jumped up onto the stage. He ran over to the support column for the lighting frame and started hacking at it. Up in the row of lights, Slouch watched Bradley’s mad actions and was suddenly afraid. He realized that his team captain was so obsessed with one-upping his rival that he was going to hurt a lot of people. Down below, when he thought the column was broken enough, Bradley took a grenade out of a pouch at his belt, pulled the pin out, and threw the bomb across the stage until it landed right next to the opposite support column.

The grenade exploded, blasting the column to pieces and setting the stage on fire. Bradley pushed the column on his end out toward the crowd. Everyone started running to get out of the way. Slouch held onto the lighting frame for dear life.

Roxanne attempted to flee, but she tripped and fell to the ground. She rolled onto her back and saw the column coming right toward her. She squeezed her eyes shut and braced for the impact.

She heard a crash off in the distance, and realized that she was still alive. She opened her eyes and saw Max standing over her, holding the metal structure up with all his strength. She looked to the left and saw some knights rushing in to help hold up the massive load. Some of Bradley’s former cronies were pulling Slouch out of the wreckage. Fortunately, he was not hurt too badly. Tank had climbed off of the stage and was lifting most of the support column on the opposite end by himself.

Bradley sauntered up to Max, smirking. He was clearly enjoying seeing Max struggle. “So, this is what being a knight is, huh, clown?” he remarked. He raised his sword to cut down his vulnerable rival, but Max would not have any of that. He willed his shield to materialize face-down at his foot. He then stepped on the rim and launched it spinning up to face level, then head-butted the back to knock it into Bradley’s face, hitting him hard enough to stun him and send him reeling back, dropping his sword and falling onto his back near the row of knights holding up the top frame of the fallen structure.

He tried to force himself back up, but found himself making eye contact with Captain Goofy. Bradley tried to grimace in contempt, but he could only stare when he saw the look on Goofy’s face. It was such a rare image to behold that Bradley did not know how to describe it. It was an expression that few could imagine his face could even make, and it conveyed an emotion that even fewer could imagine he could feel. On anyone else, such an expression would not have perturbed the arrogant rogue, but when he saw it on what was normally such a cheerful and amiable face, all Bradley could do was lie back down in shame, staring at a spot on the ceiling.

Bobby carted a box full of yellow jack platforms around the room, placing one in between each of the knights and adjusting them so that they poked up against the frame. P.J., Stacey and Vicki helped Roxanne out of the way, checking to make sure she was okay. The knights made sure that the jacks would hold up the weight of the frame, then when they were satisfied they let go of their load and ducked out from under the wreckage.

Max ran up to Roxanne, hugged her, and checked if she was okay. He turned to look at Bradley. Seeing his nemesis lying in shock, he shook his head in pity. A loud peal of cheering came from the crowd in the back of the gym. Everyone was giving a round of applause to all of the knights who saved the day, but to Max in particular. Goofy patted Max on the shoulder, causing him to look up at his father. Goofy was smiling.

“You did good tonight. I’m proud of you, Maxie,” Goofy told him.

Max could not help but smile. He placed his hand over Goofy’s. “All for one and one for all, a-hyuck.”


	4. Chapter 3: Meeting in Shadows

Pete rapped the crystal ball with his finger. The large anthropomorphic cat studied it intently, wondering why the reflective surface was still dark. He looked around nervously. From the window, the raven was staring at him with disappointment. Or was it irritation? Or did it just not care. It didn’t matter to Pete. The bird creeped him out. At the doorway, Pete saw his boss, the raven’s mistress, Maleficent, standing with her back to him. 

She waved her arms around, willing a dozen small Shadow Heartless to appear from the ground. With her black horns, cloak that spread out on the floor behind her, and scepter, she would have looked as though she was one of the shadows, if not for the green glow of the crystal orb on the top of her scepter, her pale face and the pale skin and red nails of her hands. She raised her scepter, and three Heartless that were slightly larger than the Shadows and resembled suits of leather with metal helmets appeared. The Soldiers had a black and red emblem on their chests, resembling a heart shape with a thorny X through the middle. They danced around in a jittery way, then stopped and stood at attention, saluting the witch who summoned them.

Feeling ambitious and wanting to establish her dominion over more of the monsters, Maleficent bade a pool of darkness materialize in the middle of the floor. A forceful gale of dark power caused the flames of the candles set in the wall to blow out. Something made of purple and gray metal rose out of the pool. It loosely resembled a four-fingered hand with a cylindrical extension that looked like an attached arm, which was completely separated from the body. Another metal hand appeared, a mirrored copy of its companion. Two forms popped out of the pool, resembling disembodied boots. Then, what was intended to be the torso materialized, resembling a pipe that was contracted in the middle to resemble a sort of hourglass shape, and took its place in between the gauntlets and legs. Lastly, the head appeared. The head appeared to be an entirely spherical metal ball, save for a gray spike on top and a visor with small circular holes on the front.

The evil fairy laughed. At last, for the first time in months, she had regained the authority to conjure a Heartless commander. They had been shy in swearing loyalty to her for most of the previous year since her influence had faded since she was defeated more than a year ago, and they had since gone freelance or partaken in individual attacks against the realm of light. After her return, she was able to gather an army of Heartless, but had only been able to occasionally call upon more powerful monsters on the fly, and her army was vanquished by her enemies when she attacked the town of Hollow Bastion, and she was subsequently humiliated and left without her resources. Now, she was biding her time, slowly building her influence over the Heartless. She no longer had to worry about any Organization to compete with in her evil plans, and the heroes that had once opposed her had retired to resume the lives they would have led had they not been swept up in her plots to plunge the worlds into darkness. Someday soon, perhaps she will have the power and forces to crush her foes and establish her dominion over all worlds.

“Hey, uh, Maleficent… Erm, how do you get this thing working, again?” Pete asked timidly. Maleficent rolled her eyes, annoyed that he interrupted her inner musings over something so trivial… again.

She sighed. “Did you draw out the runes?”

Pete looked at the table, a cylindrical platform constructed out of the same stone that made up the rest of the tower in which he stood. He studied the funny-looking pictures and characters that he drew on the tabletop in white chalk and compared them to the parchment that Maleficent had given him. “Yup,” he answered.

“Are you thinking of whom you wish to converse?” Maleficent tapped the orb of her scepter testily with her fingers. The Guard Armor gave her an apathetic shrug with its floating arms, apparently aware of how tedious it can be to work with idiotic minions.

“Of course,” Pete responded meekly, cognizant of his boss’ growing frustration.

“Then you must be forgetting the invocation,” Maleficent decided. “Why do I even bother with you? You cannot even remember to conduct a simple communication spell. Just place your hand hovering over the crystal ball, picture the person you wish to talk to, and say ‘ _Noivilbo’._ ”

“Oh, right. Thanks,” Pete said. He waved his hand over the crystal ball, closed his eyes, and muttered “ _Noivilbo_.” He opened up one eye and was pleased to see the orb fill up with purple smoke. He concentrated for a few more moments until finally the smoke cleared and he could see his son’s face in the curved, reflective surface.

“Hey, Dad,” P.J. greeted. On his end in Disney Town, a flat screen had materialized in a wisp of smoke in front of him, and the screen was showing Pete’s face.

“Hiya, Junior,” Pete replied. “How have you been?” Over the last few months, Pete had started using the crystal ball to communicate with his son, making it appear as if he was simply on the other side of a window. They had arranged to have these talks once a month to catch up with recent events on either end. This began after Pete had visited his days as a steamboat captain via a door to the past, and after satisfying his nostalgia (while also trying to help Maleficent breach Disney Castle’s defenses using this method), Pete had felt longing for the family he had back in Disney Town. Although she felt no empathy for his homesickness and in spite of, or perhaps because of her exasperation with his incompetence, Maleficent had agreed to his request for a method to contact his son, whom he had not seen since Queen Minnie had sent him to a pocket dimension to “cool off” and he had escaped to join forces with Maleficent. In retrospect, perhaps that was not the most responsible decision.

“Things have been going well over here,” P.J. answered. “Pistol said she’s going to join the soccer team at school this fall.”

“Oh, that’s good for her. But your sister’s been keeping up in school, right?”

“Of course.”

“What else has been going on? The Royal Knights graduation was coming up, correct?”

“Actually, it was yesterday. And Max was in the graduating class.”

“So the Goof boy is a full-fledged knight-in-shining-armor? Ha! Well, tell him and Goofy I said congrats!” Pete chuckled. Despite winding up on different sides, he still had a measure of respect for his former neighbor and his son. “Who else made the cut?”

P.J. stopped to think. “Tommy Blackstone, Humphrey the Bear, Tank—”

“Tank?” Pete interrupted, pricking up at the familiar name. “Wasn’t he part of that club? The ‘Gammas’? Don’t tell me the boss of that club made it too?”

At this, P.J. gave his dad a knowing smirk. “Brad? No way, he didn’t make it. He actually got held back because he showed no sportsmanship and even tried to sabotage everyone else to prove he was the strongest. Several times. He was so obsessed with being the best that he attacked the graduation party last night and fought with a lot of the knights, even trying to kill Max.”

“Oh, dear,” Pete gasped. “Is Max alright?”

“Yeah. He beat Brad and saved everyone. Tomorrow, actually, Brad will be facing trial for what he did.” He laughed. “And now Max is the local hero.”

“Hmph. Serves that punk right. I knew he was trouble when he was a tyke. His father never had any honor either.”

“I actually helped Max against him. I threw the surprise balls at him. The ones you sent me for my birthday.”

“Nice. Did they work out for you?”

“They did distract him. Though I’ve been having trouble putting the flashbang back together, and Brad broke the shock charge one by kicking it into the wall.”

“Huh. Then you should see if your friend Bobby can fix ‘em. He’s been working with machines with the chipmunks, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks. So, how have things been going over there?”

Pete shrugged. “Same old, same old. Maleficent’s still trying to get the Heartless to obey her again. She is having more luck as of late, though. Heck, just a few minutes ago, she hauled up a Guard Armor.”

P.J.’s eyes widened. “Wasn’t that one of the first Heartless that Captain Goofy and Mister Donald fought? There’s another one?”

“I heard that there was a second one running around half a year ago, and there have been some similar-looking guys with different color schemes that were sighted in the last several months. I guess this one just happens to have the same color.”

“So what have you been up to lately?”

“Eh, nothing too different. Maleficent has been sending me on some more errands. I’ve been sneaking around town peeking in on the goings-on. I even played a prank on that grumpy mechanic as he was moseying up to the castle. He responded by swearing to update the security system to sic the CLAYMATION things on me.” Pete snickered as he recounted this.

A puzzled look crossed P.J.’s face. He did not respond to Pete’s anecdote, causing his father to become confused and concerned. “Is something wrong, son?” Pete asked.

“Oh, sorry, Dad. It’s just that the image has become foggy.” P.J. waved his hand in front of his face to indicate this.

“Huh. I wonder if there’s some kind of interference. I’ll check it out. You wait right here.” Pete stood up and turned to investigate the disturbance. At this moment he realized that he had no idea if the spell over the crystal ball would stop working if he left it alone, but he decided that he would restore the connection if he needed to. Assuming he could remember the magic word.

Now that P.J. mentioned it, Pete did notice something in the air. The aura was so palpable he could almost smell it. Actually, considering how thick darkness was known to permeate from those with a strong affinity to it, he could literally smell it. Though he noticed there was something different about the smell. It was not the usual brand of darkness. Along with the standard whiff of sulfur and rotten eggs, he could detect a dash of incense and aether. He followed the scent into the next room, where Maleficent had been. He wondered if she had summoned a particularly powerful Heartless, or if she had fished a new kind of darkness user out of the Realm of Darkness. However, he did not see any of the Heartless that the fairy had conjured earlier. Perhaps she had dismissed them when the source of the interference appeared.

He stepped into the stairwell and noticed that the scent was getting stronger. He made his way up the spiral stairs, traversing the circumference of the tower three times before he ascended into the next chamber. A large window overlooked the mountainous divide between the Villain’s Vale and the town of Radiant Garden. Enormous rusted gears hung in front of the window, obscuring most of the view. Only one of the gears continued to turn, trying to work some sort of mechanism that was most likely disconnected or defunct.

Maleficent stood in the center of the chamber, facing an unfamiliar figure, who stood by the window, looking out toward the castle that Maleficent had once called “Hollow Bastion”. The stranger was a human male. He wore a black coat, slacks and shoes. The coat and slacks had purple trim at the collar, wrists and ankles. He had long white hair which came to small spikes going down. The ‘do reminded Pete of that Riku kid. His arms were crossed behind his back, and Pete could see that his hands were very pale, as if he had scarce seen the sun for years, only stepping outside when necessary. Despite this, he appeared to be well-built. His sleeves widened toward the wrist, and they hung loose over his forearms.

“I remember when this world was ruled by darkness,” the stranger spoke with a deep voice, still facing away from Maleficent and Pete. “Eighteen months ago, those who used the power of the Heartless made their home in that castle. Now it is the property of the defenders of light.”

Maleficent scowled. “If you have any business to intrude here other than to gloat, speak it, or leave,” she threatened, maintaining her commanding presence while keeping her irritation in check. Pete simply stared at the newcomer. This was definitely the source of the interference. Sizing him up, he judged that he was far more formidable than he appeared.

“Clearly, you cannot simply snuff out the light.” The man turned to face the witch. Pete noticed that he wore a sort of purple body armor that hugged his torso tightly and gave an even greater impression of his developed physique. The synthetic fiber had a blue trim. A part at the middle rose above the collar to sit over part of his chin. He wore a purple and blue belt with a square maroon belt buckle that had a design resembling a blue sun spreading its rays around the edge of the buckle. There were two small maroon pouches on either side, clipped onto the bottom edge of the belt with a pair of bronze hooks each. Looking at his face, Pete was instantly intimidated. The man’s face was just as pale as his hands. He wore a small goatee on his chin, which spread around the tip by an inch on either side and had been allowed to grow to little more than peach fuzz. His eyes were covered by bangs ever so slightly, but Pete could see the cold, piercing gaze in his fierce red eyes. The combination of light hair, pale skin and red eyes reminded Pete of the folk tales he had heard around the worlds about vampires. He was freaked out even more when he realized that the raven was staring at him just as fiercely and the man was not even a bit perturbed.

Despite his fear of both the intruder and his boss, Pete decided to speak up. “Who are you, anyway?” he asked, doing surprisingly well to keep his voice from shaking. “And what do you know about what we’ve been doing?”

“I am Zeromast,” the man introduced himself, his expression unchanging. “And I know everything that has ever happened.”

Pete was confused. “What does that mean?” Maleficent gave him a curt glance, not wanting to lose control of the conversation to the newcomer and his ego nor to her subordinate.

Zeromast spread his arms out as he answered. “Every war that was ever fought, I know every detail. I have seen every blow struck. Everything ever learned, I have learned as well, following the studies and lectures throughout the history of all the worlds.”

Maleficent and Pete shared a glance. Pete was growing less wary after such a silly boast, and Maleficent was losing patience.

“So, is he one of those door-to-door religious types?” Pete asked her.

“It matters not,” Maleficent answered quickly. She raised her scepter, which flared with tongues of green fire.

Zeromast reached into his right pocket and took out a palm-sized rock with a rectangle carved into it. Maleficent pointed her scepter at the man and a ball of green flame flew from the crystal orb. Unconcerned, Zeromast tapped the carved shape with two fingers then held the rock out in front of him. The fireball made contact with the stone, which was now emitting a white glow from the carved lines, and simply vanished without fanfare.

After a brief pause, Pete spoke. “Okay, talk,” he said.

“Tell us what you would like to say,” Maleficent asked of him, a command wrapped in the tone of a request. She was still unfamiliar with the concept of tact.

Zeromast replaced the runestone and cleared his throat. “I understand that for the past decade, you have been using the Heartless to consolidate your rule. First, you led the creatures of darkness to consume the hearts of the worlds so as to plunge them all into darkness. But not only did the Keyblade wielder impede your plan by locking the Keyholes of the worlds he came across, but the worlds were all brought back to the realm of light when the hero and the King accessed Kingdom Hearts. This also resulted in the defeat of your allies as well as your own death.”

Maleficent grimaced. “Do not remind me,” she retorted with a hint of anger.

“Then, after you returned, you downgraded to simply gathering an army of Heartless to try to crush your opponents,” he continued, disregarding the witch’s remark. “But once again, light fought back.” He wagged his index finger to punctuate the last three words.

“Get to the point,” Maleficent loudly commanded.

Zeromast frowned, but continued. “You have been fighting against the laws of the universe, expecting everything to bend to your will when it instead sticks to its own rules. There is a balance, one that the worlds and their defenders will try to maintain. Just as light cannot exist without darkness, nor can darkness exist without light. You cannot smother everything in shadow and not expect light to shine through. As long as the universe continues to maintain its balance, it will never bend to your will.

“But what if I told you that you could change the rules?” Maleficent and Pete were piqued at this, as Zeromast hoped. “Imagine a place from which Creation flowed, a sealed ground where rules can be written, enacted, and repealed, and matter and life itself can be created and tied together. Such a closely-kept secret that only a single person from each world is allowed to know something of that nature even exists. What would you say if you were made aware of such a place?”

For once, Maleficent was at pause. She gripped her chin, deep in thought. “A place where I could change the rules that govern the entire universe… Not even the great dominion of Kingdom Hearts would hold authority over this power?”

“From what I understand, Kingdom Hearts exists due to the code written in this place,” the man clarified, his red eyes gleaming. He knew he had them sold.

“How do we know this ain’t just some bamboozle?” Pete questioned, still unsure whether this stranger actually had their interests at heart.

The sly scholar anticipated the question. “I swear to you, this is no joke. And I will be happy to share with you everything that I know of this place, if you choose to take me up on my offer.”

Maleficent raised an eyebrow. “What sort of offer?” Pete gasped and looked at her disbelieving, amazed that she was actually listening to him, particularly after the last time a strange man offered her a power she could not refuse. He did not know the details, but he knew full well that the weirdo in the brown robe only intended to gain power for himself and left Maleficent in the dust, which led to her temporary death. And then the guy’s other half, his Nobody, became their rival for world domination.

Zeromast extended his hand, a simple gesture even though neither the witch nor the cat could reach it and probably would not care to even if they could. “An alliance. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, as the saying goes. I cannot reach this place without your help, and, though I mean no disrespect, you cannot get what you want without the power I speak of. Ascertain this power, claim control over reality itself, and all our wishes will come true. What do you say?”

Maleficent took a moment to consider the offer. She noticed that Pete was no longer trying to dissuade her, and gave him an inquisitive glance, wordlessly asking for his input.

It took a few seconds, but Pete noticed Maleficent’s expression and realized what it meant. “Well, I think it might be worth a shot,” he suggested, keeping his voice to a whisper so Zeromast would not be able to hear. “We see what he’s got, go along with it, and see if we can’t get it. All the while, we keep an eye on this guy, and if he betrays us, we turn the tables. Hey, and if this works, we can finally get that world domination! And the Boat-Boy King, and the runt Sora, they will be kissing the ground where we stepped. Ga-ha!” He covered his mouth, embarrassed, when he realized that in his enthusiasm he let out a loud cackle.

Maleficent nodded at him, deciding to ignore the outburst, then turned her gaze back to Zeromast. “All right. We have a deal.”

Zeromast smiled. “Very well,” he declared. “But first, we must gather allies. This will be a massive operation spanning every world. And as I mentioned before, brute force and strength in numbers aside, which in this case tends not to amount to anything when the defenders of light actually fight back, the resourcefulness of just the two of you is… limited.”

“Well, ya see, we did try to put the band back together when Maleficent came back,” Pete explained, “but most of them were dead, Hook wanted nothing to do with the Heartless, Jafar was stuck in a lamp and nowhere to be found for months, and Hades simply refused.”

“I have located others, who I am sure would be happy to join our enterprise,” Zeromast promised. “I have compiled a list. Feel free to take some off if you don’t think they will work.” He reached into his left pocket and took out a square of neatly-folded paper. He opened the paper up into a full-sized sheet with yellowing edges and stepped forward to hand it to Maleficent.

Maleficent and Pete looked the paper over. There was a list of names going down, written in perfect calligraphy. Next to each name was the name of the world on which they lived.

“Glom… Him?” Pete considered the idea, then shook his head. “No way! If we pick this guy up, then one way or another, we’ll get the McDuck guy going against us directly!”

Maleficent thought about this for all of three seconds before quickly slicing the name off of the list with her razor-sharp nail. Listening in and watching, Zeromast gave a quick nod in understanding, making sure they did not see him do so.

“Wait, I thought he was dead,” Pete commented. “Didn’t you throw him off the fortress when we invaded five years ago?”

Maleficent checked the name Pete was focusing on, and paused, taking a minute to recall. “That was moments before the Keyhole was breached and the world was consumed. Perhaps the final hours were undone when it was brought back.”

“Then it’s good he probably won’t remember you did that, huh?” Pete doubled back to a name higher up on the list. “You think he’ll actually say yes?”

“If we suggest that he could use this power to claim that seat at the head of his pantheon and a chance to finally get his revenge on the demigod, I am sure he will be on board.”

Pete snickered. “Those twerps won’t stand a chance!” The raven cawed in agreement

Zeromast watched as his new allies made up their minds and smirked to himself. _So it begins,_ he thought to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These first three chapters (aside from the Prologue... it's tedious on FFN with the way I kept everything numbered after the Prologue and it's going to be tedious here, so bear with me) were dedicated to showing what those three corners of the KH-verse were up to by this point. The next few will ease from that to the "setting off on a new adventure" stage.
> 
> Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments down below, and I hope you enjoy!


	5. Chapter 4: Such a Small World

The clocks marked three o’clock and the bell rang at the end of the final class period, signaling the end of the academic day at Nomura High School. Sora had broken off to meet his dad in the parking lot so he could go to his driving test, leaving Riku and Kairi to walk out together. As they passed through the front doors, they heard three voices snickering. Kairi quickly rolled her eyes, and she and Riku turned to locate the cartoon villains who were making the chittering noises.

A trio of blond-haired boys were pestering a bespectacled freshman boy. The bullies were of Riku’s age, though two of them were three inches shorter than him and the third one, Lyle, who stood to the right in the trio, was barely taller than Kairi. The one on the left, Guinness, wore a knitted winter cap despite the fact that it was March and the islands never experienced winter weather. The one in the middle, Colin, had a messy hairdo and a devilish grin that looked more corny than cruel. However, with his size and his attitude, he had the younger student sufficiently scared.

“Well, come on, shrimp,” Colin taunted. He was a complex and nuanced character like that. “Show it to me. Either you pay it up here, or you just pay the same amount for a new pair of specs. Your choice.” Guinness laughed and reached toward the kid’s glasses, forcing the freshman to back away from him. However, he was up against the wall and could not go much farther.

Riku and Kairi approached the four students. He grabbed Guinness’ hat and yanked it off of his head. The bully was confused and felt around his head to figure out what was wrong, then he wheeled around to see Riku and Kairi, glaring at him. He elbowed Colin to get his attention, and he and Lyle turned and were taken aback to see who was there.

Colin quickly regained his composure. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the wanderlust punk who let us all fall into darkness,” he taunted. Riku maintained a straight face, masking his annoyance at the fact that people had spread more word about what he and his friends had been doing over the last two years than he would have liked.

Lyle approached Kairi. “And little Miss Princess of Heart,” he teased with a whiny tone. “You want a dolly?” Kairi shook her head in pity.

Riku clapped his hands slowly, sardonically. “Bravo. New material,” he snarked. “What’s next? A joke about one of us being ‘dead meat’?” He shook his head and smirked. “How are you doing in your classes? Think you’re going to get somewhere with your lives?”

“Well, at least we’ve actually gone to class,” Colin retorted, less amused.

“You missed five days and have a C in history,” Guinness interjected weakly.

“Shut it!” Colin shouted.

Riku pretended to ignore the comments. “And here you are, tormenting a kid who’s smaller than you and can’t defend himself? Really? Do the three of you have no better way to support your egos?”

“Uh, well, erm…” The bullies were at pause, trying to come up with a suitable comeback. In the meantime, the freshman had slipped out of the corner in which he had been driven. The fear in his eyes was fading away. Colin stopped stammering and raised his hand to silently tell his friends to quiet down as well. “So how did you support your ego, huh?” he shot back. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you ran away and threw your buddies aside to prove yourself to the big leagues!” In an attempt to emphasize his jab, he gave Riku a shove. Lyle interjected a “Yeah!” much to Colin’s annoyance.

Riku regained his footing and stood unperturbed while Kairi was making yammering motions with her hand and the freshman was waving to someone across the courtyard. Riku shrugged in response to Colin’s statement. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m one of the kind of people who liked to look up and see if there was a shelf they could reach, and I reached for the wrong shelf. But at least I’m not one of the people who look down and are overjoyed when they think they see someone beneath them.”

It took a few seconds for the bullies to realize what he was saying. “Mister Big Shot over here,” Guinness shot back, not even trying to conceal his anger. The freshman looked worried that a fight was about to break out.

“Yeah. Big Shot in a small world. A small world filled with small-minded people.”

Colin drew his arm back, his hand clenched into a fist. “Why you—” he began.

The stock incomplete threat was interrupted by an “Ahem,” which drew everyone’s attention. The freshman smiled. A teacher had noticed what was going on and had approached them while Colin was getting ready to attack. The teacher made eye contact with Colin, looking at him disapprovingly. “Is there a problem here?” he asked, dryly.

Colin noticed that his fist was still raised and promptly dropped it. He and his lackeys forced a nervous smile. “Uh, nope. No problem here,” he lied. Lyle and Guinness nodded in agreement.

The teacher raised one eyebrow. “I would suggest that you three head home and study for your test on Friday.” The bullies got the hint and ran off without a word. The teacher turned to the freshman. “Thank you for calling me over here. Is everything all right?”

Riku and Kairi nodded an affirmative. “It is now,” the bespectacled student answered. The teacher smiled and walked off. The freshman turned to Riku and Kairi. “Thanks for getting those guys off my back.”

Riku smiled. “Nothing to worry about. Those three are just a bunch of small-minded lunks.”

“They used to give me and Sora trouble a couple years ago,” Kairi added, “but Riku showed us they were all bark.”

The younger teen grinned. “Well, I should get going,” he said, hoisting his backpack and turning to leave. “See you later!” He waved good-bye as he walked on home.

Riku and Kairi laughed and waved back. Kairi picked her handbag back up and Riku secured his backpack and they continued on, heading home.

* * *

Riku and Kairi’s paths diverged at the same stop where the three friends had converged each morning, and they each had gone home. As Riku approached his house, he saw a red Audi convertible pull up the street. As the car came to a stop in front of him, Riku could see that Sora was in the driver’s seat, still wearing his school uniform, and his father was relaxing in the passenger seat, his hands crossed behind his head and the seat set so he was leaning back. Sora parked the car and waved.

Riku smiled, excited at the sight, particularly by Sora’s trademark dorky grin. “You passed?” he asked his best friend.

Sora nodded. “No trouble at all,” he bragged.

Kumo waved hello to Riku. “They’ll be mailing his license in a few days,” he explained.

“That’s awesome!” Riku congratulated. He remembered how he received his only a few weeks before, as he had earned his permit when he was fifteen but had spent more than a year and a half off-world, so he was so far behind that he got the provisional license at around the time when he normally would have obtained the unrestricted license. He was still lined up to get it in a few months, however, but that did not cover how he was no farther ahead of Sora in some respects.

“So, what made you get here so late?” Sora asked, noting that Riku had only just gotten home when he should have already been back for a few minutes.

“Kairi and I were helping a freshman with a minor problem,” Riku answered with a sly smile. “Those problems being Colin, Lyle and Guinness.”

Sora laughed, and Kumo let a snicker escape. “Oh, I should have been there! Granted, I wouldn’t have done much more to take them down a peg, but come on!” Sora reigned in his laughter and let out a sigh. “Well, see you later?”

Riku nodded and waved as Sora drove off.

* * *

After Riku had changed into his regular clothes, he had pulled out his algebra notebook and textbook and began to work on his homework. Twenty minutes later, he heard the front door open and glanced toward it.

His father, Chikyu, had returned home from the station, still wearing his police uniform and hat, his breast adorned with a badge identifying him as Captain. He held a cane in his left hand and walked with a limp, but in a way that made it almost seem natural to him, putting most of his weight on his right leg. He had his silver hair neatly combed, but his bushy moustache was less well-kept.

“Hello, Riku,” Chikyu greeted in a stern but warm tone as he entered.

“Hey, Dad,” Riku returned. He looked back at his homework and began solving another problem.

“How was school?” his father asked.

“School was fine. Sora just got his license. I stood up to a few bullies.” Riku mentioned this with less of a smug tone than when he told Sora. Nevertheless, his father knew who he was referring to.

“Those bullies?” he pressed, an eyebrow raised.

“Yup.” He looked up, trying to think of the equation to use, then returned to writing.

Chikyu grunted as he smiled in amusement. He went upstairs to change out of his uniform into more casual clothes. When he came back down, leaning on the banister for support, he asked: “Your mother still at the office?”

Riku nodded. “She is,” he answered. “Probably finishing up her case work for the day.” His mother, Iwa, worked as the district attorney of Destiny Islands.

Chikyu nodded, understanding. “She ought to be back in time for dinner. You plan on going to the islet later?”

Riku looked up and answered “Yeah.”

Chikyu nodded. “Tell Sora I sent my congratulations,” he requested. He took a glance at Riku’s homework and pointed at one of the problems that he had done. “Check your chain rule, son.”

Riku looked back at the problem, and noticed his mistake. He muttered thanks and started erasing his work from that point and redoing it.

* * *

Kairi cut and ate a piece of her ham dinner. She chewed thoroughly and swallowed, then ate some green beans.

“How is it?” the man sitting across from her asked. He was in his late forties, and had blue eyes and brown hair bunched into a small ponytail. He wore a grey long-sleeved shirt with a beige hood attached and a design consisting of circles and lines on the front, a pair of blue jeans, and gray shoes.

“It’s good. Thanks, papa,” Kairi answered, smiling as she took another bite.

Braska smiled, satisfied with the answer, and himself with the meal. He was not Kairi’s real father, but he had taken her in after she washed up on the island as a child twelve years ago, when he was in his second year in office as mayor. While at first he had merely let her into his home out of convenience while the grown-ups tried to figure out where she came from and what to do with her, Braska had grown to care for her like his own daughter, and eventually filed the adoption paperwork, and he became her official legal guardian.

“I am very impressed with your grades,” Braska said. Kairi smiled shyly at this commendation. “Not only have you caught up with the months you missed and are keeping up with your classes, but you have straight A’s in all of them.” He took another bite and waited until he finished that piece before continuing. “I’m glad to see that you have been adjusting well since your return, and that Selphie has been able to help you with your studies.” He paused and remembered what Kairi had told him when explaining what happened while she was gone. “Well, her and, what was it, Naminé?” Kairi nodded affirmative. Braska sighed in exasperation. “I am still trying to wrap my head around what you told me last year about the other worlds and the Heartless and whatnot. And now, I have no idea what to make of you having a Nobody who lives in your heart and helps you with math. Do you know what I mean?”

Kairi wagged her head from side to side as a way to concede the point. “That seems to be the typical reaction. I’m still trying to make sense of how Naminé even exists; it gives us both headaches.” She laughed a bit to lighten the mood. “And a double headache in one head is not very pleasant,” she joked.

Braska let out a laugh, waiting until he was done before he put in another bite of food. “I guess we do what we can,” he decided. Kairi agreed.

When they finished their dinner, Braska took the dishes to the sink to wash. Kairi offered to help, but her father figure assured her that he had it handled and she was free to go to the islet. Kairi thanked him and went up to her room to gather her stuff, then she was out the door in a jiffy.

* * *

Kairi greeted Craig at the boathouse. She noticed that five of the boats were not in the shed, meaning that not only was she the last one to cross over but there were three others on the islet with Sora and Riku. She set the boat in the water and grabbed the oars. Rather than a side pouch for her drawing pad, she wore a purple backpack. She set that down in the boat, not wanting to deal with any unnecessary weight on her back and shoulders, sat down in the boat, and started rowing over.

When Kairi docked at the pier on the islet, her suspicions were confirmed when she saw Sora, Riku, Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie playing catch with Wakka’s Blitzball. The Blitzball was a white water polo ball with a watery blue design encircling it about one axis.

Tidus wore an open yellow shirt with white sleeves and lining and yellow hems, a pair of navy pants that had the right leg extending past his knee while the left leg only reached his mid-thigh, and black sandals with black straps and a yellow pad under the middle part of the straps. Wakka wore baggy yellow pants whose legs each bore black X-shaped straps and closed up halfway down his lower legs, a pale yellow tank top with black lining, a pair of green sandals, and blue wristbands. Selphie wore a cropped yellow dress with overall straps and a large pocket on the chest, brown sandals, and a small brown belt strap which was around her left wrist, and she also had a jump rope tied around her waist.

“Take this!” Wakka shouted, and he threw the Blitzball overhand in Selphie’s direction, not yet noticing Kairi on the pier far behind her. He threw it too high and despite jumping to try to grab it, Selphie missed the ball. Kairi saw it coming straight for her and caught it with both hands, pulling it toward her chest and backing up a step to drain out its momentum.

Everyone turned to see where the ball went and finally noticed Kairi. They waved hello. Holding onto the ball with one hand, she put the other hand on her hip and gave them a look of mock disapproval. “What, you couldn’t wait for me?” she scolded lightly. They all laughed and spread out to open a spot in the circle for her as she hopped off the pier to join them. She passed the ball to Sora as one would a basketball and joined the game of catch.

After a while, they got tired of throwing and catching the ball. Tidus picked up a red wooden stick that he had stuck in the sand nearby and brandished it as if he was ready for a fight. “Hey, how ‘bout we go a few rounds?” he challenged. Sora and Riku took their wooden swords from a loop in their belts and Selphie untied her jump rope, flicked it to straighten it out, and grabbed hold of both ends.

“Think you can take a star player like me?” Tidus charged in to engage Sora. He delivered quick strikes, which Sora either blocked or parried, then did a backflip to get out of the way when Sora retaliated. Tidus blocked a downward strike from Sora, but due to the fact that his sword was bigger and the experienced hero was much stronger, even though he was holding back sufficiently, this caused a crack to form in the stick. Tidus dove to the side and ran around to strike Sora in the back of the leg while he was bringing his sword back up.

“That’s right, keep it up!” Sora commended, turning around to block another strike. Tidus ran back and forth, strafing Sora and trying to land several hits, but Sora blocked most of them and ended Tidus’ attack by striking him in the gut with the fat side of the sword, throwing him across the beach.

In the meantime, Riku was dueling with Wakka. Wakka was throwing his Blitzball at Riku, but Riku knocked it back with a swing from his sword. Wakka had finally learned from past experiences and caught the ball before it hit him in the head. He stayed at a distance, running or leaping backward whenever Riku got too close.

“Take this!” he shouted, jumping into the air and throwing the Blitzball down at Riku. Riku deflected the ball upward as Wakka landed, and as he was recovering from that, Wakka ran up and started throwing punches. Riku blocked some with his arms and returned a few blows himself, but Wakka landed a heavy hit on Riku’s chest, sending him flying backward. Riku rolled onto his back and curled his legs to his chest, then kicked forward and launched himself at Wakka. Wakka, for his part, stepped back out of Riku’s range and watched the ball as it came down. At the right moment, he spiked the Blitzball with his palm, hitting it into Riku’s forehead, causing him to fall back down. Groggily, Riku got back up and charged at Wakka, who had stood by patiently waiting for him to regain his composure. He ducked under one of the athlete’s punches and rose up behind him, landing a jab in the middle of his lower back, which caused Wakka to fall to one knee.

Kairi and Selphie watched from the sidelines as their friends sparred. Kairi could see Selphie’s annoyance at being left out, and got an idea. She took her backpack off and dropped it in the sand, leaning it against the shed. She unzipped the main compartment and pulled out a wooden sword of her own. It was longer and thinner, for swifter strikes, and was free of cuts and nicks, being newly made.

“Hey, Selphie,” she called out. Selphie turned her head to face her, wearing a quizzical expression. Kairi swung her sword with a flourish and held it out to her side. “Tired of being left out?” She smiled and raised her eyebrow to emphasize the duel invitation.

Selphie lit up and flicked the rope with a swish while still holding both ends. “Okay, don’t hold back!” The two girls ran toward each other. Kairi swung her sword at Selphie’s shoulder while Selphie cracked her rope like a whip and stung Kairi on the side. Selphie leapt back, rubbing her shoulder. Kairi took the opportunity to rush in and strike Selphie in the arm and side. The younger brunette swung her rope, wrapping it around the shaft of the sword, and yanked it to the side, pulling it out of Kairi’s hand. She flicked the rope a few times to uncoil it from the sword. She swung the jump rope, again mimicking the use of a bullwhip, and nearly hit Kairi in the back as the redhead maneuvered around her to try to get her sword back. Kairi performed a cartwheel to clear the last few feet while grabbing the sword while she was upside-down, taking it with her as she came back up.

Selphie smiled, impressed. “Not bad,” she commented. Then her grin turned to a fierce confident. “Are you ready?” she warned as she spun her jump rope above her head. Kairi smirked as she watched the rope carefully, specifically the flying end. When Selphie drew close enough, Kairi brought her sword up, hitting the handle and sending it flying until it extended to its highest point, where the rope was perfectly straight. Selphie stopped when this happened, befuddled, before the handle came down and conked her in the head.

* * *

They sparred until sunset, and at the end of it they were all covered in cuts and bruises. Kairi reached into her backpack and took out six corked, palm-sized jars filled with green-colored Potion. When the potions were swallowed, all minor breaks healed, up to and including cracked bones, though more serious wounds and fractures would require legitimate medical attention, as even Hi-Potions and Cure magic only caused tissue and bone to repair itself, and if bones were thrown out of shape or organs were ruptured, attempts at using this method would not cause the body to heal properly. After returning home, Sora and Riku, not wanting to be stingy with their curatives nor get in trouble at school or home for ingesting mysterious chemicals whenever they needed it, showed the potions to the local doctor’s office and pharmacy and the school’s nurse’s office and supplied a list of (easily accessible) ingredients which Riku had obtained so they could learn to produce the potions themselves.

Kairi passed the Potions around and kept one for herself. Everyone drank the contents of the jars and their injuries closed up.

“Man, you’ve been training a lot, ya?” Wakka said to Riku, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

Riku returned the compliment. “You’ve been keeping up yourself.” They shared a fist-bump.

“I guess I have a ways to go before I can beat you, huh,” Tidus lamented.

Sora gave him a high-five. “You’ll get there,” he promised.

“Not at the rate you’ve been going, I won’t. Months of fighting monsters consistently, you’re way too far ahead and still going.”

Sora sighed. “Those days are past,” he said sadly. “I’m here now, at home, with my family. And you guys.”

Kairi saw the look of longing on Sora’s face. She could tell that he missed the high adventure, and he missed Donald and Goofy. She grabbed hold of his hand reassuringly.

“Y’know, I think I know what’s eating you, brudda,” Wakka stated, pensively. “You live here fourteen years, livin’ the simple life, ya? You, Sora, you don’t have much to define you, just your friends. Then Riku gets the idea to get outta here and go to other worlds and see where Kairi came from. You go along with it 'cause it sounds like a fun thing to do with your friends, ya? Then you find yourself with a new power, new friends, and a purpose. You got to see more of life than what you have on the islands. The two years since gave you more clear understanding of yourself than your entire life before. And now you’re back here, and you don’t know what to do.”

Sora tried to protest, but Wakka continued. “Yeah, yeah, you got your old friends back, and you got back together with the bruddas you were trying to reunite with the whole time you were out and about. But out there, you had adventure. Your days were full of action and excitement. You grew as a person so much in those two years, that all your life here seemed next-to-nothing. Am I right, man?” Sora could only nod weakly.

Tidus started to see the picture as well. “So now, you’re back in the simple life for three months. But you’ve been defining yourself by your adventures, by the power and purpose you’ve been gifted, with your…” He held his hand out, made a _swish_ sound through his teeth and closed his hand as if he was grabbing something that appeared out of thin air. “Now you’re out of that environment. The chapter’s closed and the genre’s shifted. You’re trying to find the answer to one question: what is your story from here on out?”

Sora thought about what Tidus and Wakka said. “So, what should I do?” he asked.

Tidus looked nervous, as if he was taken aback by the question, or the fact that Sora expected him to follow up with advice. Wakka scratched the back of his head, clearly just as unsure.

“Oh, come on, guys! You’ve just been psychoanalyzing me. The least you could do is help me out with this,” Sora joked.

Selphie cleared her throat to get Sora’s attention. “Well, maybe you should keep that stuff in your heart and look forward to see if you find something new to commit yourself to. And, about your friends from outside, it’s like you said,” she began to reassure Sora, remembering the words he imparted some time ago, “though vast the distance between you may be, as long as you are a part of each other’s hearts, they will always be here with you.”

Sora laughed. “You may have butchered it a bit. But thanks. That helps. It really means a lot.” This got her laughing, which in turn got everyone to start laughing.


	6. Chapter 5: Trouble is Brewing

The throng of people filled up the Disney Town square, all facing the gazebo in the middle. A podium was erected on one end of the plaza, upon which stood King Mickey, Queen Minnie, Captain Goofy, and Donald, flanked by half a dozen magic brooms. Max and his friends stood in front of the podium, eyes locked on the figure standing within the gazebo. They have been there the whole afternoon, observing a trial that took place in regard to the events of the other night. The proceedings had taken place, and all in the plaza awaited to learn what fate had been decided for the man who was now the figurative and literal center of attention.

The defendant was Bradley Uppercrust III, former student of the Disney Castle Royal Knight Academy. He stood facing the podium, staring emotionlessly at his judges. He still wore his armor. He had earned a black eye in the time between his arrest and his trial, a parting gift of one of his former cronies as he was expelled from both the academy and the Gamma Mu Mu club that he had previously led. His wrists were bound by a metal shackle. He refused to even glance at the people who had once thought of him as a friend. They evidently had the same idea, as they gathered to the side, just far enough around that they were out of his peripheral vision.

On either side of him stood a magic broom. Although they did not look like much in terms of security, they could carry great weight with sufficient numbers. They were also implacable, shrugging off any attempt at hindering or destroying them.

This time around, King Mickey was calling order. “Bradley Uppercrust III,” he began, managing to make his shy falsetto voice sound imposing, “you have been tried and found guilty of betraying the knight’s order, vandalism, assault and battery, and attempted murder. After much deliberation, the court has decided to sentence you to twenty years imprisonment in the pocket of the Cornerstone. Do you have anything to say for yourself before the sentence is carried out?”

Bradley’s expression remained unchanged, though Max could swear that there was a slight hint of malice in his gaze.

Mickey returned the stern gaze. “Very well,” he decreed. He clenched his fist to keep his hands from visibly trembling. It was, however, still clear to all that he was crushed by the betrayal of such a promising young man. “Take him away.”

The magic brooms each grabbed one of Bradley’s arms and led him away from the gazebo. The crowd parted as the brooms led him to the door in the white marble wall that served as a barrier around the castle. Donald raised his hand and two normal-sized doors opened in the center of the larger portal, much like in the door to the castle’s audience chamber. The convict and his security detail passed through the double doors, followed by some senior knights, and the doors promptly closed.

When all was done, the crowd began to disperse. Max, P.J., Roxanne, and Vicki did not move, though Bobby and Stacey walked off, Bobby beginning to tell a joke, heedless of their comrades’ inaction. Max stood, lost in thought. Roxanne and Vicki noticed that P.J. was similarly distracted. He had been like that all morning, and they wondered what was on his mind.

Goofy approached Max and put a hand on his shoulder. Max turned to face his father, who was looking at him, concerned. “You all right, Maxie?” he asked.

Max took a moment to answer. “I… I don’t know. I mean, I always hated the guy, and I’m glad to see him get punished for trying to hurt everyone. But…” he paused trying to find the right words, “seeing him get sent off like that… It didn’t really give me a good feeling. Do you know what I mean?”

Goofy nodded. “Gawrsh, I know all too well. I’ve seen a lot of bad people get punished for the bad things they did. And I never felt joy in it. Sometimes I even felt sorry for them.” A corner of his mouth curled up to a slight smile. “But it’s good that you feel that way, a-hyuck. It shows character, and you don’t want to be the kind of guy who enjoys other people getting punished, even if you don’t like them. You understand, Max?”

Max smiled and gave him a nod. “Yeah. Thanks, Dad.” Then a though occurred to him. “Say, Dad, what exactly is the pocket of the Cornerstone?”

Goofy averted his gaze shamefully before explaining. “Well, you know about how when Pete was sent to a pocket of space for a time out after his outburst at the Million Dreams Festival twelve years ago?” Max nodded. “Maleficent busted him out some time after, with one of her dark portals. So, after King Mickey and Queen Minnie found out about that, they decided to create another prison in a different pocket dimension, this one wrapped in the Cornerstone of Light. Since its light is so bright, not even Maleficent’s darkness can touch it, and no one will be able to bust out of it thanks to those dark portals.”

Max nodded, understanding what his dad was saying and what it meant for people like Bradley. “I gotcha.” He noticed P.J. nervously looking at his hand as if he were deep in thought. “Hey, Peej, what’s eating you?” he asked. “You’ve been acting weird all day. Did something happen yesterday? When you were talking with your dad, or something?”

P.J. looked over at Max, then at Goofy. He felt Vicki’s hand on his shoulder and realized how concerned everyone was for him. He felt that he should tell them about what happened. “Yeah. While I was talking with him through that crystal ball thing, the image suddenly became foggy, like a fluttering cloth, as if there was some new dark power interfering with the spell. Dad went to check it out, and the signal cut out a minute later.”

Goofy scratched his temple with one finger, pondering. “Hmm… Y’know, maybe we should tell King Mickey about it,” he suggested. “We can see what’s going on, and if it’s something we should worry about, the king would certainly like to know.”

P.J. was reassured by Goofy’s concern and liked the idea. “That sounds good. Thanks,” he said.

“After dinner,” Vicki interjected, wrapping her arms around P.J.’s shoulders. “You guys have plenty of time to see the king, and I believe he’s actually kind of busy at the moment. Besides, I would rather not risk any shocking revelation ruining our appetites, so let’s go.”

Goofy chuckled. “Well, I guess that’s settled. C’mon!”

* * *

Behind the castle, outside of the limits of the town, a grassy field stretched out, beyond which was a lake. Night had fallen, and the shimmering reflection of the moonlight shone off of the surface.

Donald Duck and his sweetheart Daisy sat at the edge of the lake, a picnic cloth sitting in front of them, held down by two crumb-covered plates and cups. Donald wore a blue sailor’s outfit with white accents, a red bow tie, and a blue beret-style hat. Daisy wore a purple blouse, a pink bow on her head, a light-blue bangle around her left wrist, and a pair of pink high-heeled shoes that somehow fit over her flipper-like feet.

“Oh, Donald. This is just perfect,” Daisy complimented, reaching her hand to lay it on top of Donald’s. Donald smiled contentedly, glad that she is happy. Daisy had given Donald all sorts of grief for missing their previously-scheduled dates, so Donald made sure to not stand her up this time. Donald hoped that nothing would spoil the moment.

Realizing what he was thinking and where it generally went with him, Donald was not surprised when he heard Mickey, Goofy, Max, and P.J. marching down the field toward them, making a commotion as though they did not realize that they were in the middle of a date.

“Oh, come on!” Daisy screamed, furious. “Am I not allowed to have a nice evening with my husband?” She growled in frustration, scaring everyone, particularly Donald, who was usually the one with the fiery temper.

“Gosh. I’m sorry, Daisy,” Mickey apologized, embarrassed. “It’s just that we were hoping you could help us with something. You see, P.J. thought there was something funny about when he was talking with Pete, and we thought we should check if there was something to worry about going on with Maleficent.”

Hearing this, Daisy began to calm down. She glanced apologetically at P.J. and started to chuckle nervously. “Oh. In that case, we’d be happy to help. Right, Donald?”

Donald nodded, and threw down a smoke bomb that caused his entire body to be surrounded with thick smoke. When the smoke cleared, he had changed into his wizard garb. Daisy conjured a bright pink light from her hands. When the aura died down, she was wearing an ornate, sleeveless, violet ball gown and a golden tiara inset with a sapphire in the front.

“All right,” Donald announced. “Let’s get going. Let’s see, since we’re already at the lake and the water seems calm enough, we can just conduct a simple scrying spell. However, the ground is not clear and even enough to set up the runes, but I might be able to work around that…” He took a small, orange festival rocket out of his hat and held it up, imagining the path it should take. He snapped his fingers next to the fuse and cast a small Fire spell to ignite it, and released the rocket right before it went off. The rocket flew all over the place, leaving a trail of sparks that formed an image of runes similar to the ones that Pete had drawn with his communication spell. When the rocket had burned out its fuel, Donald waved his hand and it vanished in a puff of smoke.

Donald and Daisy traded a glance and nodded to each other. “ _Noivilbo_ ,” they chanted. The surface of the water lit up, and the aquatic life beneath began to glow with an entrancing luminescence. Everyone present thought of the location they wanted to see, including Max and P.J., who had to be told what the fortress was called ahead of time by Mickey.

_Villains’ Vale… Villains’ Vale…_

An image of a ravine surrounded by mountains of blue stone and soil appeared on the water’s surface, stretched out away from the observers so that they could all clearly see what the spell was showing them. Standing in the ravine was a fortress consisting of several small buildings and seven rusted, spindly, broken-down towers, the front of which is marked with the Heartless emblem. The projection zoomed in on the middle tower, squeezed past the rusted cogs and set itself in front of a balcony. The party squeezed together to see what was happening inside. They saw Maleficent and Pete standing side-by-side. Pete wore blue and purple armor over a red short-sleeved shirt, navy-blue and white sneakers, and blue overall-type pants adorned with enormous rectangular pockets and a comically-large zipper that wrapped down and around his crotch area. This being their first time seeing Pete in his current outfit, Max and P.J. struggled to contain their laughter. The two villains were talking to an unfamiliar human-like character. Due to the way the image was positioned, the man had his back to the observers.

“Huh. I wonder who that is,” Goofy inquired. Minnie shushed him, wanting to hear what they were saying.

_“Well, the hothead tried to have his mutt eat me, but he eventually came around. He seems to be willing to help us,”_ Pete said.

_“As is the trickster. He claims to have an army as well as intentions of his own, but agreed to join us to see if he can get what he wants,”_ Maleficent added.

Mickey raised his eyebrow while Donald groaned. It seemed as though Maleficent was restoring the council that she had allied herself with during her first wave of attacks on the realm of light. And one of their member already had an army at the ready? As if the Heartless weren’t enough trouble.

Donald and Daisy were also able to notice that the image appeared foggy, much like the interference P.J. described. In fact, the area focusing around the mysterious human appeared to be the fuzziest. Perhaps he was the source? It would make sense. Maybe he had dark power that came from a different source than simply the darkness in his heart, or inherent magic. It was quite intriguing.

_“So, I’ve been wondering… What exactly are we going after?”_ Pete inquired. _You said they were on every world, which just adds to the mystery. I mean, if there was one of these things everywhere, you’d think we’d have heard about them somewhere down the line.”_

_“I will give you an idea when the alliance has been fully assembled,”_ the mystery man answered ominously.

_“Why?”_ Pete asked.

There was a brief pause before the stranger answered. _“It would be dramatically appropriate.”_ Pete raised an eyebrow in confusion at that. Watching the exchange, Max and P.J. snickered at the awkward delivery. _“How many times would you prefer I explain it to you?”_

Maleficent and Pete seemed to see the point, and the cat ceased to ask any more questions.

_“Erm, I’ll go talk to the clown guy,”_ Pete announced. He clapped his hands and a blob of dark energy rose up behind him, forming a black and purple doorway that cascaded in on itself.

_“And I shall seek out he who is called the ‘Shadow Man’.”_ Maleficent did the same, and they each left through their respective Corridors of Darkness.

The fireworks runes dissipated, and the image faded as well. The observers turned to face each other, contemplating what they just witnessed. Even though Daisy, Max and P.J. had a scarce understanding of what Maleficent and Pete had been up to previously, they knew enough to understand that they were up to something wicked. The others had come to the same conclusion, despite their questions as to the nature of whatever the fiends were after.

“We should warn Leon, and consult Master Yen Sid,” Goofy suggested.

Donald, however, shook his head in disagreement. “But Leon and the others can’t take on Maleficent on their own. They wouldn’t even be able to get to the Vale.”

“Donald’s right,” Minnie said despondently. “We must be able to gauge the situation and be prepared to intervene before it escalates, if at all possible.”

“Something tells me it’s not going to be that simple,” Goofy commented. “Here we go again. At least it’s not Ansem, er, Xemnas? Um…”

“Xehanort!” Donald clarified.

Goofy nodded, thanking him for helping him remember. “Yeah. At least we’re not facing him again.”

“Though, how different the situation is has yet to be determined,” Minnie lamented. “We know nothing of this man, where he comes from, what he wants, and what he is capable of.”

“But Goofy is still right about one thing,” Mickey affirmed. “This may be more than a simple scouting mission and fight. We could be in for another quest to protect the worlds from the forces of darkness. And if that’s the case, we’re going to need all the help we can get. All the friends we can count on.”

Donald and Goofy perked up at the declaration. “You mean—” they both cheered, excited at the prospect of what he was suggesting.

“You’re right, fellas. We’ll have to call on Sora. And Riku, too.”

Donald and Goofy laughed and cheered together until they noticed Daisy, Max, and P.J. looking sad, and went to comfort their loved ones.

“Don’t worry, Maxie,” Goofy assured. “We’ll get this over with as fast as we can, and then I’ll be right back here with ya, a-hyuck.”

Max smiled with little mirth. “You just got back. And here I was, thinking I’d be glad to get a break from your goofiness.” He chuckled ironically. “And the guys were glad to have you back as their captain.”

Goofy chuckled. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Maxie.” He glanced at P.J. to include him in the conversation. “And you two can take care of yourselves. As for the knights, they’re in good hands. They can keep things steady while we’re out.”

Donald held hands with Daisy, looking at her apologetically. “Daisy, I’m sorry I have to leave again. I promise I won’t keep you waiting for a year like last time.”

Daisy gave a slight smile. “Oh, Donald. I wish you didn’t have to go. But, I guess we all have our duties to attend to, and this is yours.” She sighed. “Well, I’m glad we at least got to finish dinner this time.” She gave Donald a kiss, then a playfully stern glare. “Just be back before our anniversary, got it?” Donald nodded quickly.

Mickey locked eyes with his closest friends and knew that they were all at an agreement. “All right. Then it’s settled. Max, P.J., can you tell Chip and Dale to prep the Gummi Ship?”

Max and P.J. met each other’s gaze and nodded affirmative. “Roger, your Majesty,” Max saluted. “But, uh, what will you be doing?”

Mickey gave them a knowing smirk. “Well, I gotta make sure Sora and Riku have a heads-up. I heard that there are some kinds of message that always reach their destination.”

* * *

By dawn, Mickey had finished writing his letter, rolled it up, and wrapped it with a seal marked with his insignia. He slipped it into a bottle and closed the bottle with a cork. He turned off the lamp and left the library, followed by Minnie and ever-faithful Pluto.

As he marched out of the castle, Donald and Goofy stepped into line behind him. The entourage walked past the gateway through castle’s external walls and tromped down the field to the lake where they had gathered the previous night. They stopped at the water’s edge.

Mickey stepped into the water, continuing until the water was up to his knees. Judging that the water was deep enough for the current to carry the bottle away, Mickey checked the cork to make sure it was secure. He rattled the glass with his fingers, muttering “Find our friends, Sora and Riku.” A silvery-blue glow shone over the glass for a split second, and Mickey knew that the magic would work.

Generally, when sending a message in a bottle, in order to ensure that the message would reach its destination, it must be addressed with the name of its recipient (or recipients, if more than one is targeted), and it must be subtly blessed with immense faith. It would also help if the intended receiver stayed in one place, in which case it would take only a few hours to make its trip, or until it could catch the person near a body of water larger than a bathtub; if the addressee moved about the worlds, the message would try to navigate the sea between worlds until it could catch up with him and appear where he could find it. When Kairi had sent her letter to Sora, she did not write his name directly, instead writing a sentence at the end that referenced his name after she had regained the memory of that particular detail about her friend, and when it set out to find him, he had gotten to traveling the worlds again and was rarely near a sufficient body of water for long enough (faith-driven bottles tend to avoid the River Styx, and ironically, nobody paid enough attention to see it at Port Royal; it also refused to appear in Atlantica because it did not want to risk the message getting opened underwater or above water then soaked anyway), until it finally reached him and Riku in the Realm of Darkness. Mickey was vaguely aware of this kind of magic, but was not entirely sure how to get it to work, so he decided to take extra care in telling his message where to go.

He dropped the bottle into the water. It bobbed for a few seconds, before being pulled down, caught in a small whirlpool under the surface. When it reached the center, a small portal opened up and the bottle fell through. When that happened, the portal pinched shut, releasing a single bubble which popped after reaching the surface.

“Gawrsh, do you think it will get to them?” Goofy asked. Donald looked at him and shrugged.

But Mickey was more confident. “Don’t worry. It will. Now come on. We should go pack up and get ready to go.”

So, they returned to the castle. Donald gathered a stash of Potions, Ethers and Elixirs. He selected a few of his backup staffs, some of which resembling hammers and one of which having what appeared to be a yellow dragon head on top, and dismissed them to the pocket realm where he and the knights send their weapons. Jiminy pulled a fresh journal from the bookshelf in the library, with which to chronicle this new adventure, and hopped onto Mickey’s shoulder to signal he was ready to go. Goofy and the chipmunks made sure to fill up the Gummi Ship’s refrigerator and pantry with necessary foods and drinks. Chip and Dale finished their check-up on the Gummi Ship, having successfully put it back together after the Teeny Ship incident from the other day. They had let Donald off with a warning and gave him permission to act as pilot once again.

Once everything was ready, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy prepared to board the Gummi Ship and begin their journey. Minnie, Daisy, Max, and Pluto were at the door to the Gummi Garage to see them off.

“You are about to begin what is likely to be a long and arduous journey,” Minnie began formally. “We wish you luck and we hope for your safe return. Please, do all that you can to safeguard the worlds.”

“Say hello to your nephews for me, Donald,” Daisy requested.

Goofy and Max shared a warm embrace. “Look sharp,” Max said.

Pluto woofed. Mickey petted him on the head. “I’ll see you real soon, boy!” the mouse promised.

After all good-byes were said, Mickey spoke into the megaphone-shaped speaker on the platform. “Mickey Mouse to launch crew: anytime you’re ready, oh-ho!” he announced, relaying the go-ahead to Chip and Dale up in the operator’s booth.

Dale pressed a few buttons and Chip flipped a switch. As they did so, a robotic arm with an enormous white glove attached floated over the group and grabbed Mickey. Another grabbed Donald, but for some reason it pinched his rear end, causing him to flip upside down when it raised him up. The arms carried them over and dropped them in the open hatch of the Gummi Ship.

Mickey, Donald and Goofy took their seats. Since Mickey had not flown the Gummi Ship in so long, he took the pilot’s seat. Donald had no problem with that and gladly sat in the copilot’s chair, while Goofy sat in the gunner’s chair, ready to fire at any obstacles or Heartless ships they blocked their path. Donald and Goofy noticed the eight new passenger seats installed around the sides of the cockpit, four against either wall. It seemed as though Chip and Dale had gotten to act on Donald’s work order that he put in after remembering that Kairi was left standing without anything to secure her as they were bounding through hyperspace when fleeing from Hollow Bastion the first time they were there, and he wanted to be considerate to any future passengers. Hopefully, this would mean that they also added bunks for all of the potential passengers, rather than just a single bunk in each of the three sleeping quarters.

The three crew members waved good-bye to their loved ones before Mickey closed down the cockpit hatch. He set the ship into gear and got ready to launch. Runway lights lit up down a tunnel shaped like a Hidden Mickey right in front of the ship, and Mickey was pumped to get to launch.

“Uh, your Majesty,” Donald interrupted nervously, “there’s something about the launch sequence that I should probably remind you of…”

A giant red arrow appeared, pointing downward. Mickey’s eyes widened, first in confusion then in shock as he remembered the hatch leading through the core of the world out through the opposite end. “Huh. I forgot about—”

He did not get to finish the sentence as the ship dropped through the real launch tunnel, the trio struggling to keep their bearings even though they had their seatbelts buckled as the ship tumbled through the passage.

“Whoa-whoa!”

“WAAAAAAAAAK!”

“WA-HOO-HOO-HOO-HOOIE!”


	7. Chapter 6: The Gathering

Maleficent and Pete looked around the room, taking in the unusual view of the colorful cast of characters that they had enlisted. Only one of them had been on their side before. The Olympian God with bluish-gray skin, a black toga held with a skull-shaped pin, and blue fire in place of hair, Hades, was an associate from Maleficent’s first endeavor in controlling the Heartless. There were ten others in the room besides them and Zeromast. One man wore gold armor and a green cape. He had shoulder-length black hair and a mischievous smile, giving off the impression of a trickster archetype and a master manipulator. There was a tall, skinny man with dark skin, purple eyes and a moustache. He wore a dark maroon tailcoat, black pants, black shoes with white spats, a purple vest, a red cummerbund, and a top hat adorned with a purple feather, a red band and a skull and crossbones design, and he carried a cane with a purple crystal ball on top. There was a thin woman with a mop of hair that was half black and half white. She wore a form-fitting sleeveless dress, an enormous fur coat and a pair of elbow-length red gloves. She was looking downward at the character in front of her, trying to make sense of the sight: what appeared to be a rotund albino gerbil that possessed rabbit ears and a tail with a bushy tip. He stood about two feet in height and wore a red cape held with a golden “H”-shaped brooch on his chest. Elsewhere stood a pale-skinned man wearing blue and black robes and a turban of similar colors as well as a brown glove on his right hand, while his left remained bare. He was accompanied by a floating eel. A few feet away from him stood a blond-haired man dressed like a clown or a court jester, wearing garb of red, yellow, blue and purple colors as well as white, red and purple face paint. There was also an elderly gray-skinned woman who wore a black and purple dress that flared out at the bottom, as well as a purple wig and mane, black sandals, and large blue disc earrings. Leaning up against the wall was a human-sized male sheep wearing a yellow-green chemist’s jacket. He drank from a coffee cup, apathetic to the characters around him. There was also a man with silver hair that fell halfway down his back, blue eyes, and a very slender and feminine figure. He wore a violet mantle about his shoulders, white sleeves, a white robe strapped around his waist and held up by a codpiece, purple pantlegs, and black boots with golden buckles. Last was a skeletal humanoid creature with green rotting flesh, glowing red eyes, sharp teeth, and two gnarled, bony horns atop his head, who wore a wine-red hooded robe with a fur mantle. All of these guests were sinister individuals drawn among the most evil lifeforms across the worlds.

Pete looked around nervously. He felt fear around the dark wizard with the eel and the undead horned guy, unease around the haughty woman-looking man and the trickster type man in the green cape, and absolute confusion at the inclusion of the woman in the fur coat and the behavior of the jester. They had all responded to his and Maleficent’s sales pitch and shown up to see if what they offered was worth it. However, Pete worried that half of the group could simply destroy the tower and possibly kill everyone within if they were not impressed. He simply hoped that Zeromast’s offer would hold.

The raven on Maleficent’s shoulder, Diablo, let out a loud screech to get everyone’s attention. Maleficent gave the bird a look of annoyance while Zeromast covered his ears, due to standing right next to Maleficent and being so close to the raven. In spite of that, the fairy did have everyone’s attention.

“Now that everyone is here,” she began, “you all should be familiar with the powers of the Heartless and the battle for supremacy between light and darkness.”

“Of course. I have observed your progress from afar,” the man in the green cape admitted. “I must say that I am disappointed that darkness did not quite make the cut,” he added with a wry smirk.

Maleficent raised her eyebrow in mock surprise at the remark. “Oh. Is there something that you would like to say, Loki?”

“I think everyone should be allowed to know what he saw, Missy,” Hades interjected. “You see, I was with her first band of knuckleheads commanding the Heartless. We sent them to attack a ton of worlds, swallow their hearts, and plunge them into darkness, and hunt down seven lovely ladies while we were at it.” He chuckled. “Now, Maleficent had picked me up after I’d clawed my way back from an unsuccessful coup against the gods up on Olympus, right, and you see I was seething with rage. I wanted revenge on my brother, Zeus, and particularly his kid, Jerkules. But the plan I had going then was one I put eighteen years into, setting things up so I had these huge Titans at my fingertips, and then they were kicked to the curb and it turns out they had a pretty limited warranty. So, there I was, sitting on my throne, thinking of something I could use to get back on top, when this lady shows up in a burst of green flame. And she says that with the Heartless under my control, I can send them to destroy everyone who ever ticked me off. Herc the jerk? Yes, sir. Zeus? Totally. That punk who blew off my offer to show him how to use the darkness a few years ago? Sure, why not? And so, I send the Heartless to terrorize the town, but that doesn’t seem to hold. Then I get the idea to sign them up for the games against the baby-faced lout. Some punk shows asking help in finding his dark half, whatever that means. I pour some dark power in him and set him against everyone’s favorite hero. Then, this runt shows up, carrying a weapon I’m sure some of you history buffs have heard of. The Keyblade? Anyone? Well, for the last few days, he’s been jumping between worlds, fighting the Heartless. He even sealed a Keyhole by then, meaning that there was one less world for the Heartless to munch. Maleficent thinks he could be of use. But I figure I can just throw him into a few matches with the Heartless, eventually he gets stepped on and boom, problem solved.

“But then, I’m sitting back in my lounge chair, a bowl full of popcorn in my lap, and I watch it all happen in the Games and out in the worlds. The runt plows through the Games, smashing every Heartless he goes up against, along with his idiot sidekicks. Meanwhile, on every world he gets to, he beats the Heartless, cuts down Maleficent’s little group one by one and finally fries the witch herself, and seals the Keyholes. Then he goes down the end zone and smashes whatever was holding the remnants of the fallen worlds, setting them back to normal! So, for all your talk of darkness being supreme and having the power to rule over all, it turns out light really was stronger and you—we got beat by a kid who wasn't even five feet tall.”

This caused the villains to grumble amongst each other, wondering what they were still doing there.

“She said that I could be empress!” the elderly woman, Yzma, complained.

“What about crushing everyone I hate?” the woman wearing the fur coat, Cruella De Vil, shot back, puffing a cloud of green smoke from her cigarette holder. Yzma covered her mouth and fanned the fumes away with her hand.

“I was supposed to reclaim what was rightfully mine!” the gerbil, Doctor Hämsterviel, remarked.

“If you have no faith in Maleficent and what she has to offer, then why are you even here?” the man in the blue and black robes, Mozenrath, asked Hades.

The lord of the dead shrugged. “I figured we should all know the lady’s position so we could get a feel for why she’s so confident about this scheme.”

After about a minute of bickering, and just as the jester, Kefka Palazzo, was starting to juggle enormous fireballs, Maleficent slammed the end of her staff into the ground three times, creating a booming sound that reverberated around the room and caused everyone to quiet down. The dark-skinned gentleman, Doctor Facilier, noticed that Kefka was still holding fireballs and used some of his magic to snuff them out. Kefka gave him a mock pout. Facilier simply responded by pointing toward Maleficent.

“You are correct, Hades,” Maleficent admitted dryly. “For all my efforts to smother the pathetic light and plunge everything into darkness, the simple fact of the matter is that such a thing cannot be done; darkness cannot completely consume light, and light cannot wipe out darkness. There is a balance that the worlds will always try to maintain. There are rules that the worlds must abide by. But, were there a way to change those rules, to redefine the balance, and make it so the worlds obeyed our will…” She trailed off, listening as the gathered villains expressed their curiosity and intrigue. Satisfied that she had regained their interest, Maleficent turned to the white-haired man. “Shall you say your piece, Zeromast?”

Zeromast drew a metal rod that was slung across his back. He reached into a pouch, took out several flat pieces of metal and a single red crystal, and assembled them onto one end of the rod so that it appeared as though four bent pieces of metal were holding the crystal in the center. The magic users eyed the glowing crystal curiously, wondering what sort of power it possessed.

“I am a scholar who has studied the history of all the worlds. Befitting my role as a Watcher, I am one of a select few individuals entrusted with knowledge of a secret chamber, knowledge passed down for generations, since the cataclysmic war that resulted in the division of the worlds.”

This drew confused glances from many in the audience. Understandable, as the existence of other worlds has been a well-hidden secret that for a long time had only been privy to Keyblade wielders, aside from elders who passed down an ancient legend. Many in the crowd had only just learned that other worlds existed when Maleficent and Pete arrived to recruit them. Even then, almost nobody was aware of how it happened.

The only exceptions, apparently, were Hades and Loki. “Ah, yes. I have been told stories of such an event. Alas, I was a boy when it occurred, and my… _father_ ,” the trickster god enunciated with contempt, as though he had recently had a disagreement with his paternal figure, or learned a painful truth about his origins, “had refused to intervene.”

Zeromast decided to continue. “In order to restore the World in any shape or form, the survivors had to use the power hidden inside this chamber to make a few changes to the World of Light. Resisting the urge to change too much for fear of unimaginable consequences, they shifted the darkness that had smothered the majority of the World into a sea of dark energy that divided remnants of civilization into countries, states and towns of varying size.” He took notice of the intrigue on the villains’ faces as they realized what he was implying. “You all heard right: this ‘power’ is a gift that, to those using it, offers the possibility to destroy or create entire worlds, and design the rules that govern them.”

Kefka snickered. “A world of our very own, to wreck, make and wreck again as we please?” He let out a unique laugh that took everyone around him by surprise. “Well, how do we get there?”

“Alas, the gateway protecting the chamber has been sealed, and its antechamber buried in the most twisted depths of twilight, at least from what I understand. This door is so complex that it cannot be opened unless it was complete. In my studies, I have learned that there are several key artifacts necessary to complete the portal, and if a single one is absent, the chamber cannot be accessed; not even the Keyblade can open it.”

Some in the audience, as well as Pete, were surprised. Others showed no reaction, as they had little to no understanding of what a Keyblade was. Maleficent herself was not surprised, as in her experience there have been a few doors whose locking mechanisms were so complex that his weapon could not simply open them; rather, he needed to solve certain puzzles to proceed.

“So, that is why you have gathered us,” the feminine-looking sorcerer, Kuja, realized. “You require all of our help in gathering these artifacts, to take control of the power to alter reality to our every whim. But what is it that you desire?”

Zeromast traded a glance with Maleficent. “We desire a new world order.”

“One where darkness consumes all and the light of hope is expunged,” Maleficent finished.

Hades smirked. “Well, I guess I’ll stick around. Heck, I could finally get the chance to turn things around on Olympus and smash that little bugger Hercules.”

The giant sheep, Doug, shrugged and took a final sip of his coffee. “Why not? As long as I get paid, it beats jail.”

“I’m in!” the villains announced simultaneously, agreeing to participate in the grandest conspiracy yet. The majority of them engaged in a glorious evil laugh.


	8. Chapter 7: The Call

Sora counted as he watched Sion lift the barbell while lying down on the bench. His cousin had invited him to work out together and spot each other at the gym that morning. It was a busy morning at “Wong’s Gym” as adults and adolescents made use of the wide range of weight and exercise systems.

_Seventeen… Eighteen… Nineteen… Twenty._ Sora helped Sion place the barbell back on the rack, then grabbed his hand to help him stand up.

Sion Barzahd was Sora’s cousin; his father was the brother of Sora’s mother. As such, they had a bit of a family resemblance. Sion stood two inches taller than Sora and had similarly spiky dark brown hair and blue eyes. His skin tone was lighter than Sora’s, as he had not spent as much time sitting out in the sun and thus had not earned such a tan. He wore a red hooded jacket with a yellow inner lining and black sleeves, a pair of blue shorts that reached halfway down his thighs along with black under-shorts that inched closer to his knees, burgundy socks, black boots, and black and yellow gloves. The words “DOG STREET” were printed in calligraphy across the bottom of his jacket, “DOG” being written on one side of the zipper and “STREET” on the other, wrapping around his side. The jacket also had two zipped-up pockets. He wore a black belt as a sort of choker.

“Not bad,” Sora commended. Sion stepped away to stretch, while Sora took a few more weights from the rack and putting them onto the bar, adding a total of one hundred and fifty pounds.

“Show off!” Sion accused. Sora shrugged before lying down on the bench. He waited until Sion was in position before he lifted the barbell and started pressing it upward. After twenty presses, Sora replaced the barbell, with Sion guiding it.

“Man,” Sion sighed. “How did you go from a lazy bum to strong enough to lift that?” He and Sora removed the heavier weights from the bar out of courtesy for the gym’s other patrons.

“Eh, when you end up doing a lot of work for months straight, you’d be amazed what you can do by the end of it,” Sora answered, trying not to sound cocky.

Sion scoffed. “The most action I get here is when I have to stop a bar brawl,” he retorted. “I mean, unless I’m a part of it.”

Sora chuckled. He knew that, as a bouncer at a bar called _Fate_ , Sion often had to forcibly remove some of the clientele when they got too rowdy and aggressive. Sora had on occasion passed by the bar, and a few times caught Sion in the process of dragging someone out. Just the week before, Sora was present when a particularly temperamental man tried fighting back while he was halfway out of the establishment, and jumped in to slam the drunkard face-first into the wall to keep him from attacking Sion.

“Well, I kind of had a busy schedule,” he understated.

Sion let out a laugh. “Yeah, and a pretty crazy one at that. Futuristic machines, ninjas, space travel, and wild science?” He grasped his head, trying to wrap his brain around it all once again. “I wonder if I would be able to handle an adventure that nuts.”

They laughed together, and stepped away from the bench press when two guys came by looking to use it. Sora followed Sion’s earlier example and stretched to loosen his muscles. Sion led him to a punching bag that hung from the ceiling by a chain, and started delivering a series of punches and kicks to it, continuing the conversation in between hits.

“Good to see you’re staying fit, even when you’re off that kind of ‘schedule’,” he said, striking the bag between every few words. “You’re keeping up in school, right? Aunt Suta said that you and Riku breezed through classes to get in line with the rest of your age group. I’m sure you haven’t let that slip by.”

Sora shook his head with a smirk. “Nah. Still doing fine in classes. But I’ve made sure I get everything done with plenty of downtime.” Sion stopped hitting the bag and stepped aside, allowing Sora to start his part of the workout. After a series of swift, powerful punches and kicks, Sora attempted a roundhouse kick, but Sion stopped him.

“Hold up, man!” Sion grabbed Sora’s arm before he could carry through with the move. “Don’t twist on your ankle or hip.” He pulled Sora away from the bag and stepped into position. He stood facing to the side, then turned his left foot to face the bag. “Put your foot in the direction of the target, and rise up onto the ball of your foot.” As he said this, he stepped off of his heel, keeping the front of his foot on the ground. “Arc up, straight line from shoulder to knee,” he tossed his right leg partway to demonstrate, “and pivot on your foot. Don’t strain your muscles. Swing yourself around that point, and then release your leg to hit with the shin.” He demonstrated a successful roundhouse kick. “Got it?” He did it two more times to show Sora the technique. “Okay, now you try it.”

Sora stepped in front of the bag, then followed Sion’s instructions. He turned to the right, raised his left foot onto the ball, and swung himself around, spinning cleanly around the point where his foot met the mat. After testing the form a few times, he carried out a complete roundhouse kick, kicking the bag with his lower leg.

“There you go!” Sion congratulated. He saw Sora deliver the kick thrice, hitting harder with each strike until the bag was thrown at a wide angle. When it came back fast and hard, Sion braced for impact and caught it before it could go the other way.

Sion took a minute to catch his breath, concerning Sora. “Are… you okay?” Sora asked.

Sion let go of the punching bag and stumbled back. Sora helped him regain his footing. Sion turned to face his cousin and gave a cheeky grin. “I think that was enough for today.”

* * *

It was a quarter past four in the afternoon on the islet. The ocean breeze blew through Kairi’s hair as she sketched in her drawing tablet. She held the pages together with a binder clip to prevent the wind from blowing them around. She glanced over to Tidus, Wakka and Selphie, who were sparring against each other. She returned her gaze to her subject matter. A few feet off from the shore, a wide, cylindrical platform rose out of the surf. It was built around with stones but covered in sand and palm trees. A wooden bridge was built connecting the platform to another raised part of the island. That area was accessible by entering a wooden shack and climbing a stairway carved out of the rock wall, exiting through a door built on top; or one could simply jump on top of the shed and step onto the upper level. One tree on the platform was twisted so that it almost looked as though it was on its side. While the other trees sprouted coconuts, this one grew the star-shaped Paopu Fruit, which had developed a bit of a folk legend around it.

Riku sat on the trunk of the Paopu tree, staring out at the horizon. Kairi could tell that he was deep in thought, most likely reflecting on his past decisions again. She remembered how he felt dissatisfied with the simple life on Destiny Islands and, intrigued by the stories of other worlds which he knew to be true thanks to Kairi’s mysterious arrival, wanted to see what was beyond the small world he grew up on. This desire to explore led him to embrace the darkness, and when she was lost because of it, he delved further into darkness, aiding Maleficent and Ansem in using the Heartless to invade and consume the worlds. Although he realized his mistake and made up for it, even getting the remnants of Ansem’s influence purged from his heart, and even as he was welcomed back by his friends and family with open arms, he was still haunted by the pain he caused his friends.

Kairi finished coloring Riku’s hair with her silver crayon and went to replace it in her bag and grab a different one when she felt a light thump on her shoulders from behind. She yelped in surprise. Tidus, Wakka and Selphie stopped their battle to see what happened. Kairi turned around to see who it was, though she was starting to get an idea.

The culprit turned out to be Sora. “Why you!” Kairi scolded playfully, lightly shoving at his leg. She broke into a fit of giggles as he grinned, put his hands behind his head, and crossed one leg behind the other. Tidus, Wakka and Selphie realized that there was nothing to worry about and continued their match. 

Sora dropped down and took a seat next to her. He peered over at her in-progress sketch of Riku. “Looking good,” Sora complimented.

“Thanks,” Kairi said, pushing her hair out of her face and giving him a peck on the cheek. She looked up at Riku, still staring pensively. Sora followed her gaze and realized what Riku was doing.

“He thinking about…?” he began to ask.

“Yup,” Kairi answered.

“I’ll go check on him.” He ran off across the beach, jumped onto the shack up to the higher ground and ran across the bridge.

Selphie found herself standing with her feet in the water. She felt something push into her ankle and looked down to find a corked bottle. Curious, she picked it up and looked inside to find a rolled-up piece of paper. Noticing a funny-looking seal wrapped around the paper, she ran past Tidus and Wakka and showed it to Kairi.

Sora crossed the bridge and vaulted himself over the Paopu tree, landing on the other side and to Riku’s left. He leaned his back against the tree and crossed his hands behind his head.

“Such a small world,” Riku said in an amused tone.

“Yeah,” Sora agreed. “But part of one that’s much bigger.” Sora recalled the end of their adventure. He and Riku had to fight Xemnas after the others had stepped through a Corridor of Darkness conjured by Naminé to escape to Destiny Islands. They managed to defeat him after a grueling battle, but Riku was injured and they were both exhausted and stuck in some in-between realm. A portal appeared and they found themselves in the Realm of Darkness. For an hour, they had resigned themselves to their fate, until a message in a bottle had washed ashore. Sora had read the letter from Kairi and he felt a glimmer of hope, then a rectangular door of light appeared in front of them, allowing them to step through and make it back home.

“Hey, Riku,” he turned his head up to face Riku, “what do you think it was, that door to the light?”

Riku hopped down and faced Sora. He poked Sora in the chest, right where his heart would be. “This.”

“This?”

“It’s always closer than you think.”

Sora took a moment to let the thought sink in. Even in the deepest darkness, there is always a glimmer of light. He realized that it was just as true as it had been when he first learned it over a year ago. He smiled, satisfied with the answer.

“Sora! Riku!”

They turned to see Kairi running toward them, carrying a bottle. She stopped in front of them and showed the bottle to them.

Sora noticed the paper rolled up inside, kept tight by a seal wrapped around it. He squinted his eyes and identified a black symbol shaped like a certain rodent’s head. “From the king?” he exclaimed as he yanked the cork out of the neck and slipped the paper out of the bottle. He removed the seal and unrolled the paper, realizing that it was a written letter. He held it up for Riku and Kairi to see and started reading the message.

_Sora, Riku,_

_I hope things have been going well since your return home. I can say that Donald, Goofy and I really miss hanging out with the two of you. Now, I’m sorry to drop this on you so suddenly, but I’m afraid I’m gonna need your help._

_We picked up something strange going on at Maleficent’s fortress and took a look to see what it was, and we found something that’s got us worried. It seems as though Maleficent and Pete have made acquaintance of a mysterious character, and they are putting together another band of baddies, like the council that commanded the Heartless before. And it seems like they are planning on going around the worlds with the Heartless again and look for some items to carry out a nefarious plan._

_And frankly, in spite of whatever power Donald, Goofy and I have, as well as what Leon and the gang can do, we cannot do this on our own. We wouldn’t have a chance without the two of you._

_With luck, we will be able to jump in and clear everything up before it begins, but, more likely, we will have to go on another extensive adventure to stop whatever evil plan they are conducting. I’d hate to force you to up and leave your families like this, but the safety of the worlds is at risk, and we really need your help with this._

_We’ll come over in the Gummi Ship for you tomorrow. You should have plenty of time to prepare for the journey ahead. It’ll be great to see you again._

_See you real soon,_

The letter was signed with a stamp of the mouse-head symbol

They processed what the letter said. King Mickey wanted their help on a new mission. They were nervous, as something that was a big enough threat for the king to require their help was certainly something to worry about. In the meantime, the thought of another quest brought conflicting feelings. On the one hand, they had practically just gotten back home and reconnected with their loved ones, and to up and leave them again for who knows how long… On the other hand, Sora could not say that he did not like the idea of seeing his old companions again, and the thrill of adventure still stuck in his memory. Meanwhile, Riku was still in the mindset that he wanted more beyond the slice of life experiences that the island had to offer, especially since he knew full well what sort of splendor could be found on the other worlds.

Kairi could see that Sora and Riku were both apprehensive and intrigued at the prospect of adventure. She knew them both well enough to understand what they were thinking. So, she decided to be the mediating third party voice.

“Maybe we should tell our folks about this,” she suggested. “You can get ready, and we can arrange ways we might be able to keep in touch with everyone.”

Sora and Riku nodded. “You’re right,” Riku said. “We have a day, right? We should at least be able to discuss this with our families.”

With that settled, the three of them told Tidus, Wakka and Selphie what was going on and departed the islet, starting to row back to the big island to meet with their folks.

* * *

Sora, Riku and Kairi had managed to convince their parents to meet at the luau to discuss the matter over dinner, where they informed them of what the letter said. The teenagers could tell that the grown-ups were concerned by the news.

Iwa read over the letter again, and looked at Riku solemnly. She was tall and slender, about the same height as her husband. She had blue eyes and shoulder-length black hair. “I’d thought this day wouldn’t come, but I should have known it would.”

“If you do want to do this, I can tell that nothing we can do will stop you,” Chikyu said. “And frankly, it would go against everything I believe in to even try to stop you from doing this.”

“Truthfully,” Kumo admitted, “we were hoping that you wouldn’t have to go back out on us for a long while.”

Sora gave his parents a comforting hug.

“You were gone for so long, and we didn’t know what happened to you, or if you were even still alive,” Suta lamented, tears welling in her eyes. “I just don’t want to have to lose you again.”

“You’ll never lose me,” Sora reassured her. “I’m sorry I made you worry for so long.”

“You’ll come back, safe and sound, right?” Kumo asked.

“I will. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“We both will,” Riku added.

Mayor Braska, who had been thinking the matter over while everyone was talking, finally spoke up. “It appears to me that the discussion has been settled. Now, we should figure out matters on the home front.” He looked over at Sora and Riku, and they stood at attention. “Should you intend to continue going to school upon your return, I would suggest that you talk to your teachers. I doubt that they would be too keen on having to throw weeks to months of school work on you to keep you with your respective grade levels a second time, particularly after jumping through hoops to bring you up to speed by several months.”

Sora and Riku looked at one another. Riku shrugged his shoulders. “I can see if the Gummi Ship crew has some way we can work around that,” Sora suggested.

Braska nodded in understanding. “Second, I am sure that your parents and friends would all like if you could keep in touch with them.” Kumo, Suta, Chikyu, and Iwa nodded confidently.

Kairi held up the bottle that the message came in. “You can send a letter like how the King did with this, and how I did before.” She looked past the others and waved to one of the waitresses, whose younger sister Kairi had often been babysitting over the last year, as she passed by.

“And I’m sure we’ll be able to visit when we have some downtime,” Sora added. The grown-ups smiled at the idea.

“Well, that was the last concern I could think of,” Braska said. Incidentally, this was the point where the waiter brought over the bill for the meal. The grown-ups paid and gave the waiter a tip. “Now, it’s getting late. You two should probably prepare for the journey ahead. We have the utmost faith in you.” He shook hands with Sora and Riku as everyone prepared to head home.

When they were outside, they prepared to part ways, but Kairi grabbed Sora and Riku by the arms as they were leaving.

“What is it, Kairi?” Sora asked.

“I was wondering if, maybe, you could let me come along,” she answered. This baffled the two of them, as well as the grown-ups.

“What?!” everyone shouted, incredulous.

“I’ve never really been a part of your adventures,” she explained. “Being semi-aware in your heart doesn’t count, and I never really got to do much when I joined you at the Organization’s castle. And, truth be told, the last few months I was kind of hoping I could get to join you on a real one someday.”

Sora and Riku struggled to respond to her request. The adults were still trying to process what she said. Kairi noticed the boys’ uncertainty and raised an eyebrow, leaning in toward them coyly.

“Come on! Remember what I said, right before we went through the door to face Xemnas? ‘Wherever one of us goes, the other follows’, right?” She shrugged and half-turned in a seemingly aimless fashion. “Besides, if I can’t handle it, you can always bring me back and drop me off here.”

Sora and Riku looked at Braska to see what he thought. He simply gave them a look that said he was leaving the choice up to them. They shouldn’t have been surprised, since he was accepting of the trio’s wish to sail off on a raft to visit other worlds, whether or not the adults actually thought the raft would work. They traded a glance with each other to see what the other was thinking, then came to a decision.

“Sure,” Sora said. “But remember to follow our lead, got it?”

Kairi nodded, glad that she could get to be part of the team. She and Sora crossed pinkies. Neither of them noticed Riku look away nervously at the display between his two friends. Iwa noticed this, and put her hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

“Okay. See you in the morning!” Sora said as everyone turned away to head home. He made sure not to show it around his parents, but he was excited. In less than twenty-four hours, he would get to see Donald, Goofy and King Mickey again, and they would embark on another universe-spanning adventure, this time with Riku and Kairi in tow.


	9. Chapter 8: The Ship That Runs on Smiles

A row of ships constructed out of red, yellow and orange blocks flew through the sea between worlds, dodging asteroids and the occasional giant orange ring that got in their way while remaining in formation. Whatever it was that piloted the ships could not understand why there were giant rings, nor could it make sense of why they were arranged in such a fashion. But it did not care. The layout of the Lanes Between had no bearing on it. The only thing that concerned it was its job, which was to make sure that no unwelcome travelers sailed the star systems. It scanned everything in its path, checking for any unsavory formations. Once, the ships passed two other ships that vaguely resembled bees, but they were not the enemies; rather, they were allied ships, similarly tasked with dominating the routes. At a distance, the front ship noticed a construct that appeared to be made of similarly-colored blocks to itself; it even possessed a similarly-shaped cockpit. However, there were some key differences: there was a pyramid-like point on the front, a gun-like part was attached to the bottom; there were some white fin-like wings on the sides, and there were two smaller ships floating on either side of the construct. The front ship scanned the construct, comparing its shape and structure to the range of ships it was directed to watch out for, and it found a match. The enemy ship was listed as “KINGDOM”.

Within the Kingdom Gummi Ship, the anthropomorphic dog pressed the button on the gunner console, and a photon blast was shot from the Fire-G gun, blasting the front ship to pieces. A few more shots and the ships behind it were obliterated.

Jiminy Cricket looked out of the cockpit from his position on top of Mickey’s head. “Gosh. It’s a wonder that there are still so many Heartless- and Nobody-controlled Gummi Ships flying around after both factions were defeated,” he commented.

“I never understood how the Heartless could fly space ships,” Donald wondered aloud. “Nobodies, maybe, since they had some intelligence, but not the instinct-driven predatory Heartless.”

Mickey shrugged. “I never really thought about them. And we never really got to stop and take a look at them.” He swerved the steering console to maneuver the ship through and around a series of rings, and Donald pulled the Teeny Ships in closer and pushed them farther away to avoid any collisions.

Mickey sighed with satisfaction. “It’s been a while since I’ve flown this thing,” he said. “Had to have been a few years before the roads and worlds got too dangerous to make regular trips. I’m glad to see Chip and Dale put in the extra passenger seats and cup holders.”

As Mickey said that, Goofy realized something. “So, uh, your Majesty,” he said, turning around to face Mickey while keeping a peripheral on the way ahead, “how exactly did you get out of the castle and into the other worlds if you left the ship for us in the garage?”

“And I’m pretty sure Master Yen Sid wouldn’t let you use the Star Shard again, even if you had gone out to borrow it,” Donald added.

Mickey looked sheepish, realizing that he never really gave Donald or Goofy any of the details of his time away when everyone was fighting the Heartless. Even in his letter, he never gave them a hint of what he was planning to do, and he felt guilty for making them worry so much.

“Well, you know how Keyblade wielders can transform their weapons into different things, such as a glider?” Mickey asked to refresh his friends. Donald and Goofy nodded, though Jiminy was perplexed, as he was not aware of that detail. “Well, I still had my own Keyblade with me, and I fished out that piece of armor like the ones used to protect them from the darkness in the Lanes Between. I activated my armor and jumped on my Keyblade Glider, and flew out into the sea between worlds.”

“The armor piece… That black vest thing with the gold buttons?” Goofy asked to clarify. Mickey nodded. “Then why didn’t you have the armor after we woke up, and you had to put on the Organization XIII coat?”

“It got smashed pretty hard while I was in the Realm of Darkness, and I had to leave it behind when I went to help you guys close the Door to Darkness. Afterwards, I tried fixing it, but it wouldn’t reactivate. Besides, since I had the Key from the Realm of Darkness, I didn’t really need the armor to protect myself. And the black coat was to keep the members of Organization XIII from picking up my scent.”

Donald, Goofy and Jiminy accepted that answer, but several seconds later they did a double take. “Scent?” they asked, giving Mickey confused looks. Goofy clicked the gunner button and held it down, firing lasers blasts at a continuous rate until a large asteroid in front of the ship was blown to pieces.

Mickey shrugged. “I don’t quite understand it myself. Riku said something about being able to ‘smell darkness’, but I never understood what he was talking about.”

They sat quietly for a while, focusing on the path ahead. Mickey steered and navigated, Donald kept an eye on the radars to detect any obstacles and guided the Teeny Ships (somehow having convinced Chip and Dale to let him operate with them before departure), and Goofy manned the guns to shoot down enemy ships and asteroids.

After a few hours, Mickey parked the ship on the side of a massive asteroid, and the four of them took the elevator down to the galley to prepare dinner. After the meal, they resumed their positions and continued their journey.

After a while, a massive object gradually came into view. It had an ovoid shape, and appeared to be mostly water, save for a few spots of land, the largest of which was covered in islands and had a tall, apparently volcanic mountain in the middle. Another spot resembled a very familiar island that the three of them had most certainly been to before.

“Land ho!” Donald exclaimed, shaking his hands together from side to side.

“Hey, we made it!” Goofy agreed, pointing excitedly out into the distance.

“And right when we planned to be here,” Jiminy noted, eyeing the clock on the ship’s display which indicated the measured time for the islands.

“All right, men,” Mickey announced. “Are we ready to see Sora and Riku again? Oh, Kairi too,” he corrected himself, remembering that, despite the short time they spent together, Kairi was a friend as well.

“You betcha!” everyone answered enthusiastically.

“Well then, let’s find a place to touch down.”


	10. Chapter 9: Together Again

Early in the afternoon, Sora found Kairi on the dock. She was sitting at the edge, her feet dangling. She wore clothes similar to the day before, but in preparation for adventure and protecting her modesty she had on some black bicycle shorts underneath her mini-dress. She had taken her shoes off to let her toes touch the water. She stared out into the distance, watching the seagulls fly over the ocean and the wind rustle the branches and leaves of the trees on the islet. Sora sat down next to her. When she noticed him, they shared a soft smile.

“This brings back memories,” he said. “When we sat on the pier at the island, watching the sunset and sharing our feelings of our planned journey.”

“It feels like so long ago,” Kairi added nostalgically.

“Thing were so different then. I was just a naïve, lazy idiot who hardly even imagined what lay out there.”

“And I was a simple girl with no memory of where I came from and who was afraid to let things change.”

“And Riku was just bored of island life and putting up with cardboard cutouts who tried to act like they were better than everyone else.”

“The last two years have changed us so much. What will happen this time around?”

Sora shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

They sat there pondering until Riku came up to them and sat down with his back to both of them.

“You guys packed?” he asked them.

“All set,” Sora answered. “Just a few things to figure out when they get here.”

“We have all our textbooks. I was thinking we could hand our homework in using the message in a bottle tactic,” Kairi suggested.

“But how do we actually follow the lectures and complete tests?” Riku asked.

“I’ll ask the King when they get here,” Sora said.

“I can’t believe we’re going back out there again,” Riku muttered wistfully, a slight smile on his face.

“We’ll be together this time,” Kairi reminded him. “No chasing each other, no fighting, no secrets. Got it?” She giggled. “You two behave yourselves.”

“Hey, that was on him!” Sora retorted, mildly offended.

“That wasn’t how I saw it back then,” Riku snarked. “And hey, I wasn’t the only one who tried not to stick around. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Mickey snuck away from you and the others at the first opportunity until you didn’t have any further to go.”

“You’re right,” Sora confirmed. “But things will be different. No separating. We’ll be together to the end.”

They heard a humming sound in the distance, which quickly became louder, and they realized that the source was coming closer. They looked up and saw a familiar craft coming from the sky.

Sora, Riku and Kairi stood up quickly, ecstatic at the sight. “They’re here!” Sora exclaimed.

“We should probably let everyone know so they don’t panic,” Kairi pointed out, remembering that nobody else had actually seen the Gummi Ship before. They ran back into town to prepare for their friends to touch down.

* * *

Everyone in town had come down to the beach to watch the ship land. Once Sora, Riku and Kairi explained what was going on to the police and lifeguards, they had arranged an area to allow the ship to land, marked off by some fence stakes and police tape. The crowd watched in fascination as the spaceship eased its way to the sand. Sora, Riku and Kairi stood in the front of the crowd, closest to the ship, their eyes wide in anticipation. They each had a suitcase next to them. Kumo, Suta, Sion, Chikyu, Iwa, and Braska were right behind them. Sion wore the same clothes that he had on the day before as well as a chain attached to his left glove and a large X-shaped pendant attached to his belt-collar by a chain. Tidus, Wakka and Selphie were not too far away. Wakka was accompanied by his girlfriend, Lulu, a young woman with red eyes and black hair braided and tied in a knot who wore a dark-gray dress with a fur trim around the décolletage, a black corset, a dark-gray waist cape, three beaded necklaces, a pair of red earrings, black stockings and shoes, and a knee-length skirt made entirely out of belts, and who carried a stuffed Moogle doll. Selphie was accompanied by her boyfriend, Irvine, a sixteen-year-old boy with blue eyes and brown hair in a ponytail who wore a purple vest, a khaki-colored jacket, black jeans, black fingerless gloves, black shoes, and a black cowboy hat. Some people noticed the cannons built under the main hull and, despite not being sure what they were, moved about so that they did not stand in front of them.

A rectangular panel started to separate itself from the underside, and bent downward to create a ramp leading up into the ship. A brief moment after it touched down, Mickey, Donald and Goofy stepped out. Donald was wearing different clothes from his court wizard garb, now having a navy blue high-collar jacket with sky blue lining and cuffs with three pockets and a zipper going down between each of them to the bottom of the jacket, as well as a blue beret with a zipper that wrapped around it several times and a belt in place of the brim. Goofy wore a green turtleneck sweater, a black combat vest with gray lining and four gray pockets, yellow pants secured by a black belt, an orange hat with red goggles that were too small for his eyes, and large brown shoes with steel toes. Their faces lit up when they saw their human friends.

“Sora!” Donald and Goofy cried out, running over to give him a big hug.

“Donald! Goofy!” Sora returned the embrace.

Mickey approached Riku and cheerfully shook his hand.

“Good to see you, Mickey,” Riku said.

Donald and Goofy shook hands with Riku and Kairi while Mickey did the same with Sora and Kairi. When they noticed their families behind them, they gave a friendly wave, but upon noticing everyone else’s incredulous expressions, they looked around sheepishly.

“Are you ready?” Mickey asked.

“All packed, Your Majesty,” Sora answered. “There’s just a few small things to work out.” He explained the dilemma with class lectures and taking tests.

“Huh. I could plug in a schedule for your classes, and have your teachers install a recording device in the classrooms to transmit video recordings to the ship for you to watch, or a holographic live feed so you can participate in class.” He trailed off when he noticed Sora’s parents giving him confused glances, and he realized that they wouldn’t have any idea what the technology he was referring to was. “Uh, I’ll have to get it out and demonstrate. And I can give them a special mailbox so they can hand out homework and tests and you can send it in.”

“Like the one Chip and Dale used to tell us about the Coliseum tournaments?” Goofy asked.

“And the communication system they used to check our radars and give us updates on the last adventure?” Donald added, remembering the chipmunks’ frequent calls during their travels over the last few months.

“The very same,” Mickey answered.

“That’s great,” Sora said, satisfied with the answer. “Oh, your Majesty, would it be alright if Kairi comes with us?”

Mickey sized her up and down and realized that she also had a suitcase. After some thought, he said “Sure. The more, the merrier!”

“It’ll be great to have you on board,” Goofy assured her. Donald nodded in agreement. Riku’s eyebrow shot up when he saw this.

“Give me a minute. I’ll get the stuff and we can talk to your teachers,” Mickey said before he ran back up the ramp into the Gummi Ship.

* * *

After talking to the teachers and giving them the webcams and mailbox, the latter of which would work like a sort of trans-dimensional fax machine, the group returned to the entrance of the ship to say good-bye to their friends and family.

“Hey, Selphie, can you cover for me with babysitting?” Kairi asked. She had begun watching the children of the island for their parents and guardians. She sometimes did it on her own, but Selphie sometimes helped her.

“Of course! I’ll keep an eye on them and make sure they have fun,” Selphie promised. Then her tone turned a bit somber, thinking of a certain babysitting charge. “And I’ll keep her spirits up. Show her she’s not alone.”

Kairi nodded in thanks, understanding her meaning. She and Selphie hugged, then she gave Irvine a fist-bump.

Sora and Riku traded high-fives with Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and Irvine. They simply received a handshake from Lulu.

Their good-byes were interrupted by a shriek of terror coming from the middle of the crowd. Everyone turned to see what was going on, and noticed a group of people running away from a certain point.

“Monsters! Everybody run!”

As most of the crowd dispersed in panic, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy could see what was eliciting such a reaction. There were several identical creatures, humanoid in body structure but slightly smaller than Mickey and Donald in size. They were entirely black, save for two circles on their spherical heads that emitted a yellow glow. At the ends of their skinny arms were hands with four fingers, and they had feet that converged into a point where the toes would have been. They had a pair of bent antennae on their heads, which twitched as they sensed the people around them. Despite the fact that they were completely unfamiliar to most of the residents of the island, the heroes knew exactly what they were.

“Heartless!” Sora called out. “Get everyone clear!” In response, Chikyu began barking orders to the other police officers, instructing them to bring the civilians to safety.

On hearing the shouts, the Shadow Heartless turned to see where they were coming from, and recognized the young man with the spiky hair. Visually, they were confused when they saw the other two men of similar appearance, but they identified the radiance within this specific human’s essence, as well as a similar radiance within the silver-haired youth next to him, and an even brighter light devoid of darkness in the girl who stood with both of them. They also took note of the bipedal mouse, duck and dog. Identifying their targets, a group of the Heartless converged on them, while the rest stayed back and went after those trying to flee.

Sora approached the nearest group of Heartless and quickly found them encircling him. Staring down the one directly in front of him, he reached his arm out in front of him. A bright flash of light burst out, and he closed his fingers around a cylindrical handle. When the light faded, he held a key-shaped object in his hand. The main body had a length of thirty-eight inches. It had a silver cylindrical shaft. The teeth extended from the side of the shaft in a downward direction, and had a blocky trapezoidal form with a cutout in the shape of a crown that resembled Sora’s pendant. Between the shaft and the handle guard was a blue rainguard. The bright gold handle guard wrapped all the way around the black handle. At the end of the handle guard, opposite from the shaft, was a loop, on which a keychain was clipped. At the end of the chain was a silver token made of three spheres arranged in a way that resembled Mickey’s head.

Sora gripped the Kingdom Key with his other hand and held it out to his side in his combat stance. The Shadow in front of him leapt in for a swipe, but Sora swung his Keyblade at it, cutting right through it and causing it to explode into a black cloud. The other Heartless moved in, but Sora struck each one down, finishing the last one off with a sliding dash, using the Key to push the ground behind him away then swing back around when he reached his target, smashing it to pieces.

Mickey conjured his own weapon, the Kingdom Key from the Realm of Darkness, which resembled Sora’s save for the fact that the shaft and keychain were gold, handle guard was silver, the rainguard was red, and the handle was brown. He jumped over top of the grown-ups and took out a Shadow as he landed. Riku summoned Way to the Dawn, which appeared in a dark cloud rather than a white light. It had the shape of a sword that resembled a black and red bat wing with a gray angel wing attached to the tip, the handle guard was made up of a white angel wing and a black demonic wing, and the token attached by the keychain resembled a Heartless emblem but without the spiked bars crossing it. He sliced through another Shadow. Donald and Goofy summoned their staff and shield and joined the fight.

Goofy smacked a Heartless with his shield then threw the shield sideways under his leg, sending it spinning through the air to hit and bounce off of multiple other Shadows. Donald whacked one on the head then cast Blizzard, sending a chunk of ice straight through the air, cutting through the creature as well as the one behind it before the spell dissipated. Tidus pulled out his stick, which he had strapped over his back, and hit a Shadow on the head, though all that did was bend an antenna. He and the monster looked at each other awkwardly, until a Blitzball and a basketball hit it from opposite sides, causing it to explode as the balls bounced off of each other. Tidus watched as the balls returned to Wakka and Irvine, who caught their respective projectile and gave each other and Tidus a thumbs-up. Sion kicked a Shadow across the beach, then performed a front-flip, bringing his heel down on an enemy’s head as he landed. Whenever a Shadow jumped into the air at someone, he was quick to punch it to oblivion. Selphie also nailed one by looping her jump rope around a Heartless’ neck and swinging it around before throwing it to Goofy, who smashed it to pieces with his shield. Kairi even got in on the action, ripping a fence stake out of the ground and, holding it like a saber, swiping and stabbing at Heartless.

The high school principal found himself surrounded by the monsters, but Sora threw his Keyblade, vanquishing three in one go. The principal watched as the weapon vanished in midair and then reappeared in Sora’s hand as the boy charged in and defeated the other Shadows. A trio of Shadows ran towards them, but Sora took a few steps forward and shouted “Fire!” A ball of fire shot from the tip of his Keyblade and flew right into the monsters. As it soared, the convection from the heat caused some of the sand beneath it to melt and solidify into glass. On seeing this, the principal’s jaw dropped, though Sora did not seem to notice, even though he had a feeling the spell would elicit a sort of reaction, as he ran off to finish off the last of the Heartless.

Sora, Riku and Mickey ran after the last Shadow, but it sank into the shadows and slipped into the water.

“How does it do that on sand?” Sora asked, annoyed. He then noticed the waves becoming bigger and rougher. The earth shook beneath his feet, causing him, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy to look around, wondering what was going on. He looked at the sky, but, fortunately, saw no orb of dark Armageddon. “Well, there’s some good news. But where—?”

He was interrupted when a massive wave threatened to overtake them. Mickey shouted “Wind!” and cast a massive Aero spell that caught the water in a typhoon and carried it far away from the shore. But when the funnel was far enough away, everyone gasped when they saw a massive shape rising out of the water.

The giant was all-black, like the other creatures, but it was twenty feet tall and built like a muscular adult man. Vine-like tendrils wrapped around its head, covering everything except for the eyes. It also had a pair of demonic wings on its back, each the size of one of its scapulae. Most peculiarly, there was a heart-shaped hole cut out of its abdomen, with a long flap of inky skin drooping from the top crease of the heart.

The Darkside marched its way to the shore until only its curly feet were submerged. It raised its hands, curled into fists, and prepared to bring them down upon the Gummi Ship.

Mickey’s eyes went wide, but he reacted accordingly. He took a remote out of his pocket and pressed a button. In an instant, the Teeny Ships flew out of the ship and started firing lasers at the Darkside, forcing it to block the attack with its arms and step away from the ship.

Kairi looked up at the monstrosity uncertainly. “Is this going to be tough?” she asked.

Sora, Riku and Mickey shook their heads. “Nah. This’ll be a piece of cake,” Sora told her confidently. He remembered how the first one he fought proved to be difficult, but the one he fought at the end of his first quest was easy, and he had seen Mickey cut down two of them in a single blow.

The Darkside punched into the ground, causing a pool of darkness to extend from the impact site. A dozen Shadows rose from the pool, but the warriors cut them down. Sora, on the other hand, was not concerned by the troops, and started swinging his Keyblade at the hand, seeking to disrupt tendons and capillaries.

After a brief period, the Darkside lifted its hand up, causing the pool to dissipate. However, before it could stand upright, it was impaled in the shoulder by a harpoon. Sora and Riku stared at it in confusion, then let their gaze follow the rope tied to the harpoon until they saw Datto and Keepa, two of Tidus and Wakka’s teammates, pulling to hold the beast down. Another harpoon hit it in the other shoulder, this time held by the other teammates, Letty, Jassu and Botta. More people came down and tied ropes around the Darkside’s legs and arms, then pulling hard enough so that it took everything in the beast’s power to not fall.

Despite this, it was brought to its knees, though it was able to lean back, dragging the water polo players’ feet through the sand. A purple glow emanated from the hole in its abdomen.

“Goofy! It’s going to shoot homing blasts!” Sora called out. Goofy nodded in understanding and watched as the first energy blast was released. He followed its movements and jumped in at the last moment, blocking it with his shield before it could hit Datto and Keepa. Another one nearly hit Letty, but Goofy blocked that.

Donald joined the effort to bring the monster down, casting Gravity spells to add extra force to keep it from holding itself up. Meanwhile, Mickey ran straight at the Darkside, slashing at its legs and hands again. Kairi slashed through the last of the Shadow Heartless and joined him. Wakka and Irvine threw their balls right at the giant’s head and chest. Whenever it rebounded into his direction, Tidus leapt and kicked the Blitzball right back at the Darkside.

Sora looked up at the head, then scanned the beach for vantage points, and turned to face Riku. “Can you give me a boost?” he asked, pointing his friend to where he wanted him to go. Riku nodded and made his way to that point, ducking beneath a harpoon rope on the way. He dismissed his Keyblade and crouched, facing away from the Darkside and cupping his hands in front of him. Sora ran around the water polo players and straight at Riku. When he stepped into Riku’s hands, Riku lifted him up, and he vaulted himself up over the Darkside’s head.

The monster looked up to see what was happening and realized too late what Sora was doing. At the apex of his leap, Sora turned his Keyblade so that the end of the shaft was pointing down at the Darkside’s head. As he descended, he brought his weapon down hard for the strike.

As far as anyone else could see, Sora disappeared right into the Darkside’s head, but fell out of the heart-shaped hole half a second later, stumbling down the giant’s rear end and leg, covered in bits of shadowy goo, until he landed knee-deep in the water.

The Darkside froze, stunned from the grievous strike, smoke pouring from between its eyes. Cracks formed along its body, and it started to fade away into a cloud of inky blackness. The ropes fell to the ground as there was nothing to wrap up. Sora looked up in triumph at his work. At last, the entirety of the Darkside dissolved into nothing. At that point, he saw the harpoon that was embedded in the right shoulder fall and he frantically jumped out of the way to avoid getting hit.

The crowd that had formed around the scene of the battle began to cheer, celebrating the victory and applauding everyone’s part in it. When Sora returned to shore he was quickly met with a tight and loving embrace from his parents. He met back up with Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, and they congratulated each other on their great work.

“Not a bad start,” Kairi quipped, jabbing the fence stake into the sand.

“You all did great!” Sora commended to the crowd.

“You have a long road ahead of you,” Mayor Braska interjected, getting their attention. “We wish you the best of luck.”

“Keep an eye on each other,” Kumo told them.

“You’re a team now,” Chikyu said. “If any of you finds yourself in trouble, you all work together to get out of it. No man gets left behind.”

“Show 'em who’s boss,” Sion said.

“Never lose sight of what you believe in,” Iwa advised. “If anything gets through your thick skulls, let that be it.”

“Follow your heart. Do what you think is right, and let the light be your guide,” Suta concluded.

Sora, Riku and Kairi gave their loved ones one last hug good-bye, and walked up the ramp with Mickey, Donald and Goofy into the Gummi Ship.

“Be good! And don’t forget to do your homework!” Suta added.

The hatch closed, and the Gummi Ship rose into the air. Once it was high enough, the ignition flared and the ship launched out of the world’s orbit.


	11. Chapter 10: Blast Away!

Riku and Kairi gazed in wonder as they explored the interior of the Gummi Ship. Kairi had been in the ship once, after she, Sora, Donald, and Goofy had escaped from Hollow Bastion more than a year ago. However, she was only on board for less than a day, due to Donald sending the ship through warp to make it back to Traverse Town, and her memory of the time was still somewhat fuzzy due to her memories of Sora and everything relating to her experience with him being tampered with. Regardless, she was still amazed by the sights. Riku, conversely, had never been in the ship at all, and although he was familiar with computerized technology, the sleek design and advanced electronic interface of the space ship left him breathless.

Sora was quick to notice the upgrades made since he was last aboard. Chip and Dale had accounted for the possibility of extra passengers and installed not only extra seats in the cockpit but also built in more bedrooms and added bunk beds. The galley was updated as well, with better storage cabinets and a larger refrigerator as well as a wider range of cutlery and cooking implements. The laundry room was in top working condition, and there were actually enough bathrooms for multiple passengers.

“Wow. Chip and Dale really put a lot of work into this!” Sora said as Donald led him, Riku and Kairi back to the cockpit.

Donald nodded. “They said that they were working on these updates during the last two years, and just got the chance to put everything in when we got back,” he explained.

“Well, I’d say they did a good job,” Kairi commended as she looked around the cockpit.

“If DiZ, ahem, Ansem could get a look at this,” Riku mused, slurping from a juice box.

Sora turned to address his animal friends. “So, how have you guys been?” he asked earnestly.

“Enjoying the peace and quiet,” Donald answered.

“I got to watch the new class of cadets graduate from training,” Goofy said, a tear sprouting from his eye. “My son Max is a Royal Knight.”

Everyone’s attention was briefly diverted when Riku snorted some juice out of his nose.

“It’s been nice to be home,” Mickey told them. “What about you?”

“Glad to be back together,” Kairi answered. Sora and Riku nodded in agreement.

“Great to be home,” Sora concurred with Mickey. “Though, I really did miss this.” After a moment’s pause, Sora ran past everyone and jumped into the pilot’s seat.

“Hey!” Donald protested. “Get out of there! You’re not flying this thing!” Riku, Kairi and Goofy laughed as Sora and Donald fought over the controls.

“You let me fly all the way through the last journey!” Sora reminded him. “Besides, I just got my driver’s license!”

Jiminy jumped onto the control panel. “Now you two behave, or we’ll have another crash landing just like with Deep Jungle,” he warned them.

“Say, how about we give Riku and Kairi a rundown on flying this?” Mickey suggested. Sora and Donald stopped squabbling and considered the idea.

“Okay. That sounds like a good idea,” Sora said, throwing Donald off of him and hopping out of the chair.

“All right. Now, let’s have one of you in the pilot’s chair and the other one in the gunner’s seat.”

Riku and Kairi briefly deliberated between themselves before coming to a decision. Riku sat in the pilot’s chair while Kairi took the gunner’s seat. Mickey gave Riku instructions on how to fly the Gummi Ship, teaching him how to hit the thrusters, steer the ship and perform an aileron roll. He then taught Kairi to aim the Fire-G cannons and send commands to the Teeny Ships to direct their laser guns, to lock onto targets, and to fire intermittent or constant photon blasts or homing laser shotlocks from both the main ship and the Teenies’ guns. He had them try it out in an asteroid cluster, where Riku deftly maneuvered around the larger rocks and Kairi destroyed the smaller rocks. He then had them switch places and showed them the controls. Kairi checked the radar and saw a number of Heartless ships a short distance away, and asked permission to fly into the area so she can practice piloting and Riku can practice shooting.

The crew saw a wide range of Heartless ships. Some were red and orange and resembled fireballs; some were brown, red and yellow-green and resembled turtles; and some resembled purple towers. Kairi maneuvered around the ships and Riku shot them down. Along the way, they saw a large green ship that looked and moved like a quadrupedal animal, even having a “head” at the front, crawling across an asteroid. Kairi hovered over it while Riku shot at it continuously. It took a lot of firepower but the Crawler eventually collapsed and exploded.

“You’re doing great!” Sora congratulated. Donald couldn’t help but agree. However, their cheers were interrupted when a warning siren blared. Checking the radar, Kairi was shocked to see a massive Heartless ship approach.

The enemy ship had a blue and purple color scheme. It was made up of four long, rigid “arms”, which were joined at and folded around a smaller, conical gray body that appeared to have a face.

Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized this creature. “Be careful with that thing,” Sora warned them. “It will shoot a lot of lasers from all of its arms continuously, and sometimes shoot ring-shaped blasts. Just keep the main guns trained on the head and let the Teeny Ships hit the arms and you’ll be fine.”

Kairi and Riku let him know that they understood. It took a short while for Kairi to figure out how to work around its barrage of attacks, resulting in the Gummi Ship taking a few hits, but pretty soon the enemy ship had taken enough damage and started to combust. Kairi flew the craft away from it while Riku sent one last shot right at the center of the face, causing the whole thing to explode.

Kairi cheered excitably and Riku laughed triumphantly, with everyone else commending them on their good teamwork.

“Would you two like to keep it up the rest of the way?” Mickey offered.

Riku and Kairi shook their heads no. “No, thank you, your Majesty,” Kairi declined politely. “Besides, we would like to take in the sights on the way to Hollow Bastion.”

Mickey looked at her with a confused expression. Wondering if it was something she said, she looked around at the others, but they all sported similar expressions, except for Riku, who was perplexed for the same reason as Kairi.

Sora came to a realization. “Oh! I guess I forgot to tell you. Leon and the others remembered the world’s true name, so now they’re calling it ‘Radiant Garden’.”

“Oh!” Kairi gasped as a memory struck her. “Now I remember. My memory is still kind of fuzzy since I was sent away. I’ve been getting some of my childhood memories back since I was there with you. I can’t believe I didn’t remember the name!”

“Nobody remembered until Tron dug it up in Ansem’s computer,” Goofy explained.

“Tron was the program from the world within the computer system, right?” Riku asked for clarification. Sora, Donald and Goofy nodded in confirmation. “And he has access to all the data on the computer?” He paused, thinking. “If that’s the case, then he could help us find any information on what Maleficent and Pete are after. If there’s a specific object on different worlds, there might be one in Radiant Garden.”

“You’re right,” Sora said. “Even if there isn’t anything that tells us about their objective, we might be able to find a clue to point us in the right direction, and maybe we’ll be able to stop Maleficent from getting those things.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Mickey conceded. “We’re going to need all the clues we can find.”

“Then we should get going.” Sora ran toward the pilot’s chair. Donald tried to get to it before him but Sora waved his hand horizontally, and a sheet of ice formed on the floor in front of Donald. As soon as the duck stepped on it, he slipped and slid across the cockpit, past the chair and into a passenger seat. Sora confidently hopped over the ice trail and sat in the pilot’s chair.

“You learned some new tricks, huh, Sora?” Donald commented, disoriented.

Sora grinned and snapped his fingers, creating a flame sprouting from his thumb. “I sometimes found myself playing around with my magic spells. I didn’t want to go forgetting them again.”

Goofy sat in the gunner’s seat, and Mickey sat in the Teeny Ship guidance seat. Riku and Kairi sat in some passenger seats and strapped themselves in, while Donald resignedly buckled his seat belt. “Ready when you are, Sora!” Goofy called out.

“All right, then,” Sora said, checking the map of the worlds to plot a course. “Blast away, Gummi Ship!” he shouted, gunning the ignition and sending the ship through the sea between worlds.


	12. Chapter 11: Restoring the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Sora and the gang are finally on their way to Radiant Garden, I figured I'd give the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee a proper introduction before having both groups catch up on old times. I also squeezed a new Final Fantasy character into the line-up, having joined some time after KHII. Let me know what you think of this addition, and whatever comments you would like to share regarding the story. Enjoy!

The telltale ring of the security system’s scanners beeped. The shopkeepers heard tiny tapping footsteps approach, and looked out of their stalls to see what was coming. What they saw was a humanoid figure covered head-to-toe in knight’s armor. Its heels were raised so that it only touched the ground with the pointed ends of its spike-shaped boots. Its visor, decorated with two red spirals, was raised, exposing its pitch-black face and yellow eyes. In its left hand it held a sword with a gold guard and handle. The ever-familiar Heartless emblem was visible upon its breastplate.

The Armored Knight heard someone coming from behind and turned around to block the man’s blade with his own. The man wore a white undershirt, a black short-sleeved jacket with a fur collar and a design of two red wings on the back, black pants that had a zipper going down the side of each leg, black gloves, black zipper-lined shoes, three belts around the waist, two of which were worn loosely, three belts around his left arm, and a necklace with a token resembling a profile lion head on a cross. He had brown hair and blue eyes. A scar was cut diagonally across the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. He held a large sword, but in place of a handle and hilt were the grip of a shotgun and the cylinder and trigger of a revolver pistol, and a token shaped like the lion head of his necklace was attached to the butt by a chain.

The man, Leon, swung his Gunblade at the Armored Knight, but the Heartless attempted to parry each time. However, Leon managed to overpower it and stun it. He used the opening to slice it in twain. It exploded in a ball of darkness. A glowing red heart floated upward out of the shade and faded back into the darkness.

Three shadows appeared in the center of the marketplace. Leon charged in to intercept them, and struck down two of them without giving them time to react. The third one, however, flattened itself to the ground so that Leon could not harm it. It crawled around and even slipped under his feet, then rose back up behind him. It tried to claw at him from the back, but Leon whirled around and cut it down.

“Leon, look out!” Leon heard the warning and turned around. He saw a red hourglass-shaped body with a black, spherical head poking out of the top. The Heartless had a pair of small, thin crow’s feet poking out of the bottom hole and wore a yellow conical hat with a jagged rim and a thin, curled tip. The Red Nocturne shot a ball of fire at Leon, forcing the soldier to brace himself for the hit, which sent him flying.

Leon forced himself back to his feet while the Heartless spun flames around itself and prepared to throw itself right at him. This attack was nullified when a throwing star hit it in the face, stunning it and dispersing the flames. Three more shurikens were thrown before it disintegrated.

Leon turned to get a look at his rescuer. On top of the Item Shop roof stood a young woman with short black hair and indigo eyes. She wore an unzipped, black combat vest over a navy-blue tank top with white floral designs, a white wristband on her right arm, a black fingerless glove on her left hand, dark tan and black short-shorts with a strap dangling from the left side, tall black socks with white stripes at the top underneath knee-height tan sneaker-boots with white soles, and a black headband. She waved cheerfully and gave Leon a thumb-up.

Leon smiled and shook his head, but then noticed a Blue Nocturne, which looked like a Red Nocturne but with a blue body, floating off somewhere to the ninja girl’s left. Leon raised his Gunblade, lined the blade up with the Heartless in his sight, and pulled the trigger. The cylinder turned and the ammo in one of the tubes struck the bottom of the blade, creating a ball of fire right in front of the cylinder and shooting it at the Heartless with a loud crack. The fire shot hit the Blizzard-based Blue Nocturne, destroying it.

He saw three Yellow Operas approach the ninja girl from behind and crackle with electricity. “Yuffie! Three behind you!” he warned her. Yuffie Kisaragi glanced a bit to the side and caught one of the Heartless in her peripheral as they were about to surround her. She pulled a metal cross-point out of her pocket and turned a few knobs on each arm, causing four kunai-like blades to extend from each end. She twirled her Fuuma Shuriken in her hand, willing it to glow with chi energy, then tossed it in a tight arc around her. It spun around her several times, cutting through the antenna-capped Heartless, then caught it and threw it across the marketplace, where it flew around and destroyed two Red Nocturnes, two Blue Rhapsodies, and a Green Requiem, then returned for her to catch. She collapsed the Shuriken back into its cross-point form and placed it back into her pocket.

A rotund Heartless with fat blue arms, silver bracelets, a conical cap, and colorful armor on the front of its torso materialized in front of Leon. Leon leapt back before the lumbering Large Body could swing its heavy arms at him. Above the Large Body, four more Green Requiems appeared. Leon groaned in exasperation, as he knew that whatever damage he dealt to the big Heartless the Green Requiems would simply heal. He could not attack them because they flew high enough to be out of his reach, and they absorbed fire, ice and thunder-based magic attacks, including Leon’s fireballs, to heal themselves.

“Yuffie! The green ones are yours!” Yuffie got the message and threw her small shurikens swiftly to destroy the Green Requiems. Leon, meanwhile, ran around the Large Body, moving from its invulnerable front to its exposed back. After that was done, he swung his sword. When it had registered the pain sufficiently, it turned around quickly, seething with an anger so fierce that it began to glow purple. Leon was already in the midst of a swing, and his blade bounced harmlessly off of the armor. Leon ran backward, and dove to the side when the Large Armor threw itself onto its stomach and slid across the ground. It seemed like it would go past the walls and up a short flight of stairs into one of the shopping stalls, but a holographic yellow disc and sphere materialized and moved into the Heartless’ path, exploding on contact and causing it to flip three-sixty degrees in the air, landing flat on its stomach. While it was stunned, Leon ran up behind it and slashed at it with his sword until it dissipated.

Yuffie jumped off of the roof and touched the ground with a three-point landing. “Nice going, Leon,” she said, walking up to her partner and holding her hand up for a high-five.

“Things have been quiet the last few months,” Leon commented pensively. “We’ve scarcely seen a Crimson Jazz. Now, a wider range of Heartless is appearing all over town. Not as many as before the invasion, but certainly more than lately.”

Yuffie retracted her hand. “Well, it’s nothing we can’t handle,” she assured him. “Come on. Let’s get something for the gang.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the freezer-shaped shop at the marketplace’s entrance. In front of the shop stood an elderly-looking duck wearing an expensive blue jacket, a black top hat, pince-nez glasses, and red spats, and who carried a wooden cane with a gold tip. “Morning, Mr. McDee,”

Scrooge McDuck noticed her and Leon approaching and smiled at them. “Ah, hello there, lassie!” he greeted back. “What can I get ye?”

“Five Sea-Salt Ice Creams, please,” Yuffie answered cheerfully.

Leon glanced at the shopkeeper across from Scrooge. A small, white, furry creature resembling a plush toy, who had a bulbous pink nose, purple bat-like wings, and a spherical red “pom-pom” attached by an antenna, floated behind the counter. A few similar creatures, known as Moogles, mulled about the shop, working with hammers and anvils, blowtorches and cauldrons, using forging and alchemy to smith and synthesize different materials and products. The shopkeeper, Mog, wiggled his pom-pom, which Leon took as the equivalent of an eye-roll for a creature whose eyes were constantly squinted until they were almost entirely shut. Both knew for sure that there was no way that Yuffie was paying for the treat.

Leon was already fishing his wallet out of his pocket when Scrooge presented five sticks of a sky-blue-colored frozen treat. Yuffie took three and, after giving Scrooge the Munny, Leon took the other two.

They walked out of the marketplace and down through the borough, the main residential district of Radiant Garden. They heard the hum of a construction machine on the city wall, and occasionally saw the holographic discs of Cid’s CLAYMORE security system appear and disappear, scanning the area to make sure there are not any intruders, namely the Heartless and Nobody variety. They approached a house with lavender roof shingles and a cylindrical tower for a second floor, which had its own roof that was shaped like a witch’s hat. Leon pushed the wooden door open and Yuffie rushed in to greet their coworkers as they entered the headquarters of the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee.

A blond-haired man in his mid-forties stopped typing on the large computer and turned to face Leon and Yuffie. Cid Highwind wore a white T-shirt, baggy blue pants, a wide orange waistband, grey socks, black shoes, black pilot’s goggles, and a necklace with a rectangular charm. He chewed on a toothpick, trying to ease up on his smoking habit out of consideration for his colleagues, at least while he was indoors.

Two women who were talking by a circular table with a white cloth turned to greet their friends as well. One of the women, a girl in her mid-twenties with green eyes and long curly brown hair that she braided and tied with a pink ribbon, smiled warmly at the arrivals. She was wearing a carmine pink and white top held up by a string that wrapped around her neck, a pink dress with a white stripe across and a second white dress beneath, and light brown boots. The other woman, an engineer in her upper thirties with hazel-brown eyes and auburn hair tied in a ponytail with a yellow band, gave them a wave. She wore a mustard-yellow sweater, similarly-colored slacks, a white lab coat, a brown belt, brown shoes, and circular spectacles. Yuffie skipped over and gave them both a stick of ice cream while Leon handed one to Cid.

“How did it go?” the girl in pink, Aerith Gainsborough, inquired.

“Ooh, there were all these big, nasty Heartless!” Yuffie embellished. “Leon was doing fine, but got himself in a jam. Then I came in and I was like, ba-bam!” She twisted back as if to throw a punch, then swung forward, throwing her arm to deliver several weak jabs into the air. Aerith pretended to look impressed as she took a bite of her ice cream.

“So how was it really?” Cid asked in a gruff tone, standing up so that he would not drip any ice cream on the computer.

Leon shook his head. “They still haven’t returned to the numbers from before Maleficent’s invasion attempt, but there is a growth in forces. We even saw a Large Body and dozens of elemental floaters, including Green Requiems.”

“Interesting,” the female engineer, Shera Martine, commented. “An hour ago, CLAYMORE detected and dispatched three creatures scaling the wall into the bailey. We believe that they were Neoshadows.”

“Neoshadows,” Leon mused. “Now those are a rare sight. This can only mean one thing.” He took a bite of his ice cream. “Maleficent has regained control over the Heartless.”

A gloomy silence fell over the band. Although it was over a decade ago, the memory of Maleficent leading the Heartless in attacking Radiant Garden, claiming the hearts of hundreds. Cid remembered gathering up as many people as he could, which was very few, and being forced to flee the world. Shera remembered staying back to close the garage and prevent the Heartless from infiltrating the group’s last stronghold, only for that to fail miserably, and being swarmed by half a dozen Shadows. Yuffie and Aerith remembered watching the streets turn black as shadowy abominations swarmed the town, and their friends and neighbors were lost in the flood.

Leon remembered fighting the monsters, but he was unable to cut them up fast enough, and the bullets he shot at the distant and airborne ones had no effect. He remembered being unable to protect the people, and was forced to abandon his home with three of the people who were in the same room as him, not even able to find his best friend before the escape. He could not go to sleep without having nightmares of a human-sized Shadow, a Neoshadow, tearing its claws into one victim…

“So what?” Cid broke the silence roughly. “We can handle what she’s got now! Heck, we took on thousands of stronger creeps. And with help from the inside of the computer system, CLAYMORE is getting smarter, faster and stronger every day. Pretty soon we’ll have the firepower to bring down a Behemoth before it gets anywhere near the town.” He smirked confidently and took a bite of his ice cream, spinning his toothpick between his fingers.

Yuffie nodded. “Cid’s right. We’ll worry about whatever threat Maleficent poses when it comes along.”

“If we spend all our days fearing the dark, we’ll never be able to call this place the City of Light,” Aerith advised.

“True, but we have to keep an eye out,” Shera said. “We don’t want to be taken by surprise by a powerful force that we are not ready for.”

Just then, an alert sounded from the computer. Cid sat down to check it out. The tab for detecting airborne objects was blinking, so he clicked on it and opened a window. Apparently, the radars at the top of the castle had detected a large flying object entering the world’s atmosphere. Cid clicked a few commands and opened up a three-dimension scan of the object. The others crowded around Cid and examined the model that was generated. Everyone except for Shera recognized the craft.

“Some surprises are welcome,” Leon said, a slight smile forming on his face.

“Well, let’s go say hello,” Aerith decreed, already opening the door. Leon and Yuffie followed her out.


	13. Chapter 12: Bringing the Band Back Together

Sora hovered the Gummi Ship over the parking area and lowered it to the landing platform. However, it was turbulent going down, much to the discomfort of the passengers. He was too close to the ground when he released the landing stands, and the ship buckled as they tried to push it back up and hold it steady. He cut the power to the engines and put the ship into park. Riku, Kairi and Mickey groaned as they unbuckled their seatbelts, and Donald was on the verge of losing his temper. Goofy was briefly stunned, but he regained his composure. When Sora stood up and saw the looks of displeasure on his friends, he scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

“Sora, you can fly this thing incredibly well. How can you not land this?” Riku asked, annoyed.

“I never really landed on the ground before,” Sora explained, embarrassed. “Whenever I had to park, I just stopped the ship right in orbit and we beamed down. To be honest, I only realized that I didn’t know how to land until I was already doing it.” He hit a button that opened the hatch, and they stepped out of the ship and into the open air.

“I’m going to have to show you one of these days,” Mickey said. He inspected the landing stands. “But no harm done.” He looked past the Gummi Ship and saw another craft made of blue and green blocks with purple and blue edges. The ship had two sonar detectors with purple stands on either side of the cockpit in the back and had a cylindrical gray cannon on either side. Mickey admired the Gummi Ship that Cid had built. Unlike the Kingdom model that he had built along with Chip and Dale, Cid’s ship was designed to seat over a dozen passengers. Over the years, Cid had learned more about Gummi blocks than Mickey ever had, and he had upgraded it greatly over the years. It had carried Cid, Leon, Yuffie, and Aerith out of Radiant Garden eleven years ago and all the way to Traverse Town, and more than a year ago brought them back.

Riku and Kairi stared perplexedly at a ship that was shaped like a giant Moogle. Their attention was drawn away when a holographic disc appeared briefly next to them, followed by one behind Mickey and three near Donald and Goofy. They looked around warily. “What was that?” Riku asked, on edge.

Sora looked at them in confusion, at first thinking that they were referring to the Moogle ship, until a disc appeared three feet from Kairi, causing her to jump a little. “Don’t worry. That was just the town’s security system. Cid built it; he calls it ‘CLAYMORE’,” he explained. “I guess it was just curious, since it didn’t recognize you. It won’t hurt you, but it will help fight the Heartless.”

This set them at ease. When another disc appeared, Kairi knelt down and waved hello.

“C’mon! Let’s meet up with Leon and the others,” Mickey called. The group walked up several flights of steps scaling the nearby wall. At the top, they stepped onto a landing which led into the marketplace.

When the shopkeepers took notice of their arrival, they all waved cheerfully in greeting. A trio of ducks wearing a shirt and hat of a different color between each of them, red, blue and green, called out “Hey, Unca Donald!” from their shopping stalls, and Donald went to go talk to his nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie. After that, he went over to the ice cream shop to say hi to Scrooge McDuck, who was his uncle.

“Well, you’re pretty popular around here,” Riku commented.

“They did save this world on three occasions, remember?” Kairi pointed out. “And they were probably regular customers, right, Sora?” Sora nodded. “So they’re bound to get some recognition.”

They saw three figures coming up the stairs that led to the borough. When they came into view, Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy recognized them. Due to not knowing them that well, Kairi had to think hard before remembering them. Riku, on the other hand, didn’t know them at all.

“Hey, Sora!” Yuffie waved cheerfully. She stopped and noticed that he was accompanied by not just Donald and Goofy, but three others. “And you brought company. Kairi, this is a pleasant surprise. Glad you could join us.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Kairi returned the greeting.

Riku and Leon sized each other up. “I don’t believe we’ve met. You must be Riku.” Riku nodded. “Call me Leon.”

“Nice to meet you,” Riku said, shaking hands with Leon. He looked at the women beside him. “And you must be Yuffie and Aerith,” he guessed.

Leon noticed Mickey and bowed respectfully. “It is good to see you again, your Majesty, King Mickey.”

Mickey shrugged casually, indicating that he didn’t need to be so formal. “Gosh, Leon. It’s good to see you all again, too.”

“We were actually coming to see you,” Sora said. “We’re sort of looking into a situation involving Maleficent and Pete.”

“That is convenient,” Aerith said curiously. “We had just figured out that Maleficent had gained control over the Heartless again, and was rebuilding her army.”

“Makes sense,” Mickey muttered. “If she’s getting the power to try something, now would be a good time to give her something to try…”

“What do you mean?” Yuffie asked.

“Let’s go to Merlin’s House,” Leon interrupted. “We can talk about it with the others.”

“Okay,” Sora agreed, and the six visitors followed Leon, Yuffie and Aerith out of the marketplace.

* * *

When they entered the borough, they found themselves surrounded by a half of a dozen Soldiers, three Red Nocturnes, three Blue Rhapsodies, and two Armored Knights. Sora, Riku and Mickey summoned their Keyblades, Donald and Goofy summoned their respective weapons, and Leon and Yuffie pulled out their respective weapons. It was a few seconds before Kairi realized that she did not have anything with which to defend herself.

“Uh, I would’ve thought I would get something to fight with before we got into danger,” she commented fearfully.

Donald thought for a moment, then summoned one of his spare staffs, one with the head of a hammer on the end, and held it out for her. “Take this!” he ordered.

Kairi complied and examined the Hammer Staff for a moment. The shaft was made of bronze and had an orange and silver tip with a yellow zig-zag near the top, beneath the head. The head was red with the print of a yellow star inside of an orange circle on both sides. A yellow diamond was attached to the very top of the hammer. She waved it around, testing its balance, and smiled.

The fight began. Mickey and Yuffie targeted the aerial Heartless with their weapons, and Donald did the same with his magic, casting Fire at the Blue Rhapsodies and Blizzard at the Red Nocturnes. Riku and Leon took on an Armored Knight each, and Sora, Goofy and Kairi fought the Soldiers. Kairi gained a feel for the hammer by hitting a Soldier in the face, helmet and chest with it. She dodged as a Soldier threw itself at her with a spinning dropkick, but Sora caught up with it by performing a similar attack, closing out by bringing his Keyblade down upon its head. The Heartless were defeated within a minute.

Leon looked at the arrivals in admiration. “Three months relaxing, and you still haven’t lost your edge,” he complimented.

“Glad to see you machines have been keeping yourselves well-oiled,” Yuffie cheered. “Good to finally see you all working together!”

Sora crossed his Keyblade behind his head and grinned. Riku smirked and put his hand on his hip. Kairi smiled and brushed a lock of her hair out of her face.

“Well, come on,” Leon said. “Merlin’s House is right here.”

* * *

Cid and Shera turned to greet Sora, Donald and Goofy when they came in with Leon, Yuffie and Aerith, and were surprised to see that they were not alone. “Well, we got a full house in here,” Cid said. “Shera, fix 'em some tea, will you?”

Shera already had some tea prepared. She set out six cups, filled them from a teapot, and brought the cups on a tray over to the visitors. Each of the guests took a cup.

“Thanks,” Sora told her, then paused as he realized that he did not recognize her. “Um, have we met?”

“My apologies. Where are my manners?” Shera shook her head in mild embarrassment. “My name is Shera. I’m Cid’s assistant, and fiancée.”

“Mazel tov,” Donald congratulated, slurping some of his tea.

“Thank you. Cid and Leon told me about you,” Shera added.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Sora told her sincerely. “I guess you didn’t quite make it out with the others, which would be why you weren’t in Traverse Town with the others…” he trailed off when he saw her face fall as he brought up the attack on Radiant Garden. “Sorry. That must have been horrible.”

“It’s all right. I honestly don’t remember much of what happened after… the incident. I woke up three months ago in Aerith’s clinic. She said that I was found at the path to the castle.”

“Gawrsh, that must’ve been after all the hearts were released from that Kingdom Hearts Xemnas was trying to build,” Goofy theorized.

“Glad to see its destruction led to some people coming back,” Riku responded, relieved.

Leon decided to bring everyone back on topic. “So, you said that there was something going on with Maleficent. What do you know?” he asked.

Before anyone could answer, a puff of smoke burst on the other side of the room. The smoke cleared, revealing an old man with a grey moustache and a long grey beard that extended almost to the floor, who wore round glasses, a loose-fit blue robe, a tall blue stocking hat, and pointed shoes of the exact same color of blue. Merlin the wizard gave everyone a light wave in greeting. “Ah. You all got here sooner than I expected,” he said.

Kairi was perplexed. “You knew we were coming?”

Riku was also confused. “Who’s the old guy?” he asked bluntly. Donald and Goofy looked at him with shocked expressions, bewildered by his lack of respect.

Aside from a brief glare, Merlin ignored Riku’s comment and chose to answer Kairi. “Yes, of course. We wizards have a knack for this sort of thing.”

Sora decided to clear the air. “This is Merlin. He trained me in magic over the last two years, on the King’s request,” he explained. “Merlin, these are my friends, Riku and Kairi. But I’m sure you already knew that.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. I’d forgotten that we had not met before today. It is a pleasure to meet you both.”

Riku raised an eyebrow. “‘Not met before today’? Why did you word it like that?” he asked.

“Oh, um, no reason. Nothing to concern yourselves with,” he stammered to cover his tracks. “Now, ahem, what is it that brings you all here?”

Everyone turned to Mickey, waiting for him to explain.

“You see,” he began, “we detected something going on in Maleficent’s hideout, an unfamiliar dark aura. So, we did a scrying spell and saw Maleficent and Pete talking to a man we had never seen before. We didn’t get to see his face. It seems as though they are working with him to gather some special objects across the worlds, and they are planning on putting the council back together.”

“We were hoping to start by finding out more about these items that they’re supposedly after, or at least get a hint on what they are. And, if possible, stop them before they get going, assuming that they don’t already have everyone gathered for their alliance.”

Leon put his hand to his chin, considering what they told him. “Unfortunately, the vale surrounding the fortress is still uncharted territory. We don’t yet have anything that can carry anyone across the terrain, and any approach from the air would be seen easily, and Maleficent would probably shoot it down before we got any close.”

“Even if we could get you guys there, there’s still the possibility that they already put the council together,” Yuffie added. “And going up against several powerful villains in one room would be suicide.”

“I figured it would be too much to hope for to be able to preempt them,” Mickey said resignedly. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t find out more about what they’re after!”

“Now, I’ve been all over the place,” Merlin began, “and I have heard bits and pieces of such a lore. But, sad to say, I do not know what they could be after. Whatever it is, it must be a very well-kept secret,” Merlin said regretfully

“I’m sure that if anyone would have known anything about a special item on this world, and maybe others, Ansem would’ve,” Cid answered. “He had to have recorded something.”

“Which means we can find it on his computer!” Goofy finished.

Almost as if it was on cue, an alert siren blared, catching everyone off guard. Cid turned back to his computer and put in commands to see what was wrong.

“Confound that infernal contraption!” Merlin complained.

“Keep your beard on!” Cid shouted back. He opened a window and a video feed appeared. “Looks like someone tripped the security system in the castle and activated the intruder alert.” Everyone gathered close to get a look at the video. Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy recognized the scenery depicted as the Great Crest of the castle that they once knew as Hollow Bastion. Front and center in the video were two figures; one was unknown to them but the other, of tremendous girth, was certainly someone they remembered.

“That’s Pete!” Sora said. “And you’re right, Yuffie. It looks like he and Maleficent have already brought their allies here.”

“But it looks like it’s just the two of them,” Riku noted.

“Well, let’s go pay them a visit,” Leon said confidently. “Donald, Goofy, Kairi, you three wait for us here. Keep an eye out if anything happens in town. Kairi, there’s a weapons’ vault upstairs. Merlin will take you there, and you can pick whatever you think suits you best. Sora, Yuffie, King Mickey, Riku, let’s go. We’ll take the front door. We should be able to intercept them at the entrance hall.”

With that, the five of them ran out the door.


	14. Chapter 13: Joke of Night

A Corridor of Darkness materialized at the ledge of the Great Crest. Loki trotted out and stepped to the side. Three seconds later, Pete appeared, and nearly walked over the edge. He flapped his arms up and down, trying to balance on one foot, before he swung his other leg back and let himself fall backwards onto even footing. The portal closed and he eased his way back away from the edge, staring down at the houses in the town, appearing tiny from his position. He looked at Loki suspiciously and noticed him smirking.

“Why, I oughta…” Pete growled, angry at the prank.

“Never mind that,” Loki interrupted nonchalantly. “This Zeromast character wants us to find whatever research the sage ‘Ansem’ had gathered regarding the artifacts across the worlds. Do you know where that might be found?”

Pete paused for a moment, caressing his chin and squinting thoughtfully. “Well, from my understanding, there’s this study in the basement. I think there’s a computer lab down there.”

“Fine.” Then Loki did a double take. “The basement? You must be joking! If we were supposed to go to the basement, why did you open this portal to one of the higher points?”

“Listen, they got a defense system designed to start shooting if you so much as open a Corridor. The Heartless can barely even survive walking around the hallways without getting blown to smithereens. And the side entrance that leads almost directly there is pretty well-guarded, and we want to keep a low profile,” Pete defended himself.

Loki looked up at the wall above the nearby passage. “And that will keep us off the radar?” he asked sarcastically. Confused, Pete followed his gaze and noticed the security camera.

“D’oh!” Pete gasped. “Come on. Let’s get down there before they catch on to us.”

They ran through the passage and entered the lift stop. Pete waved his hand over the spiked orb, causing a bronze platform to appear off of the ledge. Loki watched bemusedly as Pete vanished right in front of him and reappeared on the platform.

“Say, Loki, could you use your thingamajig to rewire the laser stream to take us to the ground floor?” Pete asked.

Loki frowned thoughtfully, then held his hand open. A golden spear with a grey metal curved tip almost shaped like a lobster’s claw that looped around a blue crystal materialized in his grip. Grabbing it with both hands, he jabbed the spear into the base of the spiked ball. The electric sparks bouncing off of the device turned green. He rotated the spear to the right. The holographic line marking the path that the elevator was to follow turned into a straight vertical line. Pete peered into the abyss, scanning how far the line went, and gave Loki a thumbs-up when he was satisfied.

“Now get on here and let’s go,” Pete ordered. Loki waved his hand over the spiked ball and was teleported onto the lift. The platform descended, following the path of the laser.

Pete noticed that Loki was studying the construction and mechanics of the area with interest and curiosity but not fascination. “You know, I pegged you more as a guy whose society was more magic-based,” he addressed the trickster, “but this stuff doesn’t seem to faze you much.”

Loki turned to face Pete. “Yes, I do prefer my sorcery and illusions, but where I grew up, our technology is far beyond what you are familiar with,” he claimed. “What some call magic and others science, to us they are one and the same.”

“Hmph. That sounds neat,” Pete admitted. A few moments later, the elevator stopped and they were teleported onto the platform leading into a passage in the wall. “Okay, when we go through here, we’ll be in the entrance hall. Instead of going down the stairs, we’ll take the left turn and go through the door there.” Loki nodded in understanding and they went through the passage.

* * *

Sora, Riku, Mickey, Leon, and Yuffie stepped into the castle’s entrance hall, and Mickey closed the door behind him, locking it with his Keyblade to make sure the intruders couldn’t escape through there. Sora and Riku looked around the circular room. It had a blue-green floor and magenta walls, encircled by lilac-colored columns holding up a second floor that looped around the perimeter of the room. A raised level hugged the wall in a semicircular shape, with a curved stairway in front on either side flanking a fountain carved into the form of monstrous grotesques. On the opposite end of the room, above and behind the fountain, was a hallway leading into what Sora and Riku remembered to be the elevator complex in the center of the castle’s infrastructure. On the left side of the semicircular level was a door that led to the library. On the other side was another door. Sora and Riku were perplexed, as the door was unfamiliar to them.

“That door wasn’t there before, was it?” Riku asked.

Leon followed his gaze and mouthed “Oh” when he saw what he meant. “Yuffie found that a few months after we settled back in,” he said. “It was covered up with tapestry. I’m not sure why. Xemnas might have done it to keep Maleficent’s crew from finding the computer room and catching on to what he was doing.”

Sora looked up and saw the bottom of the platform that floated in the middle of the second floor of the hall. He remembered how that level was accessed by entering the library, going up to the second level (all the while rearranging books in a bizarre maze puzzle) and then exiting through the door up top. “It’s been a long time since we were here,” he mused. “Right, Riku?”

“Yeah. Last time I was in here, I had stolen your Keyblade and threw a Dark Firaga at you,” Riku recalled. “Man, Maleficent and Ansem had really gotten into my head.”

“Gosh. Nine years of Heartless infestation and Maleficent’s residence really distorted the architecture,” Mickey noted, having spent some time trying to take in the fact that the castle had been divided from the town with the Rising Falls between them. “I can barely recognize the place.”

“I doubt the Grand Hall looks anything like you would remember,” Sora commented, recalling the open pipes pouring out steam, the upright crystal caskets, the carpet with the Heartless emblem imprinted on it, and the massive portal to the chaotic chamber leading to the Keyhole.

“There they are!” Yuffie called out. Everyone turned their attention to the hallway in the back, and saw Pete running out into the room. He stopped dead, eyes wide in surprise, and bucked forward slightly as if something had bumped into him from behind.

Loki stepped out from behind Pete, looking annoyed. “You blundering oaf! What are you…” he trailed off as he saw the group who were there to meet them. Sora, Riku and Mickey summoned their Keyblades, and Leon pulled out his Gunblade. “Oh, rats.”

“Hi,” Riku greeted snidely. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Loki took a moment to regain his composure, then gave them a bow, spreading his arms wide. “Then allow me to introduce myself. I am Loki, of Asgard.”

The five looked around at each other, wondering if that meant anything to anyone. “Er, sorry. But we’ve never heard of that,” Sora responded apologetically.

Loki was taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

Mickey shrugged. “There might be something referencing what you’re talking about in my library, but I think that’s mythology.”

“You dismiss me as ‘mythology’? You, who are already acquainted with gods, dismiss the God of Mischief as a ‘myth’?” Loki retorted, clearly offended.

“Wait, you’re a god?” Sora asked for clarification. Loki nodded. Sora started counting on his fingers. “So, that makes him number three?” he muttered.

“What about that friendly one-on-one with Hercules in the Coliseum?” Leon reminded him.

“Oh, right. So, four. He’s the fourth.”

“Fourth? Fourth what?” Loki asked, confused.

Sora gave him a wicked smirk. “The fourth god whose butt I kick,” he answered cockily.

Loki rolled his eyes. “Of course. Hades did mention his encounter with you,” he snarked.

Sora raised an eyebrow with interest. “So, Hades is part of your band,” he observed.

Pete tapped Loki on the shoulder. “Uh, Loki, I think we should get a move on,” he said timidly. “We are going to need to get to that computer.”

“Huh. You’re going there too?” Yuffie questioned.

Pete realized his error. “D’oh!” he gasped. “Let’s move!”

He started to go to the door to his left, but stopped in his tracks when Leon shot a fireball that passed in front of him. Sora, Riku and Mickey closed the gap between the heroes and villains, with Sora and Riku running up either set of stair and Mickey leaping over the fountain and landing on the upper platform. Loki summoned his scepter and swung to hit Sora, but Sora blocked the strike and pushed the scepter upward, throwing Loki off balance. Riku dashed in and struck him in the side, knocking him back.

“Look out!” Mickey called. Sora and Riku turned around and saw Pete roll a glowing metal ball under Mickey’s feet right toward them. Before they could react, the ball exploded right in front of them, throwing them through the air. Sora did a flip to recover in midair and landed on his feet. Riku hit the wall but regained his composure by the time he hit the ground.

Sora swung his Keyblade at Loki, but the trickster god dodged out of the way with ease and punch him square in the back. Sora turned around as Loki stepped back. He pointed his Keyblade at him and shouted “Deep Freeze!” A Blizzaga spell hit Loki in the chest. However, aside from being pushed back from the force of the ice block, Loki did not seem to be harmed by it. Curiously, his hands and the lower part of his neck seemed to turn blue, but after a moment they reverted to a Caucasian tone. “Okay, Blizzard doesn’t quite work on you,” he observed.

“Then let me try!” Riku shouted as he ran past Sora and launched a Dark Firaga spell at Loki. That seemed to have more of an effect, knocking him across the room. Sora followed up on the attack, launching himself to Loki’s position with a powerful step and hitting him hard with his Keyblade as he spun around at the end of the dash, knocking him out into the wider part of the room.

Mickey jumped all around Pete, hitting him at every angle and keeping his old rival off-balance. Angered, Pete stomped his feet, creating shockwaves strong enough to disrupt Mickey’s footing when he landed on the floor. Pete then brought both fists to the ground, creating a shockwave that sent Mickey flying into a column. Mickey kicked himself off from the column and swung his Keyblade into Pete’s chin.

Leon shot a fireball at Loki before the trickster even hit the ground. He then ran toward him and swung his Gunblade at him. The first hit knocked him back, but Loki blocked the next strike with his scepter, then kicked Leon in the stomach, sending him across the room. A puff of smoke materialized to his left and Yuffie dove behind him, throwing a shuriken at his neck. Loki felt the sting and pulled the throwing star out of his flesh, a drop of blood on one of the points. Another puff of smoke appeared to his right, this time close enough to partially envelop him, and he felt the scepter being pulled out of his hand. She ran over to Leon with it and showed it to him, laughing. Loki glared at her, fuming, and Yuffie responded by sticking her tongue out and pulling her eyelid down. Loki turned around and realized that Sora and Riku were coming right for him. He summoned a pair of daggers to counter their strikes, but they were far too skilled, and his weapons were not strong enough to withstand the force of the Keyblades. When a nasty crack formed in one of the daggers, he dismissed them and stepped away. Riku stopped and observed him cautiously, but Sora did not recognize the source of his concerns and thrusted himself straight at Loki, his weapon pointed straight at him, and passed through him with a small sonic boom. Sora stopped and looked at Loki in surprise, realizing that he was still standing there as if nothing happened. The illusion of Loki faded away.

Mickey glanced over at Leon and Yuffie and his eyes widened in shock. “Behind you!” he warned. They turned around and were surprised to find Loki there. He took his scepter out of Yuffie’s hand and swatted her aside with a backhand. Leon swung his Gunblade at Loki but the God of Mischief parried it with his scepter and smacked the staff into his head. While Leon was dazed and on the ground, Loki conjured a dagger and prepared to deliver a killing blow, but Mickey shouted “Light!” and sent a pearl of white light into his back, stunning him. Sora closed the distance with a Quick Run step and delivered a blitz of three jumping attacks, hitting Loki in the chest with vertical strikes.

Loki retaliated with a powerful shove, pushing Sora five feet away and disrupting his balance. He then thrust the tip of his scepter straight for his chest, but Riku charged in and conjured a transparent rectangular barrier, blocking the attack. He followed up with a trio of Dark Fire shots, but Loki vanished right before they hit.

Mickey was back to jumping around Pete and hitting from all sides, but this was interrupted when Loki appeared out of thin air and grabbed Mickey by the collar of his shirt. “I would suggest that we leave and continue our business,” he said disdainfully, swinging Mickey around to make him dizzy.

Pete regained his composure and nodded in agreement. “Yeah. We lost enough time as is,” he admitted.

Loki regarded Mickey with scorn and threw him at the group in the middle of the room. The two villains slipped through the door that would lead to the lower corridors.

The heroes picked themselves up after that surprise. “Everyone okay?” Leon asked. He put his fingers to the side of his head and checked his fingers, noticing that he was bleeding.

“Heal!” Sora invoked. An illusion of a leafy ivy vine with yellow bells sprouting from the ends appeared above the group and showered green sparkles over the group. The five of them felt a refreshing aura and their injuries were cured, their cuts closed and bruises healed. They climbed to their feet, at full health and ready to get moving.

“They went through there,” Mickey said, pointing toward the door that would lead to the lower corridors. “We need to catch up to them!”

Everyone nodded in agreement and ran up the stairs, went down the colonnade, and passed through the door.

* * *

Pete and Loki ran down the labyrinthine corridor before finally stopping at a wooden door with a unique design etched into it.

“Are you sure those Heartless we left behind will stall them for long?” Loki asked.

Pete shrugged. “Probably not,” he replied. “But it should give us time to get started. He turned the knob and opened the door.

They stepped into a round room with a curved metal desk and tall metal chair across from the door and bookcases on every wall. There were some glass pods broken open but stacked on top of the bookshelves rather than scattered across the floor like they were when the Restoration Committee had originally found the room several months ago. A portrait of Xehanort, at that point in time an apprentice to Ansem the Wise who usurped the sage king, leaned against one of the bookcases. Above it, drawings and writing were written on the wall in purple marker. Most of the words were faded but one could make out the words “Hollow Bastion OS” and (barely) “Door To Darkness”. Some diagrams with purple boards and teal frames were mounted on the wall. To the left of the desk, the wall was opened up into a path with gray metal walls and floor.

Loki examined the portrait. “Might this have been the master of the house?” he questioned.

Pete shook his head. “Nope. That would be Xehanort,” he answered. “He betrayed that Ansem guy and banished him to the Realm of Darkness.”

Loki eyed the portrait for a moment longer and grinned. “Well, weren’t you the little mastermind,” he teased.

Pete and Loki walked through the hall, taking a right turn and then a left turn before the passage opened into a room with a computer monitor and a counter with a keyboard built into it on one side. On the opposite side of the room was a large circular laser projector with a large red lens.

“Now, let’s plug the drive in, find the info and start copying,” Pete said. “Watch your step.” He opened up the computer and found an input box. “Hmm… Zeromast said this thing would need a password. Now, what did he say it was?” He took a moment to think of the code. “Oh, right. ‘Sora, Donald, Goofy’.” He typed in the names, wondering how their benefactor knew what the password was, and hit ENTER. The password prompt disappeared and a search bar popped up. “Plug that it, will you?” Loki inserted the flash drive into the computer console. Pete started typing key words into the search bar, hoping to find the data they needed. He found one file that piqued his interest, but before he could copy it into the flash drive, the five heroes came in, looking for a fight.

“There you are!” Sora shouted, brandishing his Keyblade.

“Uh-oh! Come on, Loki! Let’s bounce!” Pete said as he opened a Corridor of Darkness.

“But the records” Loki protested, but Pete tugged on his arm insistently.

“We ain’t gonna get them now!” Pete pulled Loki along and they retreated through the Corridor.

“Get back here!” Sora called out, but the portal closed just as quickly as it had opened.

Yuffie noticed that the computer was open to all of its functions. “How did they know the password?” she asked.

“What could they be after?” Sora wondered aloud, starting to pace back and forth. He was taken out of his train of thought when he tripped over something. He looked at where he stumbled and saw something he did not expect.

At his feet lay a slender man wearing a familiar black hooded duster, as well as black slacks, gloves and shoes. When Sora let his eyes wander to the man’s head, he gasped in shock. He would recognize the man’s spiky scarlet hair anywhere. On closer inspection, he noticed a small difference, that being there were no purple marks under his eyes, but besides that his appearance was unmistakable.

“Axel?” he identified the man. Riku tapped him on the shoulder and gestured about, bringing to Sora’s attention the other people lying unconscious on the floor.

One wore garb similar to Axel’s, but had a somewhat more muscular build. His face had sharper and less boyish features. He had blue hair that went past his shoulders, with some hair in front of his ears that approached his chin. Last, but not least, there was an X-shaped scar right between his eyes. Sora remembered fighting this man, known as Saïx, and he both despised and pitied him even after what he thought was his death.

There were two men wearing gray uniforms, white gloves with blue heart designs on the backs, and black boots, giving them the appearance of soldiers. One was very large and had angular and strong features, as well as auburn hair slicked back into messy spikes. The other was of a slightly smaller frame and had long black hair arranged in dreadlocks with pronounced sideburns. Sora did not recognize the first man, but he remembered the second man as a foe known as Xaldin. Nearby were two men wearing white lab coats. One had long, platinum blond hair and the other had steel-blue hair with long, layered bangs that covered much of the right side of his face. Sora did not recognize either of them, but Riku knew them as Vexen and Zexion, and he remembered the large soldier as Lexaeus.

“How are they here?” Riku asked.

“Maybe it really is as they say,” Mickey said. “When a person’s Heartless and Nobody are eliminated by a Keyblade wielder, the heart, body and soul fade back into darkness and reform, and the person’s original self returns to the Realm of Light.”

The group heard a groan coming from behind them and turned around to see who was there. They saw a man, conscious and standing but dazed and slumped against the wall right next to the opening to the hall back to the study. He wore a similar uniform to Lexaeus and Xaldin, but he had added a torn red scarf. He had black hair that was turning gray in multiple parts and a yellow eye. There were some nasty scars on his left cheek. There was an eyepatch over where his right eye should be.

“Ugh, I was expecting someone else,” the man who had been known as Xigbar blurted absently, putting his hand to his forehead as if trying to calm a nasty headache. Sora, Riku and Mickey glowered, remembering their previous experiences with him.

Leon and Yuffie looked around the scene before them. They had very little experience with them before they became Nobodies and almost no familiarity with them afterwards, but they knew one thing for certain. Seven members of Organization XIII, the cabal that had manipulated Sora into fighting Heartless and supplying them with hearts so that they could form Kingdom Hearts, had returned to their complete selves.


	15. Chapter 14: Remember?

_Axel sat on the ledge of the clock tower, a Sea-Salt Ice Cream in his hand. On his left sat his coworker and friend Roxas, who also held an ice cream. The two of them stared into the distance, watching the sun sit permanently on the edge of the horizon._

_“Hey, Axel. You haven’t forgotten?”_

_“Hm? What?”_

_“You made us a promise.”_

_“I did?”_

_“That you’d always be there… to bring us back.”_

_“Yeah…”_

_Roxas turned toward him and pointed at his head. “Got it memorized?” he asked teasingly._

_Axel laughed even as the image of Roxas faded away. “Best friends forever.”_

The dream ended. Axel opened his eyes, hearing a regular beeping that sounded like a heart rate monitor. He saw a white wall in front of him and groaned.

_Great,_ he thought, _I’m still alive and now I’m back in the castle, probably a prisoner for betraying the Organization._

He forced himself to sit up, and noticed that he was lying in a bed. Looking around, he saw a computer monitor next to him, and he realized that it was measuring his heartbeat. The biological organ, of course. Looking past that, he was surprised to see two men lying in similar beds down the row. He was shocked when he recognized them as Vexen and Zexion. Zexion appeared to be regaining consciousness.

“Oh, things are going to get really awkward when they wake up,” he muttered to himself. He stopped himself when he realized that they were wearing lab coats. He looked down at himself but saw that he still had on his Organization XIII coat. He climbed out of bed, unclipping the apparatus that monitored his heart rate, and stretched out his muscles. He noticed a door with a glass window next to it, and realized that he was not in the Castle That Never Was, but rather what appeared to be a hospital.

He ran over to the mirror and studied his reflection. Beneath his green eyes, he noticed that he no longer had the purple teardrop-shaped marks. Those Twilight thorn cuts had only decorated his face five years after he became a Nobody. If he no longer had them…

“We’re people again…” He looked behind him and saw three more beds lined up between him and where he had been lying. In those beds, he recognized Lexaeus, Xaldin and Saïx.

No, from furthest to closest, they were: Ienzo, Even, Aeleus, Dilan, and Isa. No longer were they Nobodies, so no longer did they have to live under the distorted names given to them by Xemnas.

He heard the door open and a green-eyed woman dressed in pink and white ran in, looking concerned. She noticed Axel standing next to her and relaxed. Axel wondered why she seemed so worried, but remembered the monitor next to his bed. He looked back at the screen and realized that, since he had disconnected himself from it, it read his “pulse” as a flatline.

“Er, sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Aerith cleared her throat. “My name is Aerith,” she introduced herself. “I am a member of the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee, and I am in charge of this infirmary. Some of my friends found you all unconscious in the computer room in the castle, so we brought you here to check up on you while you recovered.”

Axel considered what she said. “Right. Tell me, doc, was there a man named Braig in the room where we were found?” he asked.

Aerith tilted her head to the side, confused. “Braig?” she repeated uncertainly.

Axel sighed. “Scars, eyepatch, dressed either like me or like Aeleus and Dilan over here,” he clarified, gesturing toward the soldiers, vaguely noticing Aeleus begin to stir. “You might know of him as Xigbar,” he added.

“Oh, him. Yes, he was there as well, though he was already awake,” she explained. “Sora, Riku and Leon are questioning him down the hall.”

Axel was taken by surprise when he recognized two of those names. “Sora and Riku?” he repeated. “What room are they in?”

Aerith was not expecting to hear such desperation in his voice. “Room A07,” she answered. He quickly moved to leave the room and go to his destination, but she interrupted him. “Wait! Don’t you want to be here when your friends wake up?” she asked.

Axel waved his hand absently. “Let me know when the rest of them start to wake up. But for now, I really don’t think I should be the first thing Ienzo sees when he wakes up. Especially since I kind of killed his Nobody form and all. And if I’m being honest, Aeleus sort of scares me.” He broke into a run, quickly leaving Aerith’s sight. Aerith sighed and decided that she would check on the other patients.

“What do you expect to get from me?” Xigbar asked his interrogators, feigning ignorance. He sat at a table in a small room, facing Sora, Riku and Leon, who were all less-than-happy to have to put up with his antics. He was bound to a metal bar on the edge of the table by handcuffs.

“When we found you, you said something about ‘expecting someone else’,” Leon answered sternly. “Care to explain what you meant by that?”

“As if!” Xigbar scoffed. “You want to know every little thought that goes through my head, read my diary!”

Sora locked eyes with Riku, his annoyed expression screaming _I hate this guy_ , and Riku’s expression saying _I know, right?_

“You were expecting to see someone upon waking up. That means you weren’t very surprised when you reformed as a Somebody,” Leon pointed out. “And you figured that, once you did, someone would be here to meet you. Who were you hoping to meet?”

Before Xigbar could give a non-answer, the door opened. Sora, Riku and Leon turned and saw Axel standing in the doorway. They stood in shocked silence, and even Xigbar was at a loss for words. In fact, he was glad that nobody was looking his way because he was worried that with Axel’s input, he might end up being exposed.

Axel finally broke the silence. “Hey, guys,” he said awkwardly. “I guess everything went well taking down Xemnas?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. I reunited with Riku and Kairi,” he gestured towards Riku as he said his name, “and we all fought Xemnas, and Xigbar, and Luxord, and Saïx.”

“Ansem the Wise destroyed Xemnas’ Kingdom Hearts and released all the captive hearts,” Riku added, then solemnly, “at a great cost.”

Axel’s face fell; he understood what he meant. “I hear your voice is back to normal,” he noted. “I guess whatever happened to you, that got fixed.”

Riku smirked. “Yep. Back to my old moody self,” he replied.

“How are you feeling, Axel?” Leon asked. “I’m surprised you’re already back on your feet.”

Axel shrugged and gave a cocky grin. “Please! You think something like death and rebirth can keep me down?” he retorted. “And by the way, I’m a normal person again. I don’t have to live under that Nobody name Xemnas handed out to me. My name, my true name, is Lea. Got it memorized?”

Sora could not help but laugh, which he found to be odd since he never really liked Axel that much until he came to his aid in the end. He wondered if part of that was from Roxas. He wished that his Nobody could be there for real so he can catch up with his friend.

“So, why are you in here with Braig?” Lea asked, pointing at the handcuffed man to indicate that he meant Xigbar.

“Well, when we found you all in Ansem’s computer room, Xig—Braig was already awake, and he said something about how he was expecting someone else,” Sora explained. “We’re trying to get him to tell us what he meant.”

Lea thought for a moment, not sure what it could mean, then remembered something. “Hold on. The seven of us, me, Braig, and the others in the other room, we were all in the computer room, right where we’d lost our hearts, right?” he asked. Leon nodded. “Was Xehanort there, too?”

This gave everyone pause. They had not thought about Xehanort, which probably was not very wise. Sora slumped forward when he realized that he did not consider the very real possibility that his most dangerous and intelligent enemy, whose Heartless and Nobody have both been eliminated, could have come back into existence as a whole being.

“No, he wasn’t,” Leon answered. “I asked Cid to send probes all throughout the castle to check if anyone else had reappeared elsewhere, but there were no signs of life anywhere.”

Riku glanced back at Braig and caught him with a shocked and confused expression. He slammed his hand down on the table to get the Freeshooter’s attention. “All right, Patch. Where is Xehanort?” he shouted.

Braig shrugged, and put a smirk on his face in a mask of confidence. “Well, ain’t that the twenty million Munny question?”

“He’s not talking. We’ll come back later,” Leon interrupted the interrogation. He directed Sora, Riku and Lea to leave the room, then followed, closing the door behind him.

“He clearly knows something,” Riku declared. “He just won’t talk.”

“Thing is, he wasn’t expecting Xehanort to be a no-show,” Lea responded. “Something happened that wasn’t part of the plan. The others might have an idea, but right now, Isa, Dilan and Even are still out.”

“Then let’s wait until everyone is awake before we talk to Braig again,” Leon decided. “We’ll keep our eyes open for anything that might be Xehanort’s doing. In the meantime, we should work with what we do know about. I’m sure that pretty soon, King Mickey and Yuffie will have found something about what it is Maleficent’s council is looking for, and what Pete and Loki were trying to find.”

“Ienzo and Aeleus should be awake by now,” Lea said. “I suppose now would be a good time for you to catch up, Riku.”

As they walked down the hall, Sora leaned in to talk quietly to Riku. “What’s he talking about?”

“You’ll find out when we get there,” was all Riku said in reply.

Sora, Leon and Aerith looked between Riku and Lea and Ienzo and Aeleus as an awkward silence filled the room, broken only by the regular beeping that accompanied the fifty-per-minute beating of the other patients’ hearts. The tension could be cut with a knife, with one pair not knowing what to say to the other. Sora had a vague knowledge of the other former Organization members, having fought silhouettes of them and later encountered digital reflections of them in a hidden computer lair beneath the town, but he knew nothing of any of them, bar Saïx and Xaldin, beyond that. He could only wonder how Riku knew the individuals facing them.

“Well,” Ienzo addressed Lea, “aren’t you going to say hello, Axel?”

Lea was surprised by the young man’s calm demeanor. Normally, when someone tells a Replica to absorb your power and crush your essence, you would not greet them so cordially without trying to wring their neck.

“What…?”

“We have been restored to our Somebody selves after our Nobody forms had faced rather excruciating demises. You even murdered me and Vexen. **Painfully.** Don’t we at least warrant a ‘hello’?”

“Uh…” Lea put his and on the back of his neck and dodged Ienzo’s gaze in embarrassment. “Hello, Ienzo and Aeleus…?”

Ienzo smirked in mild amusement. “Aerith explained how I came to be back here,” Ienzo told him. “And since I have you to thank for sending my Nobody essence back to the darkness to wait for restoration, I figured I would put the incident behind me.” He turned to face Riku. “The same goes for you cutting Lexaeus down.”

“Excuse me,” Sora interjected, “but when did that happen?”

Now it was Ienzo and Aeleus’ turn to give him confused expressions. “Castle Oblivion,” Ienzo answered uncertainly. “You were there too. Marluxia used Naminé to twist your memories and try to turn you into a puppet he could use to overthrow Xemnas, but it failed and you defeated him. Don’t you remember? Do you remember Vexen?” He gestured to the man with dirty-blond hair.

Sora was even more confused. The only name he recognized was Naminé, but that did not help much. Riku and Lea were there to help. Lea simply said “No” but Riku explained more thoroughly. “After Marluxia was defeated, Naminé put Sora, Donald and Goofy into a year-long sleep so she could put their memories back together,” he said. “As a side-effect, their memories of their time in Castle Oblivion were disconnected from the chain.”

“Okay. I guess that makes sense. I guess that’s why the message in Jiminy’s Journal said to ‘Thank Naminé’. Though, we could have been more specific,” Sora mused. “So, what happened with you guys?” He wagged his finger around to indicate that he was referring to Ienzo, Aeleus and Even.

Ienzo paused for a minute, thinking of where to begin. “Six of us, myself, Axel, Lexaeus, Vexen, Marluxia, and Larxene, were sent to Castle Oblivion to conduct research.”

“However, Saïx knew that Marluxia and Larxene intended to betray and usurp Xemnas, so he sent me to gain proof of their treachery and eliminate them,” Lea continued.

Ienzo frowned briefly at the interruption. “They worked in the thirteenth floor, where Marluxia used the mysterious girl Naminé to take apart your memories as soon as you entered the castle. Lexaeus, Vexen and I stationed ourselves in the basement levels, where we took an interest in Riku, who had appeared in the lowest level at approximately the same time as you.” Sora’s eyes widened when he heard this. “We came to suspect of Marluxia’s plan, and so sought to use Riku to counter him. To that end, Vexen confronted Riku to gather data and create a Replica of him. He pretended to form an alliance with Marluxia and Larxene and tried to prove himself to them by sending the Replica to fight you, but you defeated him. Marluxia declared his experiment to be a failure, so Vexen decided to confront you himself, and after you defeated him he very nearly exposed Marluxia’s plot.”

“Marluxia sent me to eliminate Vexen to prevent him from jeopardizing his plan,” Lea took over. “I complied to gain his trust and also to gain proof of his treachery.”

A deep voice spoke, surprising Sora and Lea, since Aeleus had thus far remained silent. “Seeing that Vexen’s effort had failed, I confronted Riku in an attempt to sway him to our side. I failed.”

“He lost his temper during our fight and tried to kill me,” Riku elaborated. “This gave Ansem, the remnant of Xehanort’s Heartless that was still within me, an opportunity to try to take over. For a moment, he took control of my body and cut right through Lexaeus.” Sora and Lea winced at this detail, and Aeleus looked away uncomfortably.

“I soon became aware that Marluxia’s plans were falling apart, so I decided that I no longer needed Riku,” Ienzo continued. “But there was something else, something that I could not identify. I think that I wanted to destroy Riku for what he did to Lexaeus. But, that did not make sense, as I lacked the heart to feel the compassion and rage required. Regardless, I attempted to trap Riku in an illusion that you despised him and drown him in light.”

“I’m detecting the irony here,” Sora quipped with a smirk.

“However, Riku saw through the trap and defeated me, having learned to no longer fear the darkness in his heart,” Ienzo continued, not approving of the interruption.

“You can thank Naminé for that, too,” Riku added.

By this point Ienzo had reluctantly decided to let everyone offer their commentary as long as it was not too disruptive. “I retreated, and shortly afterward, Axel appeared with the Riku Replica in tow, and he ordered the Replica to eliminate me and steal my power.”

“Why did you do that?” Riku asked Lea, who averted his eyes shamefully.

“It’s complicated,” was all Lea said in defense.

Sora held his hand against his forehead, trying to take in what he had been told. On top of all of the Organization’s internal affairs that had been going on behind the scenes, he had trouble processing that he had an entire mission that he did not remember at all.

“You all right, Sora?” Riku asked placing his hand reassuringly on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Sora replied uncertainly. “It’s just that it’s a lot to take in.”

“To move to a less confusing topic, what are you guys doing here?”

Sora, Riku and Leon explained the situation.

Before Lea, Ienzo or Aeleus could respond, they heard the door open and saw Yuffie barge in. She appeared to be stressed, doing everything in her power to prevent herself from panicking.

“Yuffie? What’s wrong?” Leon asked. He gripped her by the upper arms to hold her still and locked eyes with her to try to calm her down.

Yuffie pointed out into the hallway the way she had come, fear and worry in her eyes. “A… a Heartless… a big one… it’s in town!” she stammered.

Everyone’s eyes widened. Without another word, everyone ran out, Ienzo holding back for a moment before following. They charged down the hall to get outside and respond to the crisis.


	16. Chapter 15: Castle Raid

When everyone had exited the infirmary, they saw clouds of dust lining the streets. Civilians were running in a panic. Some stumbled and nearly fell, and they would have been at risk of being trampled by the crowd if others had not noticed their plight and helped them to their feet before they continued fleeing. The residents in this district were still in their homes. Some of them had their doors open, possibly in case some of the panicking townspeople wished to seek sanctuary, but more likely in case the danger came near and they decided to flee as well. Whatever was going on, Yuffie’s fear certainly appeared to be justified.

Since the streets were overflowing, Yuffie directed the group to sidestep along the building’s wall and slip into an alleyway. They ran down the alley in single file without interruption, save for a spilled trash can and a screeching cat. Despite the volume of people stumbling over each other in the streets, none of them sought a shortcut in the gaps between buildings, most likely so that they would not run the risk of getting trapped under buildings that were collapsing on both sides. Yuffie guided them to a ladder and they climbed up to the roof of the building next to the infirmary one at a time. When they were all high enough to see the rest of the town, they saw Yuffie standing with her arm outstretched, a finger pointing to the east. When they saw what she meant, they took a step back in shock.

The monster resembled the Guard Armor that Sora, Donald and Goofy had fought when they first met, except it was easily four times its size. The main part of the torso was blue, with gold braces over the top and bottom, and the top brace resembled a raised collar. The Gauntlets were gold with red bands around the wrists and iron fingers. The ankles of the Hammerlegs were gold with red bands and the rest of the feet were red. The head piece was an orange brass with iron spikes on either side, a gold spike on top, and a golden visor with five holes drilled into it. Its enormous disjointed limbs moved with a speed proportional to its size in relation to its purple cousin, to the point where if not for it towering over the buildings Sora would have had difficulty telling if there was a difference between the two. They could see a speck dancing around the torso, glowing arcs sparking against the armor, as well as a few bolts of lightning, most likely Mickey and Donald doing what they could against the Heartless.

“You guys can handle that, right?” Lea asked, trying to conceal his own fear. In his experience, he had seen giant Heartless, some of them even being larger than this. But they had never moved this fast, and rarely did they come so close to urban areas, so he and whoever he may have been working with could engage in combat without much collateral damage (regardless of if he had the capacity for empathy during his Organization days.

“Yeah,” Sora answered. “I’ve fought bigger. Some of them on my own.”

“But the moving limbs are going to be a problem,” Riku interjected. “We’re going to need to limit the perimeter of combat to minimize destruction and allow the townsfolk to move away without getting hurt.”

Ienzo studied the area around the fight. “It appears as though the opponent is too large compared to the architecture for me to set up a barrier enclosing the field. We will need to find other methods to deter it from taking full advantage of its range of motion.”

Aeleus summoned a massive axe-sword with a black and red J-shaped block where the blade should be and rested it over his shoulder to support its weight. “Then we must convince it that lashing out would be ill-advised,” he declared. “Zexion, Axel, we must take the rooftops and harm it whenever the arms spread out too far.”

Lea grinned in anticipation and spread his arms wide. Discs of flame formed just ahead of his hands, spinning wildly until they shifted into a pair of discs made out of rings of red and silver metal with eight spikes all around and a black cross-shaped handle. Half a second after they materialized, Lea caught his chakrams. “I’m in if you are,” he said with a cocky glare.

Ienzo held his hand out and a black hardcover book appeared in his hand. He opened it and telekinetically turned it to the desired page. “I believe we should take a shortcut.” When he said that, he waved his free hand in a circle, and in a flash everyone present was standing on a rooftop directly behind the Heartless. Sora, Riku, Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, and Lea looked around bewildered.

“Did he just—?” Leon began to ask, confused.

“I need to learn how to do that!” Sora exclaimed.

“Let’s worry about that later!” Riku brought them back to focus, pointing his Keyblade at the Heartless. “We need to bring this armor down!”

“It shouldn’t be expecting reinforcements,” Yuffie noted, pulling out her Fuuma Shuriken. “Time to begin our raid on this boss!”

She disappeared in a puff of smoke, only to appear moments later in another puff on a different roof. She charged her Shuriken up with chi and threw it at one of the arms when it drew near.

“Huh. Raid… Armor… You hear that, Jiminy?” Sora asked, patting his pocket.

“I’ll put that in my journal,” Jiminy said, peeking out of Sora’s pocket to get a look at what was going on.

With that, Sora threw his Keyblade, sending it spinning into the torso of the Raid Armor. When it hit hard enough to leave a dent, Sora summoned it back to his hand and threw it again, and again, and again.

Ienzo teleported to another roof and started casting shadow spells from his book. Leon leaped off of the roof and stabbed his Gunblade right into the torso’s back. His weight caused it to carve a line through the armor until he reached the bottom, pulled the blade out and fell to the ground, where he promptly slashed at one of the legs. Lea threw his chakrams and launched fireballs at the head and arms. When the Heartless tried spinning its arms around itself, Sora, Riku and Aerith ducked, but Aeleus hit one arm with his axe sword as it came to him, sending it flying right into the other arm. Quick on the rebound, one of the arms grabbed something off of the collar and threw it behind itself. Riku caught Mickey by the hand as he flew by and spun around to drain his momentum before setting him down.

“You okay?” Riku asked.

Mickey groaned and shook his head to make everything stop spinning. “Yep. Thanks,” he replied. “Glad you could make it, ah-ha!”

Aerith tapped Riku on the shoulder to get his attention. “I should be down there. They’re going to need a healer on the field with them,” she said.

Riku nodded. “Okay, but don’t get stepped on,” he replied. He led her to the edge of the roof, wrapped his arm around her back, and jumped off. He cast horizontal barrier planes to act as stepping stones until they reached the bottom. When she saw that Goofy was on one knee, struggling to stay standing, Aerith ran over to him and cast Curaga. He rose back up, thanked her, and ran at one of the legs, spinning on one foot as he drew near so that he repeatedly hit it with his shield.

Last, but not least, Sora jumped off of the roof. He somersaulted as he landed, then realized he was standing in the shadow of one of the feet. “Reflega!” he shouted. A spherical barrier appeared around him, and the enormous leg connected with the barrier. The applied force caused the barrier to glow white. White orbs appeared around the sphere and exploded with the shield, blasting the leg into the air to crash down on the ground. He saw someone charge in and start slashing and stabbing at the leg. He ran in to join her.

Kairi was wearing a bicyclist’s knee- and elbow-pads, as well as a tan-colored shield that extended down the length of her arm from a metal pauldron on her left shoulder. There was a scabbard attached to the tablet case at her hip. She carried a rapier that was slightly longer than the Kingdom Key, and was cutting into the heel of the Hammerleg.

Sora caught up to her and cut a horizontal slash into the base of the leg. “Hey, Kairi,” he greeted. “Nice getup.”

“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “I figured that since I don’t have any magic spells like you, I should get some protection.” She waved her left arm to show off the shield. “And I figured a sword would be more balanced than one of Donald’s hammers.”

She slashed at the Hammerleg again but stopped when she noticed it start to wiggle. Sora held his arm in front of her and stepped back. Almost immediately, the Hammerleg leapt into the air. Kairi shoved Sora to the side and ran out of the way before the leg crashed to the ground. She held up her shield brace to block the stones that were sent flying.

The Raid Armor gathered itself back together and turned until Sora, Kairi, Riku, Mickey. It pulled its gauntlets back and started delivering punches at them. The four targets dodged, though Sora guarded against a couple hits, Riku conjured a shield to block some and Mickey parried a jab. A flaming chakram flew in and hit it in the head, catching it by surprise and making it stop.

Kairi saw the weapon and noticed the person who threw it. “Was that…?” But she lost her train of thought when she dodged a punch and stabbed the joint where one of the claws met the hand, splitting it enough for the finger to fall off and fade into nothingness.

The hand, short a finger, swung to the side, hitting Sora and knocking him across the street. He brought himself to his feet, feeling a sharp pain in his side, probably a cracked rib. He raised his Keyblade to the sky and shouted “Heal!” Just as the green pollen appeared above him, he heard a raspy voice call “Sora!” Another Cure spell fell over him.

Sora turned around to see that it was Donald who cast the spell, using up all of his mana as well to heal the same wound that Sora just repaired. “Donald! Come on!” he yelled. “I mean, thanks, but—” He rolled out of the way before one of the legs could stomp on him. He retaliated with a flurry of thirteen slashes, breaking heavy dents into the armor with each bash. With the final strike, a jumping finisher, he shattered the Hammerleg into dozens of pieces, which disintegrated into black smoke.

He collapsed in exhaustion, having burned out all of his stamina with a bone-mending Curaga spell and a powerful attack combo. He reached into his pocket and grabbed an Ether. The blue-tinted liquid sloshed inside of the cube-shaped bottle. He downed the contents in one gulp and within moments felt reinvigorated.

He saw Riku on the other side of the square, having difficulty keeping the fast-moving limbs at bay, swinging his Keyblade and shooting Dark Fire blasts, but mostly dodging or blocking attacks. He ran over to meet him. “Riku! We need to bring this thing down to size!” he called out.

Riku locked eyes with him and nodded in agreement. When Sora reached Riku, the remaining Hammerleg tried to crush them, but the duo locked the tines of their Keyblades with one another. A gust of wind blew them upward and they started to float. They countered the Hammerleg’s attack with a rapid flurry of stabs.

“Is that all you got?” Riku taunted. He and Sora followed it up with a series of Dark Fire orbs at the leg, vaporizing it. They delivered some more stabs to a Gauntlet, which Mickey had knocked off balance into the air with three shots of Pearl. The arm fell to the ground, and Donald finished it off with a Thunder spell. An “I’ll take ‘em” from Riku followed by another series of dark orbs and the other arm was sent flying. Aeleus responded to it by clubbing it with his axe sword. It flew over Ienzo’s roof, and the illusion-caster trapped it in a sphere of light that floated above the center. He then conjured five duplicates of himself spaced around the sphere and they all fired lasers into the sphere. When the sphere exploded, the second Gauntlet was no more.

The Raid Armor clearly did not take the destruction of its limbs well at all. It flipped its torso so the bottom was pointed at Leon, Donald and Goofy, with the head peering over the lip of the bottom opening. A red light glowed from the opening, and the three combatants were barely able to get out of the way before the Heartless shot an energy beam that blew a hole in the pavement.

Sora flourished his Keyblade and summoned a circle of thirteen blades made out of light energy. He and Riku spun in midair toward the boss as it was starting to charge up its next shot. Thirteen blades carved twenty-six gashes in the armor’s hull, then faded into sparkles. The sparkles formed into gold and silver auras around the Keyblades, which they stabbed into the cannon. The blast exploded, absorbed mostly by the Master Hearts blades and otherwise divided and dispersed harmlessly through the gashes. They struck again with the thirteen blades, this time cutting pieces out of the armor. The falling debris forced the fighters beneath to run once again, but the pieces dissipated anyway. They swung back with their aura-lined Keyblades, cutting the rest of the torso into three pieces, leaving the head floating all alone.

Sora and Riku glared at the head with all of their rage. They spun around the head to catch it in the center of a whirlwind then leapt away, throwing their Keyblades to point directly at each other with the head in the center. “You’re gonna lose it all!” Riku screamed at the top of his lungs. A white aura surrounded the Kingdom Key and a black one surrounded the Way to the Dawn, and the Keyblades fired force blasts that pushed against each other, with the Heartless’ head taking the brunt of the attack.

Then the wind stopped. Kairi brushed her hair out of her face to see what happened in the aftermath. Sora and Riku landed on their feet, standing back to back. “Time’s up!” they both said, bumping the bottoms of their fists together, then they jumped away from one another. One second after that, the Raid Armor’s head crashed to the ground, crumpled into an unrecognizable mass. A heart rose out of the top, floated high enough for it to be at eye level with Yuffie, Lea, Ienzo, and Aeleus, then vanished in a cloud of darkness. What remained of the monstrous Heartless faded into nothingness.

Everyone just sat down, exhausted and glad the battle was over. Several minutes later, some curious townsfolk entered the remains of the square, then shouted to their friends and neighbors, letting them know that the monster was vanquished.

* * *

Zeromast and Maleficent watched the events unfold from the parapets. Zeromast carried a black cinch-sack slung over his shoulders by thin ropes, the contents making the bag take on a rectangular shape. The witch had trouble reading the scholar’s expression.

“Did you find the test to be satisfactory?” she asked. “It had better have been enough. It took far too much to unleash something of that size and power, and I will not be able to call upon any more Heartless in this world for a while.”

“It must have been a significant enough distraction. By now we should have what we need,” Zeromast answered monotonously. “And I am satisfied with the data gathered from the display. Sora and Riku have not grown too strong in the intervening months.” He noticed her expression turn sour at the mention of Sora. “Of course, I would have accepted if they had fallen to the Heartless’ onslaught, though I would be disappointed. And besides, wouldn’t you prefer to get your revenge on him personally?”

There was a brief pause before her answer. “Very,” she growled.

“And they brought the princess,” Zeromast noted. “I was wondering if that would be happening anytime soon.”

“Hmph. The powers of the Princesses of Heart are of no use to me,” Maleficent seethed. “But I will enjoy crushing her beacon of light and bringing them all pain.”

“Have you ever considered visiting a therapist?” Zeromast asked dryly.

Before Maleficent could lash out at him, he drew a chalk line on the floor in front of him and stepped across it. As he did so, he vanished as if passing through an invisible door, which is exactly what he did, as he had just transported himself back to the fortress in the Vale. The witch grunted and walked through a Corridor of Darkness of her own.

* * *

Twenty minutes earlier, Pete and Hämsterviel entered the computer room. Pete was satisfied to find that the flash drive remained undisturbed in the USB port. He logged back into the computer and the search bar popped back up.

“Hurry up, you enormous oaf!” the alien complained. He crossed his arms, tapped his foot and swished his tail impatiently as he looked up at the obese feline, unable to actually get a look at the computer screen.

“Hey, these things take time, okay?” Pete shot back. “I barely even know what I’m looking for. Why don’t you go mess around with the whoozy-whatzits in the lab or downstairs while you wait?” He scrolled through the search results and opened a file. Deciding that it was related to what he was looking for, he closed the window then clicked and dragged the file over to the flash drive window, copying the file to the USB.

“Disgraceful. Demeaning. The fiendish scientist and inventor Doctor Jacques von Hämsterviel dismissed and instructed to ‘amuse myself’,” he muttered to himself. Pete simply ignored him.

After a few minutes, Pete moved one last file into the flash drive, then turned around and knelt down to look Hämsterviel as closely in the eye as he could. “I think I got all of them. You want to look through the files and see if there’s anything I missed?” he asked. Hämsterviel grunted and Pete cupped his hands for him to step onto. When the gerbil was standing on Pete’s palms, the large cat stood back up and let him step onto the counter. As soon as he reached the keyboard, he started scrolling through the search selection rapidly and inputting specifications in the search bar. Within a minute, he had finished the search, ejected the flash drive, and removed it from the console.

“Now, let us show that Zeromast the fruits of my labor!” Hämsterviel declared proudly.

“Uh, you mean our labor?” Pete corrected.

“Right, of course,” the scientist brushed him off.

Pete shrugged and opened a Corridor of Darkness, through which they exited the premises and returned to the fortress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was quite the battle, wouldn't you say? I figured I'd throw in a grandiose boss battle before wrapping things up in Radiant Garden this round. What did you think of the team-up?
> 
> Read and review, and please don't be afraid to offer some constructive criticism. No flames, though; I think there was enough ravaging in this chapter:)


	17. Chapter 16: The Puzzle of the Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now it's time to go back to the little club of evildoers where they learn more about what they have been brought together to do. It's also a good time for them to get fully acquainted with one another and see what they have to offer.

Back in the fortress, the Villains of a Sort were lounging about, waiting for the return of their newfound allies. Dr. Facilier was playing cards with Loki, with Hades watching. Yzma and Doug were arguing about their chemistry sets. Mozenrath and Kefka watched with amusement as Diablo and Mozenrath’s flying eel Xerxes competed in a staring contest. Cruella glared in disgust at Kefka’s costume and avoided laying her eyes upon Kuja’s garb, while puffing clouds of green smoke. Everyone was avoiding her because of that, save for the Horned King, who could not care less.

Everyone looked up toward the balcony as a Corridor of Darkness rose up out of the shadow, and out stepped Pete and Hämsterviel. The caped gerbil was holding the flash drive. Pete scanned around the room, noticing that not everyone was present.

“Uh, where are Maleficent and Zeromast?” he asked.

“Probably playing the lyre whilst the town crumbles,” Kuja suggested. At the mention of the attack on the town, Pete turned around and looked out at Radiant Garden. There was still smoke and dust lingering about, but there was no sign of the enormous, colorful Heartless that had been released.

“Then I guess they’ll be back soon,” he said, pointing out at the scene.

Kuja floated over to him and saw that the Raid Armor indeed was no more. “Well, those heroes are indeed capable,” he observed. “Should put on an extraordinary show should we meet.”

Moments later, Zeromast materialized out of nowhere, literally walking through the wall. Maleficent appeared seconds later in a Corridor of Darkness. Zeromast saw that Pete and Hämsterviel had already returned.

“Splendid,” the scholar said. “I trust you gathered a sufficient amount of data to aid us in our hunt.” Hämsterviel approached him and held the flash drive up to him. However, he was far too short, and Zeromast did not stoop down to retrieve the drive. Pete walked up, picked the drive out of the gerbil’s hand with two fingers (much to the scientist’s annoyance) and dropped it into Zeromast’s open palm. He received it with a “Thank you.”

Zeromast took his cinch-sack off of his back and opened it up. He took a sleek laptop out, set it on the table next to Dr. Facilier and Loki’s card game, and opened it. He logged in and inserted the flash drive into the USB port. He opened each file and skimmed their contents until he found a section of one file that caught his eye. “Very good, you two,” he commended. “This will certainly ensure that we can locate the items we seek.”

“While we’re on that point of discussion, can you go into a little more detail on what it is we seek?” Mozenrath inquired as he and Maleficent peered over Zeromast’s shoulder at the notes.

Zeromast sighed. “Very well,” he conceded. He took a step back, forcing Maleficent and Mozenrath to take wide backwards strides to the side. Loki snickered, causing Mozenrath to realize that he had lost his turban. He noticed that it was caught on Maleficent’s horn and had slumped so it was hanging in front of her face. He gingerly removed the hat, carefully ensuring that he did not make the hole any bigger than it was, and placed it back on his head as if nothing had happened, while Maleficent gave him an annoyed glare.

Zeromast walked toward the doorway, breaking his direct path to move as far out of the path of Cruella’s cigarette smoke as he dared without drawing too much attention to the action. When he reached the arched opening, he turned so that he was looking at everyone else in the room. All of their eyes were on him.

“As I explained before, there are many artifacts that we must collect to open the way to the power we seek,” he recapped. “There is one on every world, and they would be well-hidden and closely guarded. As items that truly hold the potential to destroy and create worlds, they have stood the test of time, surviving everything that would collapse and reform civilizations. They cannot be destroyed, but they can be reshaped with enough will.”

Pete raised his hand like a student wishing to say something to or ask something of his teacher. “In most of the files we found, there was something about a ‘Mysidian Crystal’. That Ansem guy seemed to think that it held some kind of power, but the only other thing he mentioned was that he was not supposed to study it. Is that one of your artifacts?” he asked.

In response to the question, Zeromast reached into his left pocket and pulled out a small leather sack. He untied the rope sealing the opening and pulled out a small blue crystal. He held his hand open, palm facing up, and let the crystal float vertically right above it. He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose, willing for some magic in or on the crystal to take effect. The crystal began to enlarge, until it was three feet long and four inches wide, with jagged edges and slowly coming to a point at either end. The translucent blue edges emitted a soft ethereal glow. Everyone stared with intrigue.

“Ansem the Wise knew my father, my predecessor, during his early years as a king and scientist. Although my father had tried to maintain his secrets, Ansem discovered the Mysidian Crystal, which, as legends said, was a remnant of a lost society of mages. Detecting its hidden power, Ansem wanted to study it, and asked permission to do so, only to be refused. He respected that; he knew where to draw the line, though he could not forget his curiosity and he was compelled to address it in his notes.

“This crystal is indeed one of the artifacts we seek. But it does not reflect the aesthetic of the other items. Even in the beginning, the items all had wildly different appearances. They could be as distinctive as an idol or an icon, or as innocuous as a spoon. But they will have a similar structure as this: a long, straight frame. Of course, they can be disguised, but their true shape will work in this formula.

“Remember: we need to gather all of these items so we can gain the power to rewrite reality. Any fewer and the rules of nature that have been tying us down will continue to write our fates.” He shrank the crystal back to pocket size and put it back in the sack, which he replaced into his pocket. “Now, we should begin our search in the morning. I will let you stew over what I have told you, and you may come to me if you have any further questions.” With that, he retrieved his laptop and walked out of the room, descending the spiral staircase.

Many of them looked between each other, realizing that everyone else was just as perplexed by the scholar’s exposition. Yzma finally broke the silence. “So then, how are we supposed to find them?” she asked angrily. “They can be anything, anywhere! What do we have to go on?”

“He said they were indestructible. We could always raze the land until they are all that is left,” the Horned King suggested, his gravelly voice cutting a chilling atmosphere as he spoke. Everyone was left shocked at his ruthless sadism, save for Kefka, who was laughing.

“Sounds fun, pal. But if that was something we could just ‘do’, neither of us would be here,” the insane clown taunted.

Pete, for his part, was mortified. “What in tarnation is wrong with you two?” he asked in a mix of genuine concern and exasperated horror.

Kefka shrugged. “Oh, you know. The Emperor decides he wants an army of soldiers with magic powers, so he drains some creatures made of magic and injects their power into me as the first test subject. I get some neat powers but lose a few marbles, but who needs a clear head when you can destroy anything that gets in your way?” he explained, capping it off with his unique laugh.

“I am the Horned King, master of the blackest of magic, disciple of the Death-Lord Arawn. By my fell armies the land of Prydain trembles in fear,” the sinister Lich intoned, his demonic voice making the shivering Pete regret asking.

“Uh, anyone here _not_ planning on killing everything?” Pete asked around, hoping that he was not in a room full of homicidal maniacs.

Dr. Facilier tapped his foot and spun a deck of cards out in his hand. “Well, I’m a businessman by trade. I cut deals: deals with people and deals with my friends. My friends on the other side,” he explained. As he did a brief dance, his shadow, which sat against the wall and had previously been replicating his every movement, performed a different jig. The shadow jumped away, then stuck its walking stick out and bumped into the back of the head of Loki’s shadow. Loki lurched forward as if he had been hit for real, and rubbed the back of his head, unsure what had just happened. The voodoo doctor’s shadow returned to its master. “And pretty soon, I will be the most powerful witch doctor and the wealthiest man in Louisiana!”

“Well, here’s a story for you,” Yzma began. “I am the advisor to a pompous, childish, pathetic emperor! When he was put on the throne as a child when his father disappeared, I was stuck raising him. I wanted the throne for myself, but I couldn’t just get rid of him and take the seat without drawing suspicion, so I’ve been trying to sneak authority whenever he wasn’t looking.”

“So, then what do you bring to the table, grandma?” Mozenrath asked skeptically, wondering why a rail-thin wrinkly old dinosaur woman was even in the group.

Yzma glared at him. “I create potions in my secret lab, potions with transformative properties. What about you?”

Mozenrath gave a sinister smirk. “I am the ruler of the Land of the Black Sand. I command incredible magical power and possess a vast array of magical artifacts, and I control an army of undead warriors. My ambition is dominion over the seven desert kingdoms and anything else I set my eyes on.”

The next person to explain himself was Doug. “Hi. I’m from a city populated entirely by hyper-evolved and civilized animals, kind of like Fat Cat over there. It’s mainly the mammals, so nothing like the ugly eel over there,” he said stoically. Xerxes gasped and growled, offended. “Except we don’t have any of whatever you are… What species would you say you were a part of?”

“Human,” Cruella answered, though Kefka at the same time said “Hume”.

“Jotun,” Loki identified himself, much to the surprise of Hades and Mozenrath.

“Olympian god,” Hades said.

“I would be called an Unseelie Faerie,” Maleficent was the last to answer.

“Right,” Doug pretended like he understood what they were talking about. “No humans or anything like whatever you are, but we’re about as civilized. And probably about as socially developed.”

“Oh, I would not be surprised,” Dr. Facilier muttered under his breath.

“Basically, I make chemical weapons for whoever hires me out. Poisons, knockout darts, hallucinogens, pathogens derived from a naturally-growing plant that can turn those affected by them feral, you name it, so long as I get paid. I’m also a great shot, if I do say so myself.”

The next object of curiosity was Cruella De Vil. As far as any of them could tell, she had no special abilities to bring to the table beyond an interesting fashion sense. She noticed that all eyes were on her and chuckled. “I can’t say that I fit into a fantasy novel like most of you lot, but I have my wealth and resources. In my recent escapades, I desired a coat made out of Dalmatian fur. Oh, the spots would have looked lovely!”

Some of the other villains looked at each other uncomfortably. “Uh… okay…” was all Pete could think to say.

“But the fur would not have been nearly soft enough if I used adult dogs, so I tried to skin puppies. Ninety-nine of them.”

Nearly everyone was flabbergasted at this. “What the—?” Pete shouted in horror.

“I purchased eighty-four of them legally, but my dear old schoolmate and her husband refused to sell me the fifteen that their dogs just had,” she resumed, oblivious to the concerns of everyone else in the room. I had the puppies kidnapped, but the imbeciles I hired allowed every single one to escape!”

There was a long silence as they let Cruella’s description of herself sink in, before Loki broke the silence. “Well, I suppose we could just see how it goes with her around.” Then he turned to Dr. Facilier so that De Vil could not see his face, and mouthed _Puppies? For clothing?_ in a disturbed tone. The witch doctor simply shrugged.

Loki realized that everyone was expecting him to say his piece. He cleared his throat. “I was raised as a son of Odin, the king of Asgard. My brother, Thor, was the heir to the throne, but I wanted to become a ruler who would make my father proud,” he began with a masterful flourish. “But then I came across a dark secret: I was not born Aesir, but I was the son of the Frost Giant king of Jötunheim, abandoned only to be found and taken in by Odin during Asgard’s war with the Jotuns. When my Father and brother were… indisposed, I led Asgard to the best of my ability, and I was sure that Odin would see me for what I was after I slew the Jotun king and destroyed the enemy realm. But as my plan to destroy Jötunheim failed thanks to my brother, Odin looked upon me with shame before I fell into the abyss.” His expression grew dark, his deep-seated rage and resentment starting to breach the surface. “I tumbled through space until I found myself on a planet inhabited by a warlike race that made a deal with me. I get an army with which to conquer the mortal world that my brother loves so dearly, and in return I deliver to them a source of great power.”

“I do hope that this artifact is not one of the artifacts we seek,” Kuja pointed out.

“I quite doubt it,” Loki quelled his concerns.

“And you intend to betray them when they exceed their usefulness before they do the same to you?” Kuja pressed further.

“Given the slightest chance,” the god of mischief answered bluntly.

“Well, sounds good. Who’s next?” Hades skipped through the closing argument and transition. “What about you?” he asked, “volunteering” Dr. Hämsterviel.

The gerbil scientist glared at him with his red eyes, though he somehow failed to be threatening. “Don’t patronize me, you flame-tipped dentist’s nightmare!” he shot back. “I am a brilliant evil scientist from a distant corner of the galaxy. I commissioned and worked with my old colleague to create an army of destructive genetic experiments. I did try to remove my colleague from the equation so I could use the experiments for my own ends, but I ended up in police custody instead. After learning that the most powerful and dangerous experiment had escaped from the Galactic Federation’s mothership on its way to banishment and has since been somewhere in this sector of space, I escaped. My cruiser was shot down and crashed on a large asteroid, and they believed me to be deceased, but I built a new ship from the wreckage, spent the following years amassing my resources, and continued my search for my experiment.”

“Neat story, Hamsterwheel,” Hades sarcastically complimented.

“That is Hämster _viel_!” the gerbil corrected angrily. “ _Veal!_ Like the delicious meat speck!” This outburst only elicited laughter from the others, much to his chagrin.

Kuja chuckled into his hand. “Well, I suppose it is my turn,” he said. He waited until the laughter had died down and he had everyone’s attention. “I am a warmonger. I profit on donating my magic and weapons to powerful leaders so they can wage war and further my agenda of death and destruction. I have even swayed a few of them to their darker impulses to give them that extra push over the edge. War, it is my purpose, as I have made it since some time after I came into being. And when civilizations have been razed I shall make the world anew in my ideal vision,” he explained with a theatrical flair.

“So, I see we’re a bunch of destroyers, conquerors, and manipulators with a wide variety of talents and abilities,” Mozenrath observed. “Many of us want to rule the world, while some of us want to destroy it. I wonder what will happen should our goals clash…” The other villains looked at each other uneasily, realizing that at some point they might have to destroy their alliance and try to kill each other so they can keep the power they want for themselves.

“It will hurt bad,” Xerxes growled in a mix of uncertainty and slight fascination.

“We shall concern ourselves with a compromise or confrontation of our ambitions when the time comes,” Maleficent declared, alleviating their worries for the moment.

“In the meantime, what do you make of that Zeromast character?” Yzma asked, rubbing her chin curiously. “We know nothing about him, and he appears to have an agenda of his own.”

“Yzma is right,” Mozenrath concurred. “He knows very much about us, and knows nearly everything about our objective, whereas he remains an enigma. How can we trust him to work with us all the way through? We don’t know what he wants from this power. He has control over this situation, something which I am sure infuriates all of you.” He glanced at Doug. “Though as long as you get paid, I’m sure you don’t care,” he added snidely. Doug shrugged apathetically.

“True, he maintains a secrecy about him,” Maleficent admitted. “But bear in mind: we cannot do this without him, and he cannot do this without us. So let him keep his secrets for now. We may find out more over time, and if he turns out to be an enemy, we will treat him accordingly.” Diablo cawed in agreement.

Kefka cackled. “Yeah! We can always just kill him when we’re done with him! Or sooner, if anyone cares.”

“Then let us work together for now,” Hämsterviel declared, “and nothing will be able to stop us!” He let out a high-pitched laugh, and Maleficent, Pete, Kefka, Cruella, Yzma, Kuja, and Dr. Facilier saw fit to join in.


	18. Chapter 17: Organizing the Facts

While the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee, with the help of Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the former Organization XIII members, cleaned up the wreckage from the battle, Aerith checked the civilians for any injuries, and guided those who were hurt in the struggle over to the infirmary for treatment. Lea and Ienzo accompanied her to check on his colleagues.

Mickey cast Zero Graviga on debris to lift them up while Yuffie searched beneath them for any surviving affects or in case anyone had failed to flee before the buildings collapsed. Fortunately, they found no one. Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Aeleus moved debris out of the streets and piled them up where Leon instructed, dividing the pieces up by material.

When the streets were cleared and the debris was arranged, Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Mickey met up with Kairi and Donald, who had been assisting the people whose homes and businesses were destroyed by the Raid Armor by helping them settle into the relief apartments, which Leon and Cid had set up for the returning citizenry after reclaiming the town from the Heartless. Kairi noticed that Sora and Riku appeared uneasy.

“You all right?” she asked, concerned. “You look like something’s bothering you.”

“Cid and Shera checked the security footage in the computer room. While we were fighting the Raid Armor, Pete and some gerbil wearing a cape accessed the files,” Sora said glumly.

“So? What does… that…” she began asking, only to trail of as it dawned on her what was going on.

“The Heartless was just a distraction,” Riku finished, a bitter tone in his voice. “Maleficent released a monster large and powerful enough to destroy the town just to distract us.”

Donald sighed. “If she can do that on a whim…” he moaned in resignation.

But Kairi saw a silver lining. “Actually, I don’t think it was that easy on her,” she reassured them.

“What do you mean?” Sora asked.

“Well, while we were helping everyone to the apartments, not a single Heartless showed up to attack,” she explained. “I only saw one of those CLAYMORE scanner things, as if it had gotten a break and hadn’t had to do much. Some of the people we were escorting said that one usually appears every few minutes, and everyone admitted that not a single Heartless came after them while they were panicking. Apparently, the streets cleared about a minute before the giant attacked.”

“What are you suggesting?” Mickey asked, curious about the situation. Wouldn’t the Heartless want to go after terrified, defenseless civilians? Wouldn’t Maleficent want to cause panic and let more people be swallowed by the darkness? Why would she miss that perfect opportunity?

“Maybe it took so much out of her to summon a Heartless that powerful, that she had to dismiss the rest of the Heartless into the shadow so she could do so and couldn’t summon any more afterward,” Kairi suggested.

Sora crossed his arms and Riku put his hand on his hip, both contemplating Kairi’s idea. “So Maleficent used so much of her power to bring in that giant that she can’t even summon any more Heartless?” Sora pondered.

“And she wouldn’t be willing to do so again unless it were extremely necessary,” Riku added. “Which begs the question: why not just bring in any other giant Heartless? Or even a bunch of them if she figured that one would go down too easy?”

“She, or maybe her new ally, might’ve wanted to see how strong we all were,” Goofy suggested. The others looked at him with a mix of surprise and confusion. “I mean, it took all of our power to bring it down. And we had been home for three months. For all she knows, we could’ve been training really hard, and by now the giant Heartless would have been no trouble.”

“Huh. That is possible,” Mickey admitted. “For now, let’s hope that we won’t be seeing too many big ones in the near future.”

Before they could think further on the matter, they heard footsteps and turned to see that Lea was approaching. Sora and Riku did not notice the shocked expression on Kairi’s face, which promptly morphed into one of anger.

“Hey guys—” Lea greeted, but he was interrupted when, before any of them knew what was happening, Kairi ran up to him and punched him in the face. The force of the blow caused him to stagger backwards.

Kairi pulled out her rapier and held it in a battle-ready position. “You have some nerve showing your face around here, Axel!” she said, seething with rage, remembering the time he kidnapped her to lure Sora into a trap and try to turn him into a Heartless. “I won’t let you hurt Sora!”

At first Lea was confused, but then realized that Kairi still remembered him as the creep who threatened her. “Listen, Kairi, I’m sorry about that. I—” He was not allowed to finish, as Kairi swung her sword at him, forcing him to take a few quick steps backward.

“Hey, Kairi, stop!” Sora called out. He ran up and grabbed her by the arm, pulling it away so she was not continuously inches away from stabbing Lea. “He’s a friend now. He helped me get to the Organization’s world to find you. He even gave his life to bring us together!”

That got Kairi to calm down. She stood unmoving, looking deep into Lea’s eyes. She saw his sincerity and remorse. She relaxed her stance. Figuring that this meant that she was not going to continue attacking him, Sora let go of her arm. She slid the rapier back into the scabbard. There was a moment’s pause before she finally said “Sorry.”

Lea waved his hands in front of him in a deflective manner. “No, it’s not… I’m the one who should apologize. I just wanted my friend back, and I didn’t care who I had to hurt to do it. But I realized I was wrong. I’m sorry,” he confessed.

Sora chuckled sheepishly. “I guess I kind of forgot to tell you about Axel after we got back home. My bad,” he said nervously. Kairi looked at him with a raised eyebrow, then gave him a slight mocking smile. Sora returned his attention to Lea. “So, Axel—sorry, Lea, were you going to tell us something?”

“Oh, yeah. The other former Organization members woke up. I already told Aeleus. We should go check on them,” Lea explained. “Uh, you might want to restrain Kairi when we get there.”

Sora and Riku nodded, understanding full well what he meant. But Kairi tilted her head in confusion. “Why?” she asked.

“Because Saïx is with them,” he replied.

* * *

On the way to the infirmary, Sora and Riku explained how Lea, Isa and Ansem’s apprentices, save for Xehanort, had been restored to their Somebody forms, but only Lea, Aeleus, Ienzo, and Braig had regained consciousness. Riku had vouched for Aeleus and Ienzo, saying that they did not act nearly as antagonistic as they did when they were Lexaeus and Zexion. Kairi wondered, if they had been villains before when they were Nobodies, what they would be like now that they have hearts again.

Lea knocked on the door while Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy stood by the window so that Aerith would see them. Aerith opened the door and let them all in.

Even and Ienzo were busily studying his and his fellow patients’ vital readings. Aeleus was talking with Dilan. Isa was standing in the back corner of the room, lost in thought. They looked up when they heard the visitors arrive.

“How is everybody?” Mickey asked Aerith.

“Isa, Even and Dilan stabilized shortly after we left, and they regained consciousness half an hour ago,” the healer explained. “Vitals appear to be perfectly normal, apart from being famished. There isn’t even any indication of whatever injuries forced their Nobody counterparts to expire. It’s as if all injuries sustained since becoming Nobodies were undone, but they still retain their physical maturity. I don’t believe Even, Dilan or Aeleus aged since Vexen, Xaldin and Lexaeus came into being, but from what I understand Lea and Isa were teenagers and Ienzo was a child before Radiant Garden fell. I’m probably not the best person to determine how any of this makes sense, but whatever it means, they appear to be completely human and completely normal.”

Donald shrugged. “I don’t think there _is_ a ‘best person’ to determine how any of this makes sense,” he remarked.

Aerith giggled. “True enough. But it doesn’t look like there would be any harm if you would like to talk to them. Maybe try to fill in the blanks as to what happened to them.”

Dilan glared at the group nervously, evidently still remembering his defeat at Sora, Donald and Goofy’s hands. They likewise were not keen on making small talk with him, and moved on to Ienzo, Aeleus and Even.

Even raised his eyebrow and smirked when they approached. “Well, I am glad to see that Marluxia’s master plot failed,” he told them. Sora stared at him blankly. Even frowned. “Of course, I have been informed that while your previous memories have been restored, you no longer remember your experiences in Castle Oblivion.” He turned to address Riku. “What, pray tell, became of my Replica of you?”

“He faded into the darkness after our last battle,” Riku answered solemnly.

“That’s a shame,” Even said, a hint of apology in his voice. “He was a promising specimen.”

“Naminé had to shatter his mind to prevent him from killing Sora,” Lea explained. “But he managed to pull himself together and came to Sora’s aid against Marluxia.”

This seemed to surprise Even. He pondered that revelation for a moment. “Interesting. He restored his own psyche from a catatonic state. But that should not have been. I created him as what was essentially a robotic organism, and I had to program behavioral responses and knowledge. He could develop memories or receive them via implantation, like what Naminé did when Larxene decided to pit him against Sora, but he had no heart, like a Nobody.”

“Roxas sure didn’t feel like ‘Nobody’,” Sora interjected. “And Axel seemed to care about him, and regret whatever harm he had done.”

“Intriguing. When I was acquainted with Roxas, he seemed to be an empty shell. He did not have your memories, and so he did not have any prior experience from which to imitate emotions. But he made friends? This warrants further analysis.”

Lea broke off from the conversation and approached Isa. The blue-haired man avoided his gaze. Lea tried to start up a conversation but he felt nervous and had difficulty finding a place to begin.

“Hey,” he finally said. Isa remained silent. Lea scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. He knew that patching things up with his former best friend would not be easy, but he was hoping to at least find a point to jump off from.

“Hey,” Isa finally replied, weakly, still avoiding Lea’s gaze, though it seemed to be more out of shyness than scorn.

“So… we’re people again,” Lea said, trying to start a conversation. “We have our hearts back.”

“You don’t seem all that different,” Isa commented. Lea frowned, worried, but Isa clarified. “The last time I saw you, you weren’t very different from the way you act now. As for me… did I honestly treat you like that?” He seemed horrified as he remembered his prior actions.

Lea snickered. “Yeah, you were cold. I tried to get you to lighten up, but you just glared at me with those orange eyes. You didn’t even give me one of your cheap remarks.”

Isa smirked and finally made eye contact with Lea. Lea’s eyes widened in surprise. “And all the while you just went right back to trying to be funny,” Isa remarked. He furrowed his brows in confusion when he saw Lea’s dumbfounded expression. “What?”

“Y-your eyes…” Lea stammered, pointing two fingers at his own eyes.

Isa walked over to the window into the hallway and looked at his reflection. He was shocked when saw that his irises were of their natural green-blue color, as opposed to the yellow-orange hue that had developed over the last few years.

“I had always wondered how my eyes were changing,” he mused. He was joined by Even, who was examining his eye color as well, intrigued.

“I had been curious about the same thing,” the academic admitted. “None of us had met that transformation except for you. The only other members to have a similar eye color were Lord Xemnas and Xigbar, but their irises had been like that before becoming Nobodies.”

“Braig only earned that color a year before we had lost our hearts,” Dilan interjected, speaking in a distinctive oily English accent. “It was shortly after the accident that cost him his eye.”

“Which brings up the question: where are Xehanort and Braig?” Even asked.

“There was no sign of Xehanort. And Braig’s down the hall,” Riku answered. “We were trying to interrogate him earlier today. He seemed to know you would come back into being, and he said something about expecting someone to meet him when he woke up. But we couldn’t get anything out of him.”

Even crossed his arms pensively. “If it is as you have inferred, then perhaps there is more to the nature of Nobodies than what we have been led to believe,” he declared.

Isa, Lea, Ienzo, Aeleus, and Dilan took a moment to process that they had been played for ten years. Their hearts sank as they realized that everything they had done up to that point was likely all part of Xemnas’ twisted game.

“Now what are we to do?” Aeleus asked, finally breaking the silence.

Another silence followed, as no one knew how to answer that question.

“We spent ten years helping Xemnas with his plan, and before that we betrayed everything we worked for,” Ienzo lamented. “Where do we go from here?”

Even raised a single finger, to indicate that he has come up with an idea. “We are researchers. We could start by understanding our situation, and determining what secrets Braig is indeed hiding,” he suggested. “I for one would like to know how beings born without hearts could indeed demonstrate emotions of their own.”

The other former apprentices thought about what he said for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “That sounds like a plausible arrangement,” Dilan said.

“And maybe we can help Squall’s group put the town back together and look into whatever they people Sora, Riku and the others are fighting are after,” Lea added. He glanced around at the others, waiting for a response.

“I can work with that,” Isa agreed.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aerith, who were watching the former Organization XIII members and listening to their conversation, looked at each other and gave each other a satisfied nod. “Glad to see that they’re working things out,” Goofy commented.

“Maybe they aren’t such bad people,” Kairi said with a smile. “I wonder what that means for the others, like that man with the playing cards, or the guy with the guitar?”

“Who knows,” Sora responded, wondering the same thing himself. At the same time, he remembered what Demyx had said before they fought.

_Oh, we do too have hearts. Don’t be mad._

Could Nobodies have hearts?

They were drawn out of their thoughts when they heard someone rapping on the window. It was Yuffie, again. Aerith let her in.

“Sora! Guys! Come to Merlin’s House! We have something!” the ninja told them, hardly holding in her excitement.


	19. Chapter 18: The Mission Begins

The door was thrown open, and the Restoration Committee saw Yuffie, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy running inside. However, there was not a lot of room to stop, and the anthropomorphic animals tumbled into each other as well as the humans ahead of them. They picked themselves back up, but had to lean against the wall as they were panting heavily from exhaustion, having run all the way from the infirmary.

Kairi had to take longer to catch her breath, as she was not as used to such activity as the others. When she and Riku could finally stand up straight, she saw to their curiosity three newcomers. They were each about two feet tall and female, and they all floated in midair. The girl in the middle had short brown hair and clashing eye colors, with a blue left eye and a green right eye. She wore a white halter-neck top with a black mark on the chest, a pink jagged bar at the bottom and a pink hoodie, tied together with a black ribbon just below the chest, a yellow armband on each arm, and two ropes tied at the base of her hairdo, one a light blue with a white fur tuft at the end and the other a red length with a hair clip shaped like yellow bird wings and a brown fur tuft at the end. She had a blue short skirt and a blue and white sash that looked like a cropped quarter of a dress over her left leg, as well as blue boots that reached almost all the way up to her knees and were tied with white laces. The girl on her left had green eyes and medium-length blonde hair tied in a ponytail with the bangs held up by a large blue headband. She wore a yellow midriff-baring tank top, an orange skirt with a jagged bottom edge and yellow ribbons on either side, cream-colored detached sleeves, white socks with yellow linings, white shoes with blue soles and shafts that went midway up her shins, and an orange scarf wrapped around her neck which levitated towards the ends. The third girl had brown-gray hair, red eyes, and a pair of black bat-like wings. She wore a black tank top with red shoulder straps, a gray shawl that wrapped over her left shoulder and under her right arm, gray shorts with a red belt wrapped loosely around her waist and a black belt, worn properly, with a skull-shaped buckle, dark gray stockings, evening gloves, and tall boots with black belts wrapped around the counter, vamp and sole.

The girl with heterochromia was watching the visitors regain their composure with polite concern; meanwhile, the blonde girl was in the midst of giggling and the red-eyed girl stared at them with stoic apathy. Riku and Kairi could not help but stare back in curiosity. Riku had never seen anything like them. The closest thing Kairi could compare them to was Tinker Bell, whom Kairi never really knew but had seen through Sora’s eyes during the latter part of his first quest (she had been extra aware while on the pirate ship, due to proximity to her own body).

The girl in the middle noticed their expressions. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, bowing respectfully. “I suppose you have never seen the likes of us before. My name is Yuna.”

“I’m Rikku!” the blonde girl said cheerfully.

“Paine,” the red-eyed girl muttered.

“We call ourselves the Gullwings,” Yuna finished.

“You never actually introduced yourselves to Donald, Goofy and me,” Sora commented. “You just said you were ‘nothing worth mentioning’, then the next time we met you threatened to extort us for all our treasure.” He chuckled at that, even while Kairi gave him a double take.

“So, Yuffie said that you found something out?” Mickey said to Leon in a questioning manner.

Leon nodded. “The Gullwings had been spying on Maleficent at our request,” he began. “It turns out that, including herself, Pete and the man who’s gotten them on this hunt, there are thirteen villains in total.”

“Some of them look pretty powerful,” Rikku interjected. “Others, not so much.”

“They are looking for a bunch of different objects all across the worlds,” Yuna continued. “They don’t look alike, and they are well-guarded. The man said that when brought together, they would be able to access a power that will allow them to change reality itself.”

Everyone’s eyes went wide. Mickey and Donald’s jaws dropped. But Goofy scratched his head with one finger, appearing confused. “Isn’t that pretty much the same as what they’ve been trying to do before?” he asked. “Maleficent wanted to plunge the worlds into darkness, and Xemnas wanted to create a new world that he would control, both by reaching and taking control of Kingdom Hearts.”

“Ah, yes. That’s true. But this time, the stakes are much different,” Merlin explained. “During their previous endeavors, you were allowed to intervene, and the worlds even put in their power to aid you, because there is a balance between light and darkness that must be kept. However, if one were to rewrite reality, then those rules might be changed. The balance could be rewritten. If Maleficent were to get her hands on that power, then she could snuff light out forever.”

With this explanation, Goofy came to share Mickey and Donald’s expression. Sora shook his head in disbelief. “Then I guess we need to make sure they don’t get there!” he declared.

“We’re still trying to find out more from the files on Ansem’s computer,” Cid explained. “Now that we have an idea what to look for, we can narrow our search down considerably.”

“In which case, I suppose we should start searching for the objects ourselves,” Mickey said. “We should find and protect as many of them as we can. Right, fellas?”

“But how are we going to do that?” Kairi asked, looking between Mickey and Sora for an answer.

Sora shrugged. “Same as we always do: fly to different worlds and wander around aimlessly until we find something,” he replied offhandedly.

Kairi raised an eyebrow and looked at Donald and Goofy. “Is this really how you get things done?” she asked.

The duck and dog thought for a few seconds before nodding. “Yeah, pretty much,” Donald answered. “Before, we just flew to whatever the nearest world was, or we opened a path and followed where it led. But we don’t have that restriction, I don’t think. So I guess we’ll just go in a random direction until we find something.”

When Yuffie, Aerith and Cid heard this description of how they conduct their business, they laughed out loud. “Oh, you guys are hopeless!” the ninja exclaimed. “Well, you do what you do best.”

“Good luck,” Yuna said, giving them another bow. Rikku waved good-bye and Paine gave them a nod.

“You might want to pick up some curative items and accessories from the marketplace,” Leon suggested.

Sora nodded. “We will. Thanks, guys! We’ll be back when we figure something out.” The party waved good-bye to the Committee and left the building. They passed through the borough and went through the marketplace, doing just as Leon suggested and stocking up on items, accessories and armor. Then they went down to the landing bay and climbed into the Gummi Ship.

“How about you let me do the flying this time?” Donald grumbled, taking the pilot’s seat.

Sora grinned and gladly strapped himself into one of the guest seats while Mickey and Goofy took their places in the Teeny command seat and the gunner seat. Donald initiated liftoff and the ship ascended above the town, before it flew through the world’s atmosphere and into the sea between worlds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. The end of the first visit to Radiant Garden, and now the party is heading off to begin their exploration for real! The next chapter will bring them to a world that none of them have seen before, but it's something that we've seen in the latest game. Let me know what you think of the story thus far (preferably in more than just thumbs-up emojis) and stay tuned.


	20. Chapter 19: The Outlaw

As the Gummi Ship approached the new world, the passengers looked out of the glass cover in curiosity. There was a large area of grassy plains. At what appeared to be the top of the sphere-shaped world was a large town with an ornate castle in the middle. The town was surrounded by a large body of water, and connected to the mainland by a bridge. At the “bottom” of the world was a tall tower. Donald checked the heads-up display on the ship’s console and was relieved to see that the walls surrounding the world had come down when the ship approached, allowing them to land without difficulty. A pillar of green light extended from a point on the world’s render, a distance away from the tower, that indicated the ideal location to disembark. He maneuvered the ship to a point above that corner of the world and parked at the edge of the world’s atmosphere. He typed in a few commands into the console and pressed a button labeled “DISEMBARK”. A circle of light began to glow in the back section of the cockpit.

“All right, everyone. Let’s head on down,” the duck instructed, unbuckling his seatbelt while the others did the same.

Mickey, Donald and Goofy stepped into the circle, while Sora led Riku and Kairi to join them. “This is going to be cool. Trust me,” Sora reassured his friends with a grin.

They heard a low humming and felt the air warm up around them. A pillar of light rose up surrounding them, briefly blinding them, all while they felt a vibration through their entire bodies. Then, for a split second, they felt nothing at all. After that, the light faded away and they were standing in a grassy plain, standing in the exact same position they were in before the light enveloped them. Riku and Kairi paused in confusion, noticing the trees and flowers and feeling a cool breeze blowing through their hair. Instead of the whirring of the ship’s engines they heard birds chirping, leaves rustling, and the clomping of hooves.

“What…” Kairi began to ask, but she could not understand enough of the experience to complete the question.

“This is actually why I never got used to parking on the ground,” Sora told them. “We would draw less attention if we left the ship in space.”

“We can transport ourselves down to the surface by locating one of these spots,” Mickey said, gesturing to the ground beneath their feet. There was a circle of green light growing from the grass and dirt, a green aura circling around their feet. “I’m not sure why, but they seem to have a stronger connection with the walls and roads than other spots, as if this is where the lanes meet. We can also use these points as a focal point to beam back up to the ship.”

“And the light fills you up like a Cure spell, so it will heal your cuts and bruises and restore your energy just by standing in it,” Donald said with a triumphant sigh.

“We like to call them ‘Safe Points’,” Goofy added.

After basking in the Point’s warm glow, the group stepped out of the circle and started to explore the forest clearing.

“So, how has nobody noticed these points all over their worlds? I’m pretty sure I never saw one before,” Riku inquired.

“Usually, they’re invisible to the naked eye. When people from outside of the world come near, the warmth becomes noticeable and they only start glowing when you step into them,” Mickey explained, and as he spoke, the glow faded away as they walked away from it.

“Neat,” Riku commented, impressed.

They heard the sound of hooves clomping grow louder behind them. Goofy turned around to investigate the sound. Three men came running from behind the trees. The man in front had brown hair and eyes as well as a scruffy goatee. He wore a white long-sleeved shirt underneath a turquoise vest, dark cream-colored pants, brown bucket-top boots, and a brown belt with a miniature satchel attached. Slung over his shoulder, he carried a light brown satchel. The two men behind him appeared to be siblings, possibly twins. They were burly and muscular, and they had red hair and blue eyes. They both wore black pants, and brown bucket-top boots. One of them had prominent sideburns and a slightly curved scar on the right side of his face, and he wore a green sleeveless shirt and had brown leather arm braces and a sword sheathed in a scabbard over his back. The other had an eyepatch over where his left eye would be, and he wore a long-sleeved shirt underneath his dark sleeveless shirt.

The lean man with the satchel deftly dodged around the group, saying “’Scuse me. Pardon me,” as he ran. The party was not so lucky with the other two. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey stepped out of the way but the brutes shoved Donald and Goofy to the ground as they plowed through.

Sora and Riku helped Goofy and Donald to their feet. Donald fumed in indignance. Sora simply looked in the direction of the three men with a puzzled expression. “What was that about?” he asked nobody in particular.

Goofy turned away when he realized that the sound of hooves were getting louder. He squinted to see what was in the distance, then his eyes widened in horror. “Everybody gangway!” he yelled. The others turned and saw five horses charging toward them, each horse carrying a soldier wearing red shirts, gray pants, black boots, white gloves, and gold armor breastplates and helmets. Each soldier carried a crossbow. The man who appeared to be the captain had a bushy moustache and rode on a white-furred Hanoverian horse while the other soldiers rode brown-furred horses.

Expressions of fear crossed the party’s faces as they ran to get out of the horses’ path as fast as possible. The soldiers and horses proceeded without much thought to the people who were nearly trampled, though one scrawny-looking soldier shouted a meek “Sorry!”

As the horses were about to disappear behind the trees again, Sora got an idea. “I’ll be back in a jiffy,” he told his friends before he turned and launched himself into a quick run, throwing himself several feet in a single bound, leaving his still-baffled friends behind.

Running like the wind, Sora quickly caught up with the rider in the rear, the same soldier who had shown brief concern for the group’s well-being. He slowed until he matched the pace of the horse and waited for the soldier to notice him. “What’s going on?” he asked, shouting above the noise of the wind and the hooves.

“We are trying to catch the thief Flynn Rider, and his accomplices, the Stabbington Brothers,” the soldier explained, after regaining his bearings from the shock of seeing a teenager running as fast as a horse.

“Good to know. Thanks,” Sora replied. He waved good-bye and stopped running, kicking up dirt as he skidded to a halt. He turned around and started to walk back to his friends, but by the time he was halfway back he met up with them, as they had started to follow him.

“Wow. You sure can run,” Riku commended, a smirk on his face. Sora, his pride fueled, simply crossed his hands behind his head and smiled.

“So, what were they doing?” Goofy asked.

“They’re chasing after a guy named Flynn Rider, and the ‘Stabbington Brothers’. The one guy said they were thieves,” Sora answered.

Kairi raised one eyebrow. “Were those two lunkheads seriously named ‘Stabbington’?” she asked.

Sora shrugged. “I guess so,” he replied bluntly. “Considering we just landed as this was happening, maybe it would be worth a look. What do you guys think?”

The rest of the group looked back and forth at each other and shrugged, though Mickey, Goofy and Kairi seemed to be more immediately receptive of the idea.

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Mickey said. Sora turned around and they broke into a brisk jog, following the path cut by the horses and the sound of the chase. As they ran through the forest, they soon came across what appeared to be a giant dandelion head. They stopped and moved in cautiously to investigate.

“Have you ever seen oversized plant life in any of the worlds you’ve been to, Sora?” Kairi asked nervously, never taking her eyes off of the large sphere of dandelion seeds.

“Only in Wonderland, which was more due to us being small… I think,” Sora answered, then groaned from a mini-migraine as he was forced to remember the utter nonsense that was the second world he ever visited.

Kairi leaned in closer, believing that she saw something beneath all of the dandelion seeds, but suddenly sneezed. Her sneeze caused all of the seeds to fly off into the breeze. With the seeds gone, the party could see a black sphere with yellow dots like eyes. The giant leaves beneath the sphere waved up and down.

The seeds landed on the ground, and an orb of dark aura formed around them. When the aura faded, in the seeds’ place stood egg-shaped black objects with a deep blue disc on the front that had two smaller circles, like glowing eyes. At the top of each shape was what appeared to be a yellow flower head, and it wiggled green leaves like arms. Beneath the deep blue disc on the front, a Heartless emblem was visible.

“That’s new,” Sora commented, summoning his Keyblade while Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy summoned their own weapons and Kairi unsheathed her sword. The Dandelion Seed Heartless flapped their leaves like wings and lifted themselves a few inches off of the ground. Sora struck one of them but another Heartless spun itself at him, slashing at him with its leaves and throwing its body at him. He promptly counterattacked, sending the foe flying before he went back to fighting the first one until it exploded into dark smoke, releasing a miniature glowing heart.

Riku swung his Keyblade at another Heartless, sending it flying, then obliterated it with a burst of Dark Fire. Donald took out two with a few successive blasts of Fira. Mickey cut through his target with a single shot, then knocked another one away with a shot of Pearl. Goofy was tripped by an enemy, but he threw it into the air with his shield as he rose back up, then spun around in a tornado spin, hitting it several times with his shield until it was no more. Kairi stabbed at another one then sliced its leaves off. Within moments, the Dandelion Seeds were all gone.

By this point, Goofy noticed that the original Heartless had already regrown its seeds, which sat on its head like a large white afro. “Careful! If those seeds get planted, more of the things we just fought will appear,” he warned his comrades.

Mickey shared a knowing look with Riku, Donald and Sora. They circled around the Dandelion until they were facing it from four directions. They pointed their weapons at the Heartless and prepared to cast a spell. “Firaga!” they all shouted simultaneously. Large bursts of flame shot out of the tips of their weapons and engulfed the Heartless. When the fire died down, the Heartless was still there, though it appeared to have been weakened, and its seed afro was completely gone.

“Now! Before it tries to spawn more of them!” Mickey commanded. Goofy threw his shield to cut into the Dandelion’s “neck”. Kairi cut the leaf arms off and stabbed at the underbelly. Sora, Riku and Mickey took turns delivering combo attacks to the head until finally it dissipated, releasing a glowing heart.

Jiminy poked his head out of Sora’s pocket. “So, it looks like this Heartless is rooted into one place, but it can create more creatures subservient to it by spreading its seeds,” he observed. “They bear the Heartless Emblem but, being sprouts cloned from the original, they do not contain hearts like other Emblem Heartless. Very interesting.” He opened his journal and began writing notes down.

Riku pointed in the direction they were headed before the fight began. “We should keep moving if we want to catch up with them,” he advised. They wordlessly agreed and continued their pursuit.

After a few minutes, they came to a cliff wall that rose roughly fifteen feet high. The party could see three soldiers restraining the Stabbington Brothers against the wall, with one of them placing handcuffs on each of them.

“I’ll kill that no-good Rider!” the brother with the sideburns growled in fury. He struggled to escape the soldier’s grip, but he was held firm and prodded with the point of a spear to be made to settle down.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy stood in a circle to discuss what was going on. “I guess that Flynn Rider guy ditched the brutes to get away,” Kairi noted.

“I wonder what his deal is,” Riku mused.

“Say, wasn’t Aladdin a thief who was chased down by the guards?” Goofy asked, remembering what he had heard from word on the street in Agrabah.

Donald looked at him in disbelief. “Not all charismatic thieves have good hearts, you know!” he scolded. “We know far too many scoundrels!”

“Maybe so, but I still think we should take a closer look before we judge,” Sora said. He studied the wall, gauging its height. “I think maybe we could make a ladder by standing on each other’s shoulders. Some of us can climb up to reach the ledge, and then we can pull each other up, one by one.”

“We can only reach down so far,” Riku reminded him.

“Then I’ll be at the bottom,” Sora answered. Everyone gave him a confused look. “Trust me,” he reassured him.

Riku glanced at the cliff wall and smirked. “I think I’ll be right above him. Then Goofy, then Kairi should be able to reach the top.”

They had come to an agreement. While the soldiers were too busy with the criminals, Sora took his position in front of the rock wall. Riku climbed up his back and stood on his shoulders, and Goofy did the same to stand on top of Riku’s shoulders. Next, Kairi climbed the stack of three until she stood firmly on Goofy’s shoulders and could easily lay her arms over the ledge. Riku noticeably struggled to not buckle under the weight, though Sora had less difficulty.

Mickey was the first to scurry up the impromptu ladder and get off on the higher ground. As Donald proceeded to do the same, one of the soldiers saw them. “Hey, what are you doing?” he asked, bewildered.

“Don’t mind us. Just passing through,” Sora replied. Kairi started to snicker at the ridiculousness of such a claim, and even more so when she realized that the soldier seemed to have bought it.

When Donald was safely at the top, Kairi pulled herself up. She turned around and knelt down to reach for Goofy. But she realized that he was too far down for her to reach while properly anchoring herself, not to mention she probably could not pull him up all by herself, so she called Mickey to help. She grabbed him by the ankles and held him upside-down over the ledge. He summoned his Keyblade, holding it by the teeth, and reached it down for Goofy to grab. Together, Kairi and Mickey, with some assistance from Donald, pulled Goofy up.

Sora let Riku go and the silver-haired boy dropped to the ground. They both stepped back thirty feet. Their friends, as well as the soldiers, watched them with interest, curious as to what they were planning to do.

“Think you can make it?” Riku taunted lightly.

“Try to keep up,” Sora retorted. They both crouched, their backs arched and their hands on the ground, as if they were ready to begin a footrace.

After ten seconds, they broke into a run. They closed the distance between them and the wall within seconds, and when it appeared as though they were about to hit it they pushed downward hard with one foot each, launching themselves almost vertically upward. They brought their legs up to catch onto the rough surface, and kicked out to throw themselves further up, almost as if they were running up the wall. As they reached the top, they brought one hand out to catch onto the ledge and vault themselves upward, soaring clear over the others.

Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi clapped, with Kairi even cheering, clearly impressed. Down below, the soldiers and criminals stared upward in utter disbelief. “What sort of training regimen do those two go through?” one of the soldiers asked. The scrawny soldier simply shrugged.

Riku studied the signs of travel, flattened grass, broken branches and twigs, and the scent of sweat and horse fur. He pointed in the direction in which Flynn Rider fled and the remaining soldiers pursued, which was to the right of the way they had come up. “That way,” he directed. Without a word, they followed the path.

After a few minutes, they came across the other two soldiers, one of them being the captain, and one of the horses. They were backed up against each other, surrounded by Shadow and Soldier Heartless, as well as two Heartless that looked like the Red Nocturne and its cousins but had a blue-green body with white swirls around it and it wore a pale green cap with a light blue curled antenna. The soldiers shook with fright in spite of themselves, holding their crossbows pointed at the nearest monsters, while the horse was completely spooked.

The party knew they had to do something, so they brought out their weapons. Sora pointed at the floating Heartless. “Emerald Blues,” he identified, explaining their nature to Riku, Kairi and Mickey. “They use Aero magic. Be careful of their tornado attacks.”

With the element of surprise as an advantage, they rushed in to the rescue. Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi fought the Shadows and Soldiers, while Sora and Riku each engaged an Emerald Blues. The floating Heartless attempted to counter by conjuring blades of wind around themselves. This did knock the Keyblade wielders back, but it otherwise had little effect, and they swiftly struck back and vanquished the Heartless.

The captain approached Sora and Riku. “Thank you for your help,” he said, clearly embarrassed at his inability to protect himself but sincerely grateful for the assist. “We have never seen anything like those creatures before.”

“Huh. I guess the Heartless only showed up recently,” Sora pondered. He looked at their rescues and realized something was off. “Didn’t you have a white horse?”

“Indeed, I did. I was dislodged from my mount and we ended up being cornered by those, erm, ‘Heartless’ creatures. In the meantime, my steed, Maximus, continued his pursuit of the thief Flynn Rider,” the captain explained. He looked off into the distance for a moment. “However, I cannot imagine that the chase would have led them much farther, unless they were to go off of the cliff…”

Sora nodded, understanding. “We’ll keep a lookout. You be careful, now.” He turned to face the rest of his group. “Come on, guys.”

Much to the captain’s confusion, the three youths and the strange-looking warriors ran in the direction that Rider and Maximus had gone.

The group approached the cliff and looked down into the pit, which seemed to go down several hundred feet. They saw what appeared to have been a horizontally-growing tree that sprouted from the edge of the cliff. However, it was completely snapped as if it had failed to hold up a sufficient weight. They knew immediately that the thief and the horse had indeed fallen from the cliff.

“Judging from prior experience,” Donald judged from examination, “they might have survived mostly undamaged. Kairi gave him a perplexed look, but Sora, having fallen a great distance and into a tree house after crashing through the roof only to get back up and fight a wild animal before even learning Cure magic, was not keen to argue.

“But just to be safe…” Sora summoned his Keyblade again, and Riku and Mickey followed suit. Sora grabbed Kairi with his free hand and held her close, whispering “Trust me” into her ear. He backed both of them off of the cliff. After a few seconds, he dug his Keyblade into the rock wall. The blade continued to carve through the rock as they went down, but this was enough to slow their descent until they were almost completely stopped by the time they reached the ground. Seconds later, Riku, Mickey and Goofy came down. Goofy was using his shield to carve the way down, and Donald was hanging from his neck for dear life. However, the shield in the rock did not resist their motion as well as a sword stabbed into the rock, and the two of them hit the ground hard enough for Goofy to fall on his backside and Donald to lose his grip and hit the ground as well.

“We all right?” Mickey asked. The others nodded, though Donald grumbled. The mouse king seemed to take that as an “I’m fine”.

“Okay, let’s see what’s around,” Sora declared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this section after the world was announced but before _Kingdom Hearts III_ came out, so if you're wondering why I named the "Puffballs" and "Chief Puffs" as "Dandelion Seeds" and "Dandelions", I named them myself for this.


	21. Chapter 20: The Girl in the Tower

While the Keyblade wielders and their companions were rescuing the soldiers from the Heartless, Flynn Rider and Maximus had indeed survived the fall with barely a scratch. As the white horse sniffed around for the thief’s trail like a bloodhound, Flynn had managed to hide behind a rock while his pursuer went by. When he was sure the horse was gone, Flynn snuck away, creeping through a tunnel concealed by a curtain of ivy. He soon came across a wide clearing enclosed on all other sides by a cliff. Some trees and bushes were strewn about, and a thin waterfall descended down the cliff wall toward the rear of the space, leading into a winding stream when the water hit the ground.

What drew Flynn’s attention was the tower in the center of the clearing. It appeared to stand about one hundred feet tall. Much of the wall was covered in moss. A conical purple roof sat on top of the top floor, which appeared wider than the rest of the tower’s height and was almost entirely cylindrical, albeit with an alcove jutting out of the side. In the front of the tower, halfway up the height of the top floor, was a window large enough for a person to walk through if the fact that it was seventy feet above the ground did not deter them.

Flynn approached the tower and walked around the circumference, only to find no other apparent entrance. When he had looped back around to the front, he looked up at the window and smirked. _That should be safe enough until the guards give up and go home,_ he thought.

He pulled two arrows, which he had kept with him for the purpose of scaling walls, out of his belt satchel. Jabbing the heads of the arrows into the joints between bricks, Flynn climbed up the wall of the tower. When he reached the window, he grabbed onto the ledge and pulled himself in. He closed the wooden double doors behind him.

Opposite from the window, there was a white marble fireplace with a set of red curtains above it. On the right side there was a stairway that went up to a balcony that led into a door flanked by some more curtains. Beneath the balcony there was another door. Under the stairwell there were shelves with pots, cups and plates, and in front there was a dinner table, a chair with a red backing and seat, and a kitchen table. To the left of the window, there was a mirror stand and a blue-painted closet. Beyond that, there was another window. Every inch of the walls was covered in beautiful paintings.

Finally sure that nobody would find him, Flynn breathed a sigh of relief. “Alone at last,” he muttered to himself, unslinging the satchel from his shoulder and opening it to admire his latest steal.

_CLANG!_

The intruder fell forward, unconscious. A young woman stood behind him, a cast iron frying pan held above her head defensively and a scared expression on her face. She let out a high-pitched squeal and ran back to hide behind a mannequin torso.

The girl wore a purple dress with pink accents. The skirt of her dress extended all the way to her ankles, stopping high enough to show her bare feet. She had fair skin, large green eyes, brown eyelashes and eyebrows, light freckles around her nose, and a small overbite in her front two teeth. Most noticeably, she had seventy feet of golden hair growing from her head, the long strands bunched together so that there was not a single split end, and the hair gathered together like a long, thick rope.

The girl rolled the mannequin as she inched closer to the intruder to get a better look. Stepping out from behind the mannequin, she lowered herself down toward the man, tapping him on the back of the head with her frying pan to see if he would respond. When he did not stir, she shared a glance with her pet chameleon, a palm-sized reptile who stood on the floor a few feet away. The chameleon shrugged. The girl used the handle of the frying pan to tilt the man’s head and push some bangs out of his face. When she got a good enough look at his face, she stared in awe, admiring the handsome spectacle.

Then he opened his eye, and Rapunzel went right back to being scared. She gasped and hit him with her frying pan, knocking him right back out.

Realizing that she had an unconscious stranger, who may have been like one of the dangerous men that her mother had warned her about for her entire life, Rapunzel quickly hid the man in her closet and held the doors shut by pinning a green chair up to the handles.

“Okay, okay, okay. I’ve got a person in my closet. I’ve got a person… in my closet,” she muttered to herself nervously. She looked at herself in the mirror as she realized the flipside of what she just did. “I’ve got a person in my closet!” she repeated, this time proudly. “Too weak to handle myself out there, huh, Mother?” she bragged, flourishing her frying pan and chuckling. “Tell that to my frying pan—” She cut herself off when she tried to spin the pan in her hand but accidentally hit herself in the eye. She recoiled from the hit and rubbed the pain away.

While she was doing this, she noticed the open satchel reflected in the mirror. She reached into it and took out a gold band studded with small pearls, rubies and sapphires. There were three teardrop-shaped diamond insets on the front. Curious as to what it was for, she put it around her arm, but it was far too big. She then peered through the diamonds at the chameleon, but her pet shook his head. She then put the band upon her head. The crown fit perfectly on her head, and she certainly looked regal, but the chameleon still was not sure.

Just then, she heard a shout of “Rapunzel!” from outside of the tower. Rapunzel quickly hid the crown and the satchel in a pot and ran over to open the window.

“Let down your hair,” the woman’s voice continued in a sing-song tone.

“One moment, Mother,” Rapunzel replied. She threw her hair over a hook hanging out over the window and let the rest of it fall down to the woman’s level.

“I’ve got a big surprise,” the woman shouted upward as she grabbed hold of the hair.

“I do too,” Rapunzel said, walking backward as she pulled on her end of the hair.

“I bet my surprise is bigger,” the woman teased as she ascended the tower.

“I really doubt it,” the girl muttered to herself.

By then, Rapunzel had pulled the woman all the way up to the window. The woman let go of the hair and sat down on the ledge. Mother Gothel, a woman who appeared to be in her early- to mid-forties, had flawless, smooth skin that appeared to be a shade of pale ivory, and had prominent cheekbones. She had gray eyes and brown eye shadow. Her curly black hair was thick and glossy and fell past her shoulders, while three curls hung over her forehead. Her fingernails were a dark brownish-gray. She was a tall, slender woman with a curvaceous figure. She wore a flattering crimson dress with elbow-length sleeves, gold trim, and a matching sash with a gold buckle. She also wore brown, buckled shoes and she had on a hooded black cloak. She carried a wicker basket on her right arm.

“I brought back parsnips. I’m going to make hazelnut soup for dinner. Your favorite. Surprise!” Gothel said with a cheerful tone and a theatrical flair.

“Well, Mother, there’s something I wanted to tell you, so—” Rapunzel began, or at least tried to. Earlier that morning, she had asked her Mother to take her to the outside world for her birthday the next day so they could watch the festival where lanterns were sent to float through the sky, something which happened every year on the night of her birthday. However, Gothel rejected her wish and, to deter her further, sang another one of her lectures about how the outside world was full of dangers such as wild animals, deadly nature traps and most of all cruel people, and reassured her that she was safer in the tower with her. But since she had “handled herself” against an intruder, Rapunzel thought she could change her Mother’s mind.

“Oh, Rapunzel, you know I hate leaving you after a fight, especially when I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong,” Gothel interrupted her as she removed her cloak and hung it up on a hook on the wall.

“Okay, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said earlier—”

“I hope you’re not still talking about the stars,” Gothel said dryly while taking the parsnips out of her basket.

“Floating lights,” Rapunzel corrected her. “And yes. I’m leading up to that—”

“Because I really thought we dropped the issue, sweetheart.”

“No, Mother,” Rapunzel said in exasperation, “I’m just saying you _think_ I’m not strong enough to handle myself out there—”

“Oh, darling, I _know_ you’re not strong enough to handle yourself out there,” Gothel cut her off while giving her a smarmy glare.

“But if you just—”

“Rapunzel, we’re done talking about this.”

Rapunzel started reaching for the green chair to remove it and open the door, intending to show her Mother her captive. “Trust me! I know what I’m—”

“Rapunzel. Rapunzel! Enough of the lights, Rapunzel! You are not leaving this tower! Ever!” Gothel shouted angrily.

Rapunzel stopped cold. Defeated, she retracted her hand, leaving the chair in its place.

Gothel slumped into the dinner chair and tiredly leaned her head into her hand. “Oh, great. Now I’m the bad guy,” she groaned.

Rapunzel glanced at the painting above the fireplace, one that depicted her sitting on a hill watching the floating lights in the sky, which she had only finished painting that morning. She closed her eyes dejectedly, realizing that her Mother was not going to allow her dream to come true.

“All I was going to say, Mother, is that…” she began weakly, then as she trailed off an idea came to her mind, “I know what I want for my birthday now.”

“And what is that?” Gothel asked bitterly.

“New paint. The paint made from the white shells you once brought me,” Rapunzel answered, the wheels turning in her head.

“Well, that is a very long trip, Rapunzel. Almost three days’ time.”

“I just thought it was a better idea than the… stars.”

Mother Gothel sighed, got up from the chair and approached Rapunzel. “Are you sure you’ll be all right on your own?” she asked, putting on a caring tone.

“I know I’m safe as long as I’m here,” Rapunzel replied, hugging her. Gothel hugged back, stroking the girl’s hair briefly.

Shortly afterward, Rapunzel had helped Gothel pack food into her basket. Gothel donned her cloak once again and took the basket. “I’ll be back in three days’ time. I love you very much, dear,” she reassured the girl.

“I love you more,” Rapunzel replied affectionately.

“I love you most.” With that, she descended down Rapunzel’s hair-pulley system and set off on her three-day trek.

* * *

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy pushed their way through the vine curtain and passed through the tunnel until they came into the tower clearing. As they approached, a Dandelion Heartless appeared. It quickly dispersed its seeds and sprouted more Heartless. The group swiftly defeated the foes, but when they turned back to the tower they saw a cloaked woman standing at the base of the structure.

“When did she get there?” Goofy wondered aloud. Kairi then pointed above the woman, and they noticed something with a golden glint retracting into the window.

Riku guided the group away, and they hid behind a tree so that the woman would not see them. When the woman had passed through the tunnel, they stepped out and took another look at the tower.

“You sure that guy went in there?” Mickey asked.

“Well, I’m pretty sure that the horse went the other way, and if it’s that determined to catch him, then he would want to get as far away from it as he could. This is the only direction where he could have gone, and there’s nowhere else he could go from here,” Sora reasoned.

They approached the tower. Sora tugged on the moss to see if it would hold his weight. “I’m going to take a look inside. If I’m not back in an hour, or if I shout for help or send a flare or something, send reinforcements.” He did not wait for a response before he started climbing up the tower by the moss. There were a few points when his friends worried that the moss would not hold and he would fall, but this did not happen.

Sora climbed up to the window and pulled himself in. He looked around to see if anyone was home, and took a few steps in. The first thing he noticed was the large piles of what appeared to be straw or fair hair strewn about the floor, all in what appeared to be a continuous length. The second thing he noticed was the open closet. In front of the closet, Sora saw Flynn Rider, splayed about unconscious.

“Huh?” As soon as he uttered that confused remark, he felt something hard hit him on the head and everything went black.

* * *

Sora wearily opened his eyes. Everything was fuzzy, but he could have sworn that he had been on the other side of the room, but now he could see the closed doors of the window. He finally shot awake, and tried to stand himself up, but found that he could not. He looked down at himself. He realized that he was seated in a chair. His forearms and shins were tied down by the stuff that he had seen on the floor, which, feeling it against his skin, he determined to actually be hair.

He looked up to see what was going on, and he saw the thief seated in a green chair in the center of the room, also tied up in the golden hair. There appeared to be a small green chameleon on his left shoulder. The chameleon slapped his face with one of its paws, apparently trying to wake him up, but that had no effect. It did the same with its tail, to no avail. It then decided to shoot its tongue into the man’s ear, which caused him to wake up with a start, jolting so hard that the chameleon fell off of his shoulder. He took in his surroundings, terrified, and struggled to escape his bonds, only to fail to do so.

“Is… Is this… hair?” Flynn wondered aloud.

“Struggling… Struggling is pointless,” a voice came from up in the rafters. The voice seemed to be that of a young woman, who was trying to sound imposing but only betrayed that she seemed nervous. The two prisoners tried to get a good look at her, but could only see a silhouette hidden in shadows.

Sora and Flynn saw the figure of their captor jump from her perch to the floor as if it was nothing. “I know why you’re here,” she said. “And… I’m not afraid of you.”

“What?” was all Flynn could say in response, having absolutely no idea what was going on. He noticed Sora and looked at him as if hoping he knew what was going on. However, the boy did his best to shrug. They both looked back at the silhouetted figure.

The woman stepped out of the shadows. Both captives could tell that she was a pretty girl in her upper teens with long golden hair, which indeed was the source of the material holding them in place. She was carrying a frying pan, which made Sora wonder if that was the weapon used to knock him out. “Who are you?” she asked, directing her question more toward Flynn, as if Sora was only an afterthought. Clearly, he realized, the man had left more of an impression on her, even if he was unconscious the whole time. Of course, she also might not have realized that he was awake. “And how did you find me?” she continued, brandishing her frying pan.

However, Flynn was a bit too infatuated to answer properly. “A-ha,” he muttered.

“Who are you? And how did you find me?” the girl repeated, more forcefully.

Flynn cleared his throat. “I know not who you are, nor how I came to find you. But may I just say…” he began poetically, which Sora found amusing. The man spoke in a suave, confident tone. Then, he gave her a cheesy flirtatious grin. “Hi.” He winked an eyebrow enticingly, much to the girl’s confusion. “How you doing? The name’s Flynn Rider. How’s your day going?”

Sora snickered, causing the girl to finally notice that he was awake. She was utterly baffled, but she steeled herself, not wanting to lose focus. “Who else knows my location, Flynn Rider?” she questioned, bringing her frying pan closer to Flynn’s face.

“All right, Blondie—” the thief began.

“Rapunzel,” she corrected.

“Gesundheit,” Flynn quipped. “Here’s the deal. I was in a situation, gallivanting through the forest. I came across your tower, and…” He stopped, realizing that something was missing. “Oh, oh no. Where is my satchel?” he asked Rapunzel, worried that he had lost the item he had stolen.

“I’ve hidden it,” Rapunzel retorted smugly, crossing her arms. “Somewhere you’ll never find it.”

Flynn looked to his right, then to his left. “It’s in the pot, isn’t it?” he guessed dryly, unimpressed, pointing at the pot as he spoke.

Angrily, Rapunzel hit him on the head with the frying pan, knocking him out once again. She reached into the pot and pulled out the satchel. She glared at Sora, and the boy obligingly closed his eyes. He heard Rapunzel move something made of stone.

“You can open your eyes now,” he heard her say moments later. He opened his eyes and saw Rapunzel standing in front of him, her arms crossed, trying to appear intimidating. “And why would you be here?” she asked him.

Sora decided that there would be no harm in being honest. “My name’s Sora. I’m actually new around these parts,” he explained. “I saw that ‘Flynn’ guy running past me, being chased by some people, so out of curiosity I followed him. His pursuers lost his trail, but I eventually tailed him here. I’m sorry to intrude.”

Rapunzel stared at him for several seconds, considering his words. “You’re… not here to hurt me? Or Mother?”

Sora was taken aback by this. “What? Why would I ever do that?” he questioned.

Rapunzel dodged his gaze, somewhat embarrassed. “Mother told me that the outside world is full of dangers, and everything out there would try to hurt me,” she explained somberly.

Sora frowned at this. “That’s a bit of an over-generalization,” he said. “Sure, there are plenty of bad people out there who would be more than happy to exploit and harm others, but there are also a lot of good people. You just have to go out and find the right ones.”

He looked around the room and noticed the artwork on the walls. “Did you paint those?” he asked.

“Huh?” Sora cleared up her confusion by having her follow his gaze to the painted walls. “Oh, yeah. I did,” she replied, smiling.

“They’re really good,” he told her.

“You really think so?” she asked him, cheerfully.

“Of course.” He then noticed that they covered every inch of the wall. “Wow. You sure did a lot.”

“Yeah. Well, I have a lot of time to myself when Mother is out,” she said.

Sora raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never been outside of the tower, have you?”

Rapunzel shook her head. Some of her hair that just reached the floor wiggled slightly. “Mother always warned me that I would never be able to handle myself out there, and I wouldn’t survive the dangers of the outside world.”

Sora wondered if the girl’s “Mother” was actually keeping her prisoner. He certainly had a few questions about her parental judgment. All the same, he felt bad for Rapunzel. She had been isolated from the world around her and all social interaction save for her “Mother”. And on top of that, the Mother left her alone for extended periods of time, leaving her in a tower with only so much to do. It was a wonder that the girl did not yet completely go mad.

He was going to continue the conversation when he looked past Rapunzel and back at Flynn. He realized that the chameleon was once again on his shoulder, sticking its tongue into his ear.

Flynn woke up and realized what the chameleon was doing. He jolted, knocking the chameleon off just like before, then rubbed his ear against the shoulder of his vest to try to get the reptile saliva out, muttering “Would you stop that?”

Rapunzel quickly retook her place in front of Flynn, crossing her arms confidently, still holding the frying pan under her arm. “Now it’s hidden where you’ll never find it,” she informed him. “So, what do you want with my hair?” Sora shook his head, realizing that he had not convinced her to shake off that paranoia; she seemed to have warmed up to him, but she was still skeptical of the other intruder. “To cut it?”

“What?!” Flynn gasped.

“Sell it?” Rapunzel guessed again, pointing the frying pan under the man’s chin.

“No! Listen, the only thing I want to do with your hair is to get out of it! Literally!”

Rapunzel paused for a beat. “Wait… You don’t want my hair?” she asked, confused.

“Why on Earth would I want your hair? Look, I was being chased. I saw a tower. I climbed it. End of story.”

“Well, that lines up with what he said.” Rapunzel glanced over at Sora briefly.

“Who is that guy?” Flynn asked, exasperated. “Never mind.”

“You’re telling the truth?” Rapunzel figured she should check.

“Yes!” the man pleaded.

With a squeak, the chameleon crawled out from behind Rapunzel’s hair, having apparently been standing on the back of her neck for the whole conversation, and scurried down her arm and up her frying pan until it was at the point that was just a few inches from Flynn’s face. It stared intently at him, forcing him to lean his head back and stare, wide-eyed, at the reptilian. After a few seconds, the chameleon looked back at Rapunzel. She drew back and cupped the chameleon in her hands. Making sure she was far enough away from both of her prisoners, she faced away from them and brought her pet close to her face. They started whispering a conversation that neither Flynn nor Sora could make out, Rapunzel using words and the chameleon making squeaking noises. Sora was able to hear her say “Pascal”, which he guessed was the reptile’s name.

“Okay, Flynn Rider,” she began, returning to her conversation with the thief. “I’m prepared to offer you a deal.”

“Deal?”

“Look this way.” She tugged on her hair, causing the green chair to spin around, though this caused Flynn to lose balance and fall face-first on the floor. In the meantime, Rapunzel had climbed up onto the fireplace mantel and drew the curtains open. Sora glanced at the art, now illuminated by the glow from a skylight window. “Do you know what these are?” she asked Flynn sternly.

“You mean the lantern thing they do for the princess?” he identified, his voice distorted due to having half of his face squashed against the stone tile floor. Sora raised an eyebrow, his interest piqued. Princess?

“Lanterns… I knew they weren’t stars,” she said under her breath. “Well, tomorrow evening,” she directed at Flynn, pointing her frying pan at him as she did so, “they will light the night sky with these ‘lanterns’. You will act as my guide, take me to these lanterns, and return me home safely. Then, and only then, will I return your satchel to you. That is my deal.”

“Yeah,” Flynn said, lifting himself up with his hands and pushing himself and the chair onto their side. “No-can-do. Unfortunately, the kingdom and I aren’t exactly ‘friendly’ at the moment, so I won’t be taking you anywhere.”

Rapunzel and Pascal traded glances. The chameleon made a very human gesture suggesting that she hit Flynn again, but the girl had other ideas. She jumped down and pulled at her hair until Flynn was upright again.

“Call it what you will, Flynn Rider,” she began, enunciating his name in a mocking tone. “Fate, destiny—”

“A horse,” Flynn quipped in a deadpan tone.

“So, I have made the decision to trust you.”

“A horrible decision.”

“But trust me when I tell you this,” she took on a more serious tone. She then pulled her hair until Flynn was about to fall forward, then leaned her hand against the back of the chair to keep up. She kept her eyes locked with Flynn’s. “You can tear this tower apart brick by brick, but without my help, you will never find your precious satchel.”

“Mm-hmm. Let me just get this straight. I take you to see the lanterns, bring you back home, and you’ll give me back my satchel?” the thief clarified.

“Sounds about right,” Sora interjected.

“I promise,” Rapunzel declared, though Flynn did not seem too convinced. “And when I promise something, I never, ever break that promise. Ever.”

Flynn stared at her blankly for another second. “All right, listen. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice. Here comes the smolder.” He then put on the most over-the-top pleading pout that Sora had ever seen. The boy struggled to hold in his laughter. On Rapunzel’s end, the man’s blatant attempt at exploiting his attractiveness simply confused her, though she remained focused.

“This is kind of an off-day for me. This doesn’t normally happen,” Flynn muttered, disappointed. “Fine, I’ll take you to see the lanterns,” he finally relented.

“Really?” Rapunzel dropped her serious façade and let go of the chair, bringing her hands up beneath her face cheerfully. However, in doing so she dropped the chair, causing Flynn to fall on his face. Rapunzel and Sora winced at this. “Oops.”

“You broke my smolder,” Flynn whined.

“Say, would you mind if I tag along?” Sora requested. “You could probably use a bodyguard. There are these creatures called Heartless that have been showing up around here recently, and they cause trouble all over the place. Fighting them is kind of my thing, so I could keep you safe from them. Plus, my friends and I would really like to see the kingdom.”

“Your friends?” Rapunzel parroted.

“Yeah. They’re actually outside on the ground, waiting for me, and…” He realized something. “I said to send someone up if I took more than an hour. How long was I out?”

“About five minutes,” the girl replied.

“Oh, good. Plenty of time.”

Rapunzel looked at Pascal and thought for a moment. “Sure, come along. The more, the merrier!” she answered his request.

“Yeah, why not?” Flynn added cynically.

“Great! Now that we have that all settled, I have another question. Would you please untie us?” Sora all but shouted.

“Oh, right. Sorry about that.” Rapunzel got to work unwrapping Sora and Flynn. Since the hair was so long, it took a few minutes but eventually they were free.

* * *

Down below, Sora’s friends were doing whatever they could to allay their boredom. Goofy was snoozing on the hill. Riku and Kairi were sparring. Donald was patrolling the perimeter of the tower. Mickey was reading a book that he had brought in the event of moments like this.

When Donald finished his current lap around the tower, he stopped and addressed the group. “What’s taking him so long?” he asked in exasperation.

“He could have just run into more than we thought he would,” Riku suggested. “For all we know, he could be exploring. Regardless, we haven’t heard any signs of a struggle, and there’s still plenty of time before the point where he told us to check up on him. Just give it time.”

“Hey guys!” They looked up and saw Sora standing at the window, waving down at them. Goofy woke up on hearing the greeting and looked up as well. Riku and Kairi laughed, glad to see him no worse for wear.

Sora grabbed onto the moss and started to climb down. When he was thirty feet off of the ground he simply let go and dropped the rest of the way. He went up to talk to his friends.

“Things got a little strange,” he admitted. “But, good news! We’re going with Flynn and this girl, Rapunzel to see the kingdom.”

As he said that, Flynn climbed out of the window and started scaling back down using his arrows.

“Well, we might not be able to meet any high-level authority figures yet, but we can still get the lay of the land,” Mickey noted.

“And what’s more fun than seeing new sights?” Kairi added.

The discussion was interrupted when they saw an enormous length of golden hair fly out and wrap around the hook above the window. Rapunzel stepped onto the window ledge and grabbed onto the length of her hair that was beyond the hook. She stepped toward the edge, turned back briefly as if hesitating, then leapt off of the ledge, using her hold on the hair to keep her descent safe. She stopped just short of touching the ground and paused for a moment. She looked at the grass uncertainly, still nervous about her decision. Then, gingerly, she lowered one bare foot to the ground. As she felt the grass between her toes, she grew confident and planted her other foot on the ground. Cheerfully, she pulled her hair until it was all off of the hook and on the ground. In the meantime, Flynn climbed back down and was on the ground next to her.

Although they were not entirely sure about the new compatriots whom they had not even met, the party could not help but smile warmly when they saw Rapunzel’s innocence as the girl admired the grass, the blowing seeds of a dandelion (the weed this time), the flowing stream, and a bird fluttering nearby.

As they started walking out of the clearing, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy introduced themselves to Rapunzel and Flynn, and vice versa. The adventurers quickly grew fond of the kind and naïve girl, while Flynn remained aloof. Sora had explained what they were doing, why Rapunzel wanted to visit the kingdom, and how Flynn Rider got roped into all of this, though he omitted the part where he got knocked out with a frying pan.

One thing that the six adventurers could agree on: they made the right choice in following the thief into the tower.


	22. Chapter 21: Most Certainly Not a Stereotypical Pub Filled to the Brim with Violent Criminals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad that there isn't a character limit on chapter titles on this site. The version of this chapter on FFN had to be listed as "Chapter 21: The Snuggly Duckling" because the real title wouldn't fit (but the real title still appeared in the actual text). Here, no such problem.
> 
> Also, I've got a surprise midway through the chapter. Let me know what you think of how I did it. I'll put in some more down the line.

In a not-too-distant field, roughly an hour’s walk from the tower, Maximus continued his hunt for the thief and the stolen crown. He sniffed around, trying to pick up his scent, when he heard someone’s footsteps. Judging from the loudness and the rate of the footsteps, whatever was approaching was most likely human. From what the horse could guess, there was nobody else who would be this far out into the forest, save for the guards, but they would be traveling in a group; if this was just one human, then it could be Flynn Rider. Quickly, he hid behind a large rock, where he waited for the person to come closer. This was his chance. In just a few seconds, the guard captain’s horse would capture the thief and return the stolen crown.

Patience. Just a few more seconds.

Maximus leapt over the rock and glared at what he thought was his quarry, letting out a triumphant whinny.

Mother Gothel recoiled in shock at the ambush. When the horse realized that he was scaring some lady instead of apprehending the criminal, his face fell in disappointment.

Gothel calmed down and gave the equine a look of disdain. “A palace horse,” she reassured herself, then she realized something. “Where’s your rider?” She gasped, her eyes opening wide. “Rapunzel.” She turned around, fear in her eyes. “Rapunzel!” she shouted as she ran back to the tower, leaving Maximus utterly bewildered.

Gothel hurried back as fast as she could. When she was at the base of the tower, she shouted upward “Rapunzel, let down your hair!” There was no response. “Rapunzel?” she pleaded.

When there was still no reply, she ran around to the opposite side, where the wall was covered in vines that sprouted purple flowers. She ripped a section of vines off, revealing an archway sealed entirely with rocks. She frantically tore the rocks out and opened the way, then ran all the way up the spiral stairs. When she reached the ceiling, she pushed upward, knocking a section out of its place, and pushed the stone trapdoor to the side. She climbed into Rapunzel’s room and searched frantically for the girl, calling her name as she went. She tore the curtains off of the second set of windows, illuminating the room with an almost haunting glow.

Gothel started to wander around the room, distressed. Then she noticed a glint under the bottom step of the staircase on the opposite side of the room. She investigated and lifted a stone that sat on top of a wooden slat right where it warped inward, allowing a glance into the space beneath the step. Inside that space, she found a brown leather satchel. She picked it up and opened it to see what it was that reflected the light, and she took out the crown.

It took a second for her to realize exactly what it was, at which point she gasped in fright and dropped it. _That was the crown given to her when she was a newborn. How did it come to be here? If she finds out who she really is, then I will lose her forever!_

She looked into the satchel again and drew out a parchment. It had a drawing of a man’s face. It said:

WANTED

DEAD OR ALIVE

FLYNN RIDER

THIEF

Adopting a shifty gaze, Gothel opened a drawer in the desk and took out a long, thin dagger with a cross-guard that curved toward the blade and curled at the ends.

_No. I will have the Flower back, whatever it takes._

She sniffed the air, detecting something rather unusual.

_I smell… magic. A magic I that has not shown itself in centuries._

* * *

“So, if you’re not from around here, where are you from?” Rapunzel asked Sora, Riku and Kairi. The party of eight (plus Pascal the chameleon) were trekking back through the forest. Mickey, Donald and Goofy were scouting ahead, checking to see whether the guards were still patrolling the area, leaving the Destiny Islands trio with the sheltered girl and the thief. They had been walking for over an hour. Much of the time has been spent by Rapunzel feeling conflicted over her decision, flip-flopping between feeling guilty over disobeying her Mother and celebrating at the top of her lungs. Flynn had also been trying to guilt her into giving up on her journey, while the others just rolled their eyes.

The three teenagers were taken aback by the question Rapunzel posed. Sora and Riku were not used to people asking such questions, and while Kairi knew that they were not supposed to tell others about the other worlds she did not know how to explain such things away. But she decided to come up with something anyway.

“We’re explorers,” she said, which was technically the truth. “We’ve wanted to travel and visit all the corners of the world, and now we’re finally getting the chance to do it together.”

Sora and Riku were surprised by how easily she was explaining the situation without revealing too much. Though, Sora noted, it was not too far off from what he said to Ariel when first arriving in Atlantica and asking her to teach him, Donald and Goofy how to swim underwater.

“It was originally just the three of us,” Riku added. “We met up with Mickey, Donald and Goofy along the way.” Again, this left multiple details out, but was technically true.

“Must be nice to see new places,” Rapunzel mused. “Meet new people, have a lot of fun.”

Sora smiled. “It sure can be fun,” he replied.

Just then, a Shadow Heartless materialized in front of Rapunzel. Sora, Riku and Kairi stopped, preparing to bring out their weapons. Flynn, meanwhile, looked at the creature in confusion. However, Rapunzel stared in fascination. She squatted down to the creature’s level and stared into its featureless round face with its simple yellow eyes.

“Aw, aren’t you a cute little thing,” the girl said, petting the Heartless on the head, much to the creature’s bemusement.

“Rapunzel, be careful,” Riku warned. “That’s a Heartless, a being of darkness that will go after your heart.”

This did not seem to register with Rapunzel, however, until the Shadow tried to strike her with its claws. “Eep!” She jumped back up to her feet and backed away from the attack. The Shadow lunged forward, but the girl drew out her frying pan and crushed it with a single hit, disintegrating the enemy into black smoke.

More Heartless appeared, including Shadows, Soldiers, Emerald Blues, and Green Requiems. There was also a large Heartless that resembled a centaur with a red tail, hooves, and cape, wearing blue armor and carrying a staff with a yellow blade shaped like a blocky spiral design on the top.

Sora summoned his Keyblade and leapt at the Assault Rider. He swung hid weapon at the beast’s torso, pushing it backward, but the horse body remained stalwart. Before Sora could begin another combo, the Assault Rider twirled its staff in its hand, spinning it fast enough to hit Sora rapidly several times like propeller blades, ultimately throwing him to the ground.

“I hate these things,” he muttered as he brought himself to his feet, only to be sent flying once again when the Heartless stomped hard on the ground, throwing him off of his feet with a shockwave.

Riku and Kairi fought off the Shadows and Emerald Blues. Kairi sustained a few scratches and was sent flying by a tornado, but she caught herself on a tree branch and regained her bearings. As soon as the winds died down, Kairi retaliated, cutting the floating Heartless in two.

Flynn had taken a hunting knife from his belt satchel and was cutting his way through the Soldiers and some of the Shadows. He ducked when Sora flew past him from the force of the Assault Rider’s attack. He noticed that the Green Requiems were healing the Heartless’ injuries, so he leapt after and jabbed his knife into one of them, slamming it into a tree until there was nothing left of it, but this left the knife stuck in the wood. He tried to pull the blade out, but had to leave it to dodge a Soldier’s attack. He ran after the other Green Requiem, leapt and grabbed it by the feet. It tried to fly away, but his weight dragged it down. When his feet met the ground, he swung the Heartless through the air and bashed it into the same tree several times until it disintegrated.

Rapunzel helped Sora to his feet. “You okay?” she asked, concerned. Sora nodded. Rapunzel looked at the Assault Rider and got an idea. She grabbed a portion of her hair, swung her arm around a few times to flick it like a whip. She threw her hair to wrap around the enemy’s staff, then tugged, starting a tug-of-war with the Heartless, which it ultimately lost while falling forward. Sora caught the staff and slipped it out of the loop of Rapunzel’s hair. He thanked her, then ran straight at the beast, lunging and stabbing the tip of the spear into its leg. While it was thus incapacitated, Sora bludgeoned it with his Keyblade until it was slain.

Pretty soon, the Heartless were all gone. Sora cast Cura to heal whatever cuts and bruises were sustained. All weapons were dismissed or sheathed.

“Well, that was… mildly worrying,” Rapunzel stated. “But it wasn’t too bad.” On hearing this, Flynn rubbed his chin, pondering something.

At this point, Mickey, Donald and Goofy rejoined the group. “The guards seem to have gone elsewhere, though they’re probably still searching the forest,” Mickey explained. “But the way ahead is clear.”

Goofy noticed that the other five had recently been tensed up, and he saw a few scratches in nearby trees. “Did something happen while we were gone?” he asked.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Sora waved him off. “We took care of it.”

Donald felt his stomach growl. “Now would be a good time to get something to eat,” he said. The others could not help but agree.

Flynn snapped his fingers. “You’re in luck, boys, because I know the perfect place!” he announced, a devilish smirk on his face. “Follow me.”

* * *

“I know it’s around here somewhere,” Flynn said as they walked, scanning about the area. He looked to the left and, down a path lined with low-level fences not unlike highway guardrails, he saw a purple-roofed single-story building that looked like an architect’s nightmare, twisting and curving with the lay of the land, and it appeared to be built around a large tree. “Ah, there it is. _The Snuggly Duckling_.” Several yards ahead of the front door, there was a sign that hung at the side of the path, with a section in the middle cut out in which sat a painted planar carving of a yellow duckling surrounded by some cattails. There were some horses tied off at the front, indicating that the establishment was indeed occupied.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Donald shared suspicious glances.

“Don’t worry, very quaint place, perfect for you. Don’t want you scaring and giving up on this endeavor now, do we?” Flynn reassured Rapunzel.

“Well, I do like ducklings,” Rapunzel said with an innocent smile.

“Yay!” Flynn said with a sarcastic cheer.

As Flynn started to lead her inside, the other six hung back, still following but keeping a good enough distance to chat quietly amongst themselves.

“You know, I’m thinking it’s not as nice as it looks,” Goofy guessed. Donald rolled his eyes at how obvious a trick this was.

“I’ve never actually been in a bar brawl,” Sora mused. “Granted, not old enough to drink, of course, but still. And punching a guy that Sion is in the process of bouncing does not count.”

“They can be fun,” Riku said, earning an inquiring eyebrow-raise from Kairi.

“All the same, we’d better go in and watch their backs,” Kairi added. With that, they increased their pace as they closed the gap with Flynn and Rapunzel.

Flynn threw the door open inward. “Garçon, your finest table please!” he called out. Rapunzel gasped in horror.

The modestly-lit bar was filled with brutish-looking thugs decked in armor and warrior garb that some would find reminiscent of Vikings. One had a moustache divided into two sections at either side of his mouth; he wore an enormous brown spiked pauldron on his right shoulder, and he had a hook in place of his left hand. The enormous man next to him wore a helmet with a wide set of horns that curled up and inward at the tips. One of the scrawnier men, though only relatively, had a large red nose and uneven teeth. Another, who appeared to have some girth, wore a large metal, bucket-shaped helmet that covered his entire face and also had a pair of tiny horns at the top, and, interestingly, he had a tattoo of a cupcake on his right upper arm. Among other fearsome-looking ruffians, there was also a short old man who appeared to be in a senile and inebriated daze.

Afraid, Rapunzel held her frying pan out defensively. Flynn leaned on her shoulders as he led her through the crowd.

“You smell that? Take a deep breath through the nose,” he said right into her ear, inhaling the smell when he said that. “Really, let it seep in. What are you getting? Because to me, it’s part man smell, and part _really_ bad man smell. I don’t know why, but overall it just smells like the color brown. Your thoughts?”

Rapunzel was yanked back as she felt something grab onto her hair. It turned out to be one of the thugs holding it. “That’s a lot of hair,” the guy muttered.

“She’s growing it out,” Flynn replied. He took a better look at the man. “Is that blood in your moustache? Blondie, look at all the blood in his moustache!”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy made their way through the crowd, glaring confidently and warningly at any thug who dared to meet their eyes. One poked Mickey’s ears, but the mouse king glared upward at him, intimidating him into backing off. Another reached out toward Kairi, but she slapped his hand away.

Rapunzel had gathered up most of her hair into a large bundle and backed away quickly, only to bump back against another large thug who was sitting near the fireplace. She spun around to give him a quick warning frying-pan-point, then turned back.

“Ooh, you don’t look so good, Blondie,” Flynn teased. “Maybe we should get you home. Call it a day? Probably better off. This is a five-star joint, after all. And if you can’t handle this place, well, maybe you should be back in your tower,” he suggested as he led Rapunzel to the door, right past their glowering traveling companions.

“If he gets her hurt, I’m going to kill him,” Riku grumbled, balling his fists.

Before they could reach the door, however, the thug with the giant horns slammed the door shut, pinning a sheet of paper to the door with his hand. “Is this you?” he asked sternly.

The eight newcomers leaned in and noticed that the sketch on the Wanted poster greatly resembled Flynn. Nervously, Flynn pinched the thug’s index finger, which was covering the nose, and moved it out of the way. To his dismay he saw that the sketch was perfect except for the fact that the nose extended three inches. Sora, Donald and Goofy started laughing, while Riku, Kairi and Mickey entered their own fit of snickers.

“No, now they’re just being mean,” Flynn muttered.

“Oh, it’s him, all right,” Hook-Hand sneered as he approached the thief and grabbed him by the shirt. “Greno, go find some guards,” he ordered, prompting one of the patrons to run out the door. “That reward’s going to buy me a new hook.”

The helmet-wearing thug pulled Flynn out of Hook-Hand’s grasp. “I could use the money!” he shouted.

“What about me? I’m broke!” The enormous thug did the same. Almost instantly, the thugs swarmed on Flynn, trying to grab him so they could claim the reward.

Realizing the predicament, Sora and Riku cracked their knuckles, ready for a fight. Goofy summoned his shield and Mickey picked up a stool.

“Leave him alone! Pinocchio’s with us!” Sora called out, chuckling at his joke to which Donald and Goofy joined in. Then he stopped awkwardly. “They don’t know who that is.” He looked back at Kairi. “You don’t either.”

Rapunzel tried to get into the clump of warring brutes, trying to rescue Flynn, while the thief made his own attempts at pleading. “Guys stop! Hey, leave him alone! Give me back my guide! Ruffians!” She even started pummeling against one thug’s shield with her frying pan, to no effect.

Finally, she threw her hair over a support beam and let it wrap around a branch. She pulled her hair, using the beam like a pulley to pull the branch up. Just as Hook-Hand was about to punch Flynn while the others held him still, she released, and the branch fell back down and bounced off of Hook-Hand’s head. The other thugs stopped roughing Flynn about and stared in shock.

“Put him down!” she demanded. Hook-Hand turned to glare at her. “Okay, I don’t know where I am, and I need him to take me to see the lanterns because I’ve been dreaming about them my entire life! Find your humanity! Haven’t any of you ever had a dream?” she pleaded.

Hook-Hand unslung an ax from his back and started marching toward Rapunzel. The enormous thug lifted Flynn up and hung him by the shirt on a hook. Sora and Riku discretely summoned their Keyblades and Kairi placed her hand on the handle of her rapier, ready to come to the girl’s defense. As Hook-Hand approached, Rapunzel backed away in fear until she found herself leaning back over against a barrel.

When it looked like Rapunzel was about to get hurt, Hook-Hand said something surprising in his deep voice. “I had a dream, once.” He then threw his ax so that it hit the wall above a bard’s head, slicing the feather off of his green hat. A fearful stare in his eyes, the purple-and-green-clad musician, who was manacled by the ankle to a ball-and-chain, started playing on his accordion.

**_Hook-Hand:_ ** _I’m malicious, mean and scary, my sneer could curdle dairy, and, violence-wise, my hands are not the cleanest. But despite my evil look, and my temper, and my hook… [He back up to a piano as a spotlight comes on and focuses on him] I’ve always yearned to be a concert pianist!_

_[While playing on the piano with both his hand and his hook] Can’t you see me on the stage performing Mozart/ Tickling the ivories till the gleam? [He strums across the keys, accidentally launching them out of the piano while Rapunzel and Goofy block them with frying pan and shield]_

_Yep, I’d rather be called deadly/ for my killer showtune medley. Thank you! ‘Cause way down deep inside I’ve got a dream!_

**_Chorus of other thugs:_ ** _He’s got a dream! He’s got a dream! [Flynn and Donald are confused, while all else look on in amusement]_

**_Hook-Hand:_ ** _See, I ain’t as cruel and vicious as I seem. Though I do like breaking femurs/ you can count me with the dreamers. Like everybody else I’ve got a dream!_

**_Big-Nose:_ ** _I’ve got scars and lumps and bruises/ plus something here that oozes/ and let’s not even mention my complexion. But despite my extra toes, and my goiter, and my nose/ I really want to make a love connection._

_Can’t you see me with a special little lady/ rowing in a rowboat down the stream? Though I’m one disgusting blighter/ I’m a lover, not a fighter. ‘Cause way down deep inside I’ve got a dream!_

**_Chorus:_ ** _He’s got a dream! He’s got a dream!_

**_Big-Nose:_ ** _[at the same time] I’ve got a dream! I’ve got a dream! [on his own] And I know one day romance will reign supreme. Though my face leaves people screaming/ there’s a child behind it dreaming. Like everybody else I’ve got a dream!_

**_Others:_ ** _Toll would like to quit and be a florist._

_Gunther does interior design._

_Urf is into mime. [A chubby man dressed and made up as a mime demonstrates in front of the party]_

_Attila’s cupcakes are sublime! [The helmet-wearing thug brings out a tray of cherry-topped cupcakes]_

_Bruiser knits! Killer sews! Fang does little puppet shows!_

**_Hook-Hand:_ ** _And Vladimir collects ceramic unicorns. [The enormous thug brings out a pair of tiny items of such description and clinks them together]_

Hook-Hand: “What about you?”

Flynn: “I’m sorry, me?”

Big-Nose: “What’s your dream?” He takes Flynn off of the hook and sets him on the ground.

Flynn: “Sorry, boys. I don’t sing.” He finds himself surrounded by swords, along with one Keyblade and a staff.

**_Flynn:_ ** _I’ve got dreams like you. No, really. Just much less… touchy-feely. They mainly happen somewhere warm and sunny. [He grabs one of Vladimir’s unicorns, earning a scowl, and places it in a bowl with a pile of oatmeal] On an island that I own/ tanned and rested and alone/ surrounded by enormous piles of money! [Some of the thugs grab him and throw him into the air, cheering]_

Big Nose: [to Sora and the others] “What about youse guys?”

[An accordion solo swells up but Sora is left in silence]

Sora: I… don’t know.

The music came to an awkward halt.

“I mean, I’m enjoying my adventures, but in the long run, I’m not sure where to take it when there are no more monsters to fight and lands to save,” he explained somberly. Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy looked at him sympathetically. The former two knew better than anyone how he lived in the moment.

The elderly “thug”, nicknamed Shorty, shrugged. “Eh, we can’t all have it mapped out,” he said.

“Yeah, you’ll figure it out. I’m sure of it,” Hook-Hand reassured him. “Any other dreams about?”

Kairi snapped her fingers to signal for the music to start playing again.

**_Kairi:_ ** _So, the three of us who were never apart/ planned to sail to lands great and far. But we were split and I couldn’t go with them to new stars. But now we’re together and ready for some fun/ and I’m ready to fly with them to each and every one! [she wraps her arms around Sora and Riku’s necks]_

_Can’t you see me running with my greatest friends/ fighting with the shadows’ darker schemes? I was just a simple girl/ now I’m soaring between worlds! Oops._

Sora: You’re fine.

**_Kairi:_ ** _Like everybody else I’ve got a dream!_

**_Thugs:_ ** _Huzzah!_

**_Rapunzel:_ ** _I’ve got a dream! (She’s got a dream!) I’ve got a dream! (She’s got a dream!) I just want to see the floating lanterns gleam! And with every passing hour/ I’m so glad I left my tower. Like all you lovely folks, I’ve got a dream!_

**_Chorus:_ ** _She’s got a dream! He’s got a dream! They’ve got a dream! We’ve got a dream! So, our differences ain’t really that extreme. We’re one big team!_

_Call us brutal! Sick! Sadistic! And grotesquely optimistic! ‘Cause way down deep inside we’ve got a dream! I’ve got a dream. I’ve got a dream. I’ve got a dream. I’ve got a dream._

**_Rapunzel:_ ** _I’ve got a dream!_

**_Chorus:_ ** _Yes, way down deep inside I’ve got a dream! Yeah!_

The door opened, and Greno came back in. “I found the guards,” he announced. Realizing the predicament, Flynn pulled Rapunzel off of the table that she had been using as a center platform at the end of the song, and Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy followed them as they hid behind the counter. The captain of the guard and two other soldiers marched in, with the captain shoving Greno to the side.

“Where’s Rider? Where is he?” the captain demanded. “I know he’s in here somewhere. Find him. Turn the place upside-down if you have to!” He slammed his fist onto the counter to emphasize.

Once the captain had walked away, Flynn peeked over the counter, as did Riku. A couple other guards led the Stabbington Brothers, still in their custody but not yet back in prison, into the bar.

Hook-Hand held his hook in front of Flynn to get everyone’s attention. He glanced toward the back wall to indicate where to go. As they snuck toward the wall, Sora summoned his Keyblade and pointed. A beam shot out and hit a rectangular panel in the floor as it curved up to meet the wall, which opened backwards and downward like a trapdoor, revealing a hidden passage. The party of eight, with Hook-Hand behind Rapunzel and Flynn, crouched before the opening.

“Go. Live your dream,” Hook-Hand said.

“I will,” Flynn replied.

Hook-Hand glared at him. “Your dream stinks. I was talking to her.” Sora and Kairi wagged their heads from side to side as if conceding to the point. Disappointed, Flynn crawled into the passage.

“Thanks for everything,” Rapunzel said, giving Hook-Hand a kiss on the cheek before following Flynn. The thug smiled at this.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy started to follow, but Hook-Hand stopped Sora. “You’ll find your dream. And when you do, you follow it to the ends of the earth. Got it?” he said. Sora nodded. Hook-Hand glanced over the party. “You all, you’re pals. You stick together.” With those words, he shook hands with Sora and let them through, turning a blind eye as Donald and Goofy crawled through carrying some food. When they were all in the tunnel, Hook-Hand flipped a lever upward to close the trapdoor.

While this was happening, the other thugs were trying to distract the guards. Vladimir, holding the Wanted poster, picked up the diaper-wearing Shorty.

“I believe this is the man you’re looking for,” the enormous thug proclaimed.

“You got me!” Shorty said, holding his arms forward to get cuffed.

The captain could only look on, baffled, wondering if everything, including the guy in the blue shirt coming to alert them, was just an elaborate prank. A guard came back from his own search.

“Sir! There’s no sign of Rider,” he reported.

They heard a whinny coming from outside, drawing their attention. Maximus ran in and blasted the door open.

“Maximus!” the captain said, both glad to see his horse again and curious as to what he was doing.

Maximus sniffed the ground until he came upon a scent. He pushed a group of thugs aside with his forelegs and made his way to the counter.

“What’s he doing?” one of the guards asked. The captain, confident in his steed’s intuition, slammed his hand over the man’s mouth.

Maximus neighed, standing with his forelegs on the counter and pointing at the lever. The captain shook his head lightly in confusion. Maximus gave him a look as if to say _Come on, you moron. It’s obvious._ He pushed down on the lever, opening the trapdoor.

“A passage!” the captain said triumphantly. “Come on, men. Let’s go. Conli! Make sure those boys don’t get away!” The guards followed the captain and Maximus into the tunnel, leaving the scrawny guard who was armed with a halberd to watch over the hulking robber brothers.

* * *

Mother Gothel watched as the events unfolded inside the pub. She had trailed the party to the pub and was about to enter and retrieve Rapunzel but was stopped due to the activity that had developed inside, as she had arrived in the early stages of the musical number. Then she had hidden when the guards appeared, and waited for them to catch the thief, in which case she would not have to kill him and could drag Rapunzel back without trouble. However, she had still lost her target.

“I’ve got a dream… I’ve got a dream…” Gothel turned on hearing the drunken singing and saw Shorty stumbling around. When the little old man saw her, he smiled and leaned against the door frame. “Oh, somebody get me a glass, 'cause I just found me a tall drink of water,” he said flirtatiously.

Oh, stop it, you big lug,” Gothel replied, acting flattered. She laughed briefly, then drew out her dagger, pointing it into Shorty’s nose. “Where does that tunnel let out?” she asked sternly.

“…Knife!” the old man exclaimed hoarsely.

* * *

The tunnel was hollowed out of the earth, with stone all around leaving plenty of open space to carry in a cart full of supplies. Judging from the skeleton with a sword embedded in its chest as well as that observation, Riku determined that it must have been used for smuggling purposes, be it to smuggle items inside or to smuggle people outside, though the transport was not completely incident-free. Based on the layer of dust covering the skeleton and the sword and the cobweb connecting the skull and the handle of the weapon, this passage had been in use for a very long time.

Flynn carried a lantern as everyone made their way through the cavern. Sora was in front of Rapunzel and Flynn, keeping a lookout. Flynn carried a globe-shaped lantern to light the way. Next to him, Rapunzel was smiling giddily. Goofy and Riku were right behind them, then Kairi, then Mickey and Donald guarding the rear. Sora and Mickey reflected light off of their Keyblades, and Donald added illumination by filling the top of his staff with an aura of fire and thunder. Everyone made sure not to step on Rapunzel’s long hair.

“Well, I’ve got to say, didn’t know you had that in you back there. That was pretty impressive,” Flynn admitted.

“I know!” Rapunzel said excitedly. Her voice echoed a bit. She calmed down a bit. “I know…” Flynn smiled back at her.

“That was pretty amazing,” Sora commended. “Even though… I threw off the groove in the middle.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over that,” Goofy reassured him.

“Kairi sure can sing,” Donald interjected.

“Oh, you should have seen her at the eighth grade talent show,” Sora said. “Ahem… _When you walk away, you don’t hear me say…_ ” he riffed.

“ _Please! Oh, baby. Don’t go. Simple and clean is the way that you’re making me feel tonight. It’s hard to let it go,_ ” Kairi pitched in, only to start laughing, with Sora and Riku joining in.

Sora saw movement to the left and jumped out of the throng to strike down some Heartless.

Rapunzel nervously pushed some hair behind her ear. “So, Flynn. Where are you from?” she asked.

“Whoa, whoa! Sorry, Blondie, I don’t do backstory,” he interrupted. “However, I am becoming very interested in yours. Now, I- I know I’m not supposed to mention the hair.”

“Nope,” the girl responded.

“Or the mother.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Frankly, I’m too scared to ask about the frog.”

“Chameleon,” she corrected.

“Nuance. Here’s my question though. If you want to see the lanterns so badly, why haven’t you gone before?”

This took Rapunzel by surprise, causing her to chuckle nervously. The others in the group raised their eyebrows questioningly, wondering the same thing.

Before she could answer, a pebble fell on her head, and they heard a rumbling that shook the loose stones. Everyone turned around and saw the guards coming their way.

“Ryder!” the captain of the guard shouted, him carrying a torch.

“Run!” Flynn said. Riku and Goofy helped Rapunzel gather her hair up and the group ran through the tunnel. Sora rejoined the line and cast a Blizzard spell on the ground behind him to try to cause the guards to slip, though this did very little to impede them. Some Heartless appeared and tried to block their way, but Donald eliminated them with a Thunder spell.

Soon, they saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but when they came out they were standing at a rock ledge into a canyon. Behind them, a wall made of wooden boards formed a dam, while against the rock wall to their right, a complex system fed water from the reservoir down through a chute that led down through the canyon. They ran to the edge, but found that the only way out was down a long rope ladder and through a hole into another cavern on the canyon floor. And they did not have the kind of time to go down that way.

To the left of that passage, a boarded-up path was blown open, and out stepped the Stabbington Brothers, brandishing their swords. The one with the eyepatch held his with his right hand while his brother used his left.

“Who’s that?” Rapunzel whispered.

“They don’t like me,” Flynn replied, figuring that was all he needed to say.

“How did they get free?” Riku asked.

“Those guards must not be good at their job,” Sora observed.

The guards came out of the tunnel, leaving the party surrounded. “Who’s that?” Rapunzel asked.

“They don’t like me either,” Flynn said.

Maximus burst out of the tunnel as well. “Who’s that?!” Rapunzel asked again.

“Let’s just assume for the moment that everyone here doesn’t like me!”

“We’ll hold them off,” Riku said, the six adventurers brandishing their weapons.

The captain’s eyes went wide with surprise as he recognized the group. “You… You’re the young lads from before. The ones who fended off those monsters. You’re aligned with Flynn Rider?!”

Sora shrugged. “At present, it’s like an alliance of convenience. Sorry,” he said flatly.

Rapunzel shoved her frying pan into Flynn’s hands. “Here!” She threw her hair so it wrapped around a broken beam, then pulled it taut.

Sora saw what Rapunzel was doing and looked across the canyon, where he saw, on a ledge on the opposite side, Heartless materialized in wait for her arrival. He turned to address Mickey. “Your Majesty! Cover Rapunzel!” he told him pointing in the direction of the long-haired girl as well as the Heartless.

Mickey nodded in understanding and, just as Rapunzel began to swing across the canyon, jumped onto the girl’s back. This surprised Rapunzel, but she did not let it distract her, and it did not interfere with her swing. When they landed, Mickey dropped off of Rapunzel’s back and swiftly slew the Heartless on the platform.

The captain dropped his torch and pulled out his sword. “I waited a long time for this,” he said.

Before the fighting could begin, some Heartless appeared between both groups. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy quickly took on the Heartless, including some creatures resembling blue monkeys and others resembling orange monkeys with hair bows and slingshots. The five of them took out the brute force-utilizing blue Powerwilds, though some stragglers tried to flee by climbing the rock wall, while the orange Bouncywilds hung onto the canyon wall, firing glowing purple orbs at the party, forcing Sora, Riku and Goofy to run up the walls after them while Donald tried to take them out with Blizzard and Thunder spells. A Bouncywild began sniping at Mickey, who could only block the shots with his Keyblade. Rapunzel lashed her hair out, wrapping the Heartless up with one end, then she swung the hair and released the Heartless, letting it fall to the bottom of the gorge.

This left Flynn and Kairi alone with the guards. Kairi came to the thief’s defense but the captain easily swatted her aside. At first, Flynn was concerned, but then he remembered that he was holding a frying pan that had knocked him out a couple times already. So, when the captain charged at him, Flynn swung the pan, hitting his opponent in the face and knocking him to the ground. Another guard came at him, but he deflected the man’s sword and knocked him out as well, and did the same to the third and fourth.

When all of the guards were unconscious, Flynn looked at the frying pan in amazement. “Oh, mama! I have got to get me one of these!” he exclaimed.

“Glad to see you’re having fun,” Kairi quipped as she picked herself up.

A sword came into view, and Flynn brandished the frying pan, but was surprised to see that his opponent was Maximus holding a sword between his teeth.

Sora and Riku landed on the ledge. Goofy was not so close, and he hit the wall beneath, barely grabbing the ledge. Sora grabbed his hands and pulled him up.

Flynn started parrying Maximus’ sword strikes, running around to try to dodge the horse’s vicious charges. Sora, Riku and Goofy tried to knock the horse down, but he just kept getting back up. Donald tried to cast Fire on his tail, but he bucked and kicked him away.

Flynn continued to parry Maximus’ attacks. “You should know that this is the strangest thing I have ever done!” he shouted over the sound of iron and steel clanging. At the edge of the platform, however, the horse managed to knock the frying pan out of his hand. They watched as the cooking implement fell to the bottom of the canyon.

“How about two out of three?” Flynn suggested. Instead of taking him up on his offer, the horse pointed his sword at Flynn’s neck. Sora pushed the blade away with his Keyblade, then kicked the horse in the flank.

“Yeah, that was pretty strange,” the Keyblade wielder admitted.

“Flynn!” Rapunzel called. She had wrapped a section of her hair around a rock sticking out of her ledge, and threw the rest of her hair to wrap around Flynn’s hand. Much to Maximus’ shock and Sora, Riku and Kairi’s amusement, Rapunzel pulled Flynn and swung him across the canyon. When she saw that he was headed right for the angry Stabbington Brothers, she shouted a warning and pulled her hair to shorten the length from the rock to the swinging object, pulling him out of the range of the brutes’ swords.

“Ha! You should see your faces, because you look—” Flynn started to gloat before finding himself hitting a wall. Everyone else, including the horse, winced.

Riku shook his head. “Ridiculous,” he said plainly.

Flynn let himself drop onto the water chute, all while Maximus kicked at one of the support columns holding the dam up. The column broke off, causing water to spill out of a hole in the wall, and landed evenly to create a bridge between his platform and Rapunzel’s, which he began to cross. Sora and Riku quickly followed, though Kairi, Donald and Goofy made their way across more cautiously.

“C’mon, Blondie! Jump!” Flynn called. Just as Maximus reached her, Rapunzel jumped off of the ledge and swung down. Mickey jumped and kicked the horse in the neck to stun him, then leapt off of the platform himself. Rapunzel swung down and when she reached the bottom of her swing, she landed and skidded in a puddle of dripping water. She pulled the rest of her hair down and ran. In the meantime, Flynn jumped into the chute and slid down the current of water, reminding Sora of a fondly-remembered escapade in a certain jungle. He jumped over the side and landed on another section of the chute, which started to collapse under his sudden weight. Using its collapse to guide his descent, he reached the ground and quickly joined Rapunzel.

Donald noticed the dam starting to collapse. He tapped his finger on Sora’s thigh, and when he noticed, he tapped on Maximus’ mane. The horse snorted angrily at him, only to notice the dam completely fall apart. The guards, who had just come to, saw the falling wall of water and screamed. Maximus snorted defiantly as everyone on the upper level was swallowed by an enormous wave.

The wave hit the Stabbington Brothers as well, and the massive torrent caused a boulder tower to fall down. Rapunzel and Flynn barely made it into the cave, and Flynn retrieved the frying pan, which had washed up to them, right before the boulder fell and blocked their way, leaving them in the dark.


	23. Chapter 22: Drying Off

When the wall of water hit the party, Sora, Donald and Goofy were surrounded by a white light and glowing bubbles. When the light faded, the three of them had transformed. Their clothes had vanished, and parts of their bodies had been morphed. In place of legs, Sora had the back half of a dolphin, sleek blue-gray skin leading into a tail, with a dorsal fin on his lower back, and he also had gills on his neck. Donald’s flippers had morphed into six blue octopus tentacles with a yellow underbelly. Most of Goofy’s entire body had become that of a sea turtle with a green shell, an orange underbelly, and black limbs.

The three of them gained their bearings and realized that the spell that Donald had cast so they could safely enter the underwater world of Atlantica had kicked in automatically. They also realized that only they had been affected by this spell, and Riku, Kairi and Mickey were left helpless.

They cast their eyes about and saw their friends, the guards, and the Stabbington Brothers being carried about by the rapid current. Maximus was nowhere to be seen, but a quick glance upward showed that he somehow made it to the surface. Seeing he was fine, they ignored him.

“Donald, you have something that can keep the fluid out of their systems?” Sora asked with a sense of urgency as they swam toward Riku and Kairi.

“Yeah!” the cecaelia-duck confirmed. When they got close to Riku and Kairi, he pointed his staff at them. “Oxyale!” With that incantation, bubbles shot out of his staff and went into the unconscious teenagers’ mouths and nostrils. The bubbles expanded out of those orifices until they fused together and formed a large bubble surrounding their heads.

“Neat,” Sora said, before grabbing each of them by the hand. He carried them as he maneuvered through the current, avoiding rocks and pieces of wood caught in the current. Meanwhile, Donald swam around to each guard and cast Oxyale on each of the guards. A bubble formed around their heads, and the water that was forced into their airways was expelled.

Goofy searched frantically, looking for the King. He saw the Stabbington Brothers being carried along, and above them he saw the mouse king. “Down there!” he alerted the others, divebombing toward his friend as fast as he possibly could. Sora and Donald followed. Goofy swept under Mickey and caught him onto his shell. As quickly as he could, Donald cast Oxyale, encasing his king’s head in a bubble. He watched intently, hoping to see some sign of vitals. He relaxed when he saw Mickey take a soft breath.

“He’ll be fine,” Donald told Sora and Goofy. He offhandedly cast Oxyale on the Stabbington Brothers, then dismissed his staff as he had expended his mana creating the bubbles.

“What about Rapunzel and Flynn?” Goofy asked as the current carried them out of the crevasse and through a ravine.

“I lost sight of them when they got to the cave. They’re on their own for now. We need to worry about getting out of this flood!” Sora explained. He swung Riku and Kairi out of the way of a boulder.

Donald spun himself around an overhanging rock and launched himself above the surface of the water. He momentarily transformed back into his normal self, clothes and all, and took a look off into the distance. His eyes widened when he saw the edge of the ravine, dropping off into a river. But the river seemed pretty far down from the ledge…

He dropped back into the water and returned to his aquatic form. “We’re gonna go off a cliff!” he warned his friends. This earned panicked expressions from Sora and Goofy.

Sora beamed when he had an idea. “Donald! Take Riku and Kairi. I’ll latch onto the wall off to the side with my Keyblade right where we go off, then you and Goofy will launch yourselves out of the water before you fall in. I’ll reel you in.”

Donald was taken aback, and Goofy was just confused. But when they met Sora’s steely gaze, they trusted his judgment. Donald grabbed hold of Riku and Kairi’s arms. Sora let go of his closest friends, leaving them in Donald’s hands, and summoned his Keyblade. “A hundred feet ahead,” Donald informed him. After a few seconds, he shouted: “Ready, now!”

Sora cast Fire downward, creating a jet of steam that propelled him into the air, throwing him to the left of the water flow. He stabbed his Keyblade into the rock wall right at the ledge, then, since he was now a human again, set his feet on footholds on the wall. Donald and Goofy threw themselves out of the water just as it fell over the cliff. They soared through the air, terrified. Goofy held Mickey tight in his arms while Donald held Riku and Kairi’s wrists for dear life. Sora grabbed onto the cliff wall with his free hand, yanked his Keyblade out, and pointed it at his friends. “Magnega!” A vortex of white light materialized in front of the tip of his weapon. Light particles swirled in a sphere around the ovoid vortex. The airborne party members were pulled out of their trajectory and found themselves spinning around the vortex’s orbit.

As the vortex started to fade, Sora grabbed Riku and Kairi and wrapped their arms around his neck, using a Blizzard spell to freeze their fingers together so they would not fall off. Goofy grabbed onto the wall and Donald grabbed onto Goofy’s back, holding Mickey by the arm. The Oxyale bubbles had dissipated after everyone left the water.

“Everyone all right?” Sora asked. Donald and Goofy nodded. Riku, Kairi and Mickey started to come to.

“Ugh… My head,” Riku groaned. “Um, where are we? What happened? And why can’t I move my fingers?”

“Long story short, we got caught in a flood and separated from Rapunzel and Flynn, but now we’re holding onto a cliff for dear life,” Sora summarized. “Now you all hold on while we climb down to safe ground.

* * *

Despite the boulder sealing off the way they came in, Rapunzel and Flynn found themselves stuck in a pitch-dark cave with water filling up rapidly behind them. They turned to run, but quickly found a pile of the rocks sealing the way completely. Flynn dove under to find a way out while Rapunzel and Pascal searched the wall for a loose point to clear the way, but to no avail. Rapunzel started hitting a rock with her frying pan. Flynn forced himself against the rocks to try to dislodge them, but he ended up cutting his hand. He dove under again, but came back up with a distressed look on his face.

“It’s no use. I can’t see anything,” he said resignedly. Rapunzel started to dive under but Flynn pulled her back up. “Hey, there’s no point. It’s pitch black down there.”

Rapunzel leaned back against the wall as the gravity of the situation sunk in. “This is all my fault,” she whispered in despair. “She was right. I never should have done this. I’m so… I’m so sorry, Flynn.” She broke down into tears.

“Eugene.”

“What?”

“My real name is Eugene Fitzherbert,” the thief confessed. “Someone might as well know.”

Rapunzel giggled as the despairing moment turned sweet, even as the water was now at their necks. “I have magic hair that glows when I sing,” she said.

This flat-out confused Flynn. “What?” he asked.

At the same time, Rapunzel realized something. “I have magic hair that glows when I sing! _Flower-gleam-and-glow-let-your-power-shine—_ ” They took a deep breath and went underwater as the water level rose above their heads.

At first, there was no light down there, but then a golden glow began to emanate from Rapunzel’s seventy-foot-long hair, lighting up the entire cave. Pascal was treading right next to Rapunzel’s head. Flynn gasped in surprise at the sight of the glowing hair, forgetting he was underwater, and covered his mouth quickly. They followed the golden path of the hair until they saw a pack of rocks near the bottom of the cavern, loosely stuck together and appearing to cover up a way out. Without a moment to lose, seeing that this was their only shot at freedom, they swam down and started tossing the rocks out of the way.

The light of the magic hair faded, leaving them in darkness, but they knew what they were doing and kept working. Within moments, they pushed out the last wall of stones, and the force of the water pushed them out and into a pond.

Rapunzel and Flynn climbed up onto the shore, Pascal sitting on Rapunzel’s frying pan, and they laid there, catching their breath.

“We made it!” Rapunzel said triumphantly.

“Your hair glows,” Flynn said in shock.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ran up to them. They were all soaking wet just like Rapunzel, Flynn and Pascal. For some reason, Rapunzel noticed, Riku and Kairi had their own fingers stuck together.

“Hey! Glad you made it out!” Sora greeted, relieved.

“Gosh, are you all right?” Mickey asked, concerned.

“We’re alive!” Rapunzel exclaimed, still celebrating their victory over the forces of nature.

“Never seen that coming. Her hair actually glows. Why does her hair glow?” Flynn asked the chameleon, gripping his cut hand protectively.

“Eugene!” Rapunzel called to him. “It doesn’t just glow.”

Sora, Riku and Kairi looked at Rapunzel in confusion. “Eugene?” Riku repeated.

* * *

Further into the forest, Gothel came across a hollowed-out tree. On the ground inside the tree, there was a circular trapdoor with a yellow duckling painted on it. With her hood raised, she drew out her dagger, waiting for her quarry to come through. But when the trapdoor was pushed open, it was not Rapunzel and Flynn Rider who came out, but the Stabbington Brothers. On seeing this, Gothel slipped behind a rock, watching the duo’s movements.

The brothers stopped to catch their breath, still recovering from the incident at the canyon. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill that Rider!” the brother with the sideburns cursed. “We’ll kill him and get back the crown. Come on.”

“Boys!” Gothel called. The two scoundrels turned to get a look at the woman. “Perhaps you want to stop acting like wild dogs chasing their tails and think for a moment.” She held up the satchel containing the crown.

The brothers drew their swords, intending to just take it from her. She chuckled in response. “Oh, please. There’s no need for that.” She tossed the bag to the brothers, and they immediately began fighting over it until the one with the sideburns withdrew the crown. “Well, if that’s all you desire, then be on your way. I _was_ going to offer you something worth one thousand crowns. Would have made you rich beyond belief and that wasn’t even the best part!” She laughed at this point. “Oh, well. _C’est la vie_. Enjoy your crown.” She turned to leave.

Their interests piqued, they looked at the crown uncertainly, then back at Gothel. “What’s the best part?” Sideburns asked.

With a wicked smile on her face, Gothel brought up the Wanted poster. “It comes with revenge on Flynn Rider.”

The brothers smiled evilly at each other. A Shadow Heartless rose up out of the ground, watching the group plot, drawn together by their own darkness.

* * *

“Well, that is intense,” Flynn commented while Riku added wood to the fire. After reuniting, they had found a Safe Point and decided to use it as a spot to camp and recover, electing to dry off and rest before completing the trek to the kingdom. Mickey sent a message up to the Gummi Ship, and a camping set materialized in front of him. Riku and Kairi’s fingers had thawed and they were able to separate them and move them freely. Riku and Mickey gathered firewood, which Sora lit, while Kairi and Goofy cooked dinner with the food that Donald and Goofy had smuggled out of the Snuggly Duckling. The group sat around the campfire, seated on a circle of rocks, and they traded stories of what happened during the flood.

“Wait, if everyone else was unconscious and you used the oxygen spell to save them from drowning, how did you survive?” Rapunzel asked. Riku, Kairi and Mickey turned to Sora, Donald and Goofy, as they were also curious about what happened.

“Well, Donald had cast this spell on me, Goofy and himself a while back so that we could survive underwater when we visited an undersea kingdom,” Sora explained.

Kairi stared in shock. “Sora! Orlds-way ecrecy-say!” she reminded him, concerned that he was violating the world order which she had been told was supposed to be maintained.

“Kairi, the first thing you need to know about the secret order kept between the worlds is that nobody cares,” Sora retorted.

“He’s right,” Mickey added.

“Besides, it’s not like they’re going to actually find their way to other worlds, let alone Atlantica,” Sora continued. “Anyway, this spell gave me the lower body of a dolphin, Donald the tentacles of an octopus, and Goofy the body of a sea turtle. And I guess it just kicks in whenever we get submerged in deep or turbulent water. So, it’s a good thing that happened.”

“And you two got out of that flooding cave because of Rapunzel’s magic glowing hair?” Riku asked for clarification.

“It didn’t glow when you were singing in the pub earlier,” Kairi noted.

“Well, it requires a specific song,” Rapunzel told them. “And it doesn’t just glow. Flynn, give me your hand.” With a raised eyebrow, Flynn held out the hand that he had cut while in the cave. Rapunzel grabbed a lock of her hair and wrapped it around Flynn’s palm several times. She pulled it too tight, causing Flynn to wince in pain.

“Sorry,” Rapunzel said. “Just, don’t… don’t freak out.” She then closed her eyes and started to sing a soft melody. As she did so, her hair began to glow. “ _Flower, gleam and glow. Let your power shine. Make the clock reverse. Bring back what once was mine._ ” Flynn, as well as the onlookers, followed the path of the hair as the golden light slowly covered the entire length. Flynn finally looked at his hand as the hair wrapped around it began to glow, and he felt a warm tingle in the skin of his injured hand. “ _Heal what has been hurt. Change the fate’s design. Save what has been lost. Bring back what once was mine. What once was mine…_ ” When she stopped singing, the glow faded.

The others stepped in behind Flynn to get a closer look. Flynn uncovered his hand and adopted a shocked and surprised expression. The others, having seen the effects of such magic at work already, merely looked intrigued and amused. Flynn’s hand was completely healed, the open wound closed and any signs of infection gone. Flynn stared at his hand in utter disbelief and started to scream.

“Please don’t freak out!” Rapunzel quickly said, interrupting the freak-out.

Flynn stifled a small version of the scream and tried to segue it into a comment. “I’m not freaking out. Are you freaking out? I’m just very interested in your hair and the magical qualities that it possesses. How long has it been doing that, exactly?” He put on a nervous grin.

Rapunzel relaxed and let out a small chuckle. “Forever, I guess. Mother said, when I was a baby, people tried to cut it. They wanted to take it for themselves. But, once it’s cut, it turns brown and loses its power,” she explained, pulling back her hair to reveal a lock of short brown hair that reached below her right ear. “A gift like that, it has to be protected. That’s why Mother never let me… That’s why _I_ never left, and…” She looked away shamefully.

“You never left that tower,” Flynn finished. Rapunzel looked back at him, the sad look in her eyes saying it all. “And you’re still gonna go back?”

“No. Yes…” She dropped her head into her hands. “It’s complicated.” Pascal leaned against her foot reassuringly.

The others considered what she had said. On top of what he had already been told while in the tower, Sora put together his own thoughts on Rapunzel’s Mother. She had kept Rapunzel in a secluded tower for eighteen years, which she was never permitted to leave, and often left her on her own for extended periods of time with barely enough to stave off boredom and keep from going insane. On top of that, she had instilled in her mind the idea that all people were inherently cruel and selfish and continually insisted that she was incapable of handling herself, probably tearing down her self-esteem in other ways as well. And she claimed that this was because evil people would exploit her healing powers, and the Mother kept her to herself to protect her and that “gift”. Sora shared a glance with Riku, Kairi and Mickey, and they all seemed to have similar suspicions. But before he could come to any definite conclusions, he wondered one other thing: If the power was to be “protected” for good use, then how had the Mother been using it? Clearly, it had been in use, as Rapunzel knew the song well enough to recite it herself

Rapunzel peeked past her fingers and realized that Flynn was still staring at her in sympathy. She decided to change the subject. “So, Eugene Fitzherbert, huh?” she asked, giving him a playful look.

“Ah, yeah. I’ll save you the sob story of poor orphan Eugene Fitzherbert. It’s a little bit of a downer,” he tried to brush the issue off.

However, Rapunzel inched closer to him, and Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy moved around until they were standing in front of both of them. This forced Flynn to relent.

“There was this book. A book I used to read every night to all the younger kids. ‘ _The Tales of Flynn Rider_ ’, swashbuckling rogue, richest man alive, not bad with the ladies either. Not that he’d ever brag about it, of course,” he explained.

“Was he a thief too?” Rapunzel asked.

“Uh… Well, no. Actually, he had enough money to do anything that he wanted to do. He could go anywhere that he wanted to go. Not too much unlike you guys,” he said, comparing the literary classical hero to the six adventurers in front of him. He faltered as he slipped back into his own childhood insecurities. “And, for a kid with nothing… I don’t know, it just seemed like the better option.” He looked to his listeners and held out his hand entreatingly. “You can’t tell anyone about this, okay? It could ruin my whole reputation.”

“Ah. We wouldn’t want that, right?” Kairi teased.

“What book?” Riku added with a wink.

Flynn shrugged. “Well, a fake reputation is all a man has,” he said. This caused all eight of them to laugh.

Rapunzel and Flynn’s eyes met for an extended period. Sora and Kairi looked at each other knowingly, and Donald and Goofy snickered.

Flynn realized what he was doing and broke the eye contact. “Ahem. Well, I should get some more firewood.” He stood up, stepped over the strewn-about hair, and headed into the line of trees.

“Hey,” Rapunzel said, causing Flynn to turn back around. “For the record, I like ‘Eugene Fitzherbert’ much better than ‘Flynn Rider’.”

This definitely resonated with Flynn. “Well, then you’d be the first,” he said solemnly. “But thank you.” Sora, Kairi and Goofy nodded in agreement with Rapunzel’s statement. A soft smile appeared on Flynn’s face as he turned back to go get firewood.

“We should start keeping watch and getting ready to get moving in the morning,” Mickey said. The others agreed and split up in groups of two, leaving Rapunzel to watch the fire.

When she was alone, Rapunzel heard someone she was not expecting. “Well, I thought he’d never leave!” Mother Gothel said, revealing her presence.

Rapunzel turned around in shock. “Mother?”

Gothel lowered her hood, revealing that strands of her hair were turning gray. She had a few new wrinkles on her face. She was also wearing an obsidian bangle on her right wrist. “Hello, dear.”

“But I-I-I-I don’t… How did you find me?” she stammered as Gothel walked up and hugged her.

“Oh, it was easy, really. I just listened for the sound of complete and utter betrayal and followed that,” Gothel replied, clearly guilting her.

“Mother—”

“We’re going home, Rapunzel,” she said sternly, grabbing her by the arm and starting to drag her away. “Now.”

“You don’t understand!” the girl protested. “I’ve been on this incredible journey, and I’ve seen and learned so much. I even met someone.”

“Yes, the wanted thief. I’m so proud,” Gothel retorted sarcastically. “Oh, and a union of Keyblade wielders, too. How nice.”

This caught Rapunzel by surprise. “How do you know about that?” she asked, mystified.

“Oh, please. Rapunzel, my dear, I’ve been on this earth for a long time, and I’ve seen more than you will ever hope to understand. I had certainly hoped that those _weapons_ were gone from this land for good.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Keyblade only brings destruction and despair, and its wielders claim to protect the light, but they only care to take whatever power they can for themselves and let the world burn. The fact that you failed to see that shows that I was right, and you are a hopeless fool for thinking you could do this on your own.”

“But—”

“Uh-uh-uh. No ‘buts’. These ‘friends’ of yours don’t care for you at all. You’re best off at home. In the tower. Come on, Rapunzel.”

“Mother, please. I think… Eugene… I think he likes me.”

Gothel scoffed. “Likes you? Please, Rapunzel, that’s demented.”

“But Mother, I—”

“This is why you never should have left! Dear, this whole romance that you’ve invented just proves you’re too naïve to be here. Why would he like you? Come on, now, really? Look at you! You think that he’s impressed? Don’t be a dummy. Come with Mummy. Mother…”

“No!” Rapunzel said defiantly, standing firm.

“No? Oh… I see how it is.” Gothel sneered, intimidating Rapunzel. “ _Rapunzel knows best. Rapunzel’s so mature now. Such a clever, grown-up miss. Rapunzel knows best. Fine, if you’re so sure, now, go ahead, then give him this!_ ” She pulled out the satchel and showed it to Rapunzel.

“How did you—?” Rapunzel began to ask, shocked that her Mother had found it, and also surprised that she knew what it was.

Gothel took the crown out and held it up for the girl to see. “ _This is why he’s here! Don’t let him deceive you! Give it to him. Watch, you’ll see!_ ” Gothel tossed it to her, and she caught it.

“I will!” Rapunzel shot back.

A dark aura rose from Gothel’s person, though it burned into a black flame around her right hand. “ _Trust me, my dear. That’s how fast he’ll leave you. I won’t say I told you so! No, Rapunzel knows best! So, if he’s such a dreamboat, go and put him to the test!_ ”

“Mother, wait!”

“ _If he’s lying, don’t come crying! Mother knows best!_ ” She turned away, swinging the cape of her cloak dramatically, and vanished.

Rapunzel stared at the crown uncertainly for a moment. Was her Mother telling the truth? Was Eugene just using her? Were her new friends truly as wicked as she claimed? No. She refused to believe that.

“Hello? Hey, can I ask you something?” she heard Flynn calling from a distance. Rapunzel quickly put the crown back in the satchel and hid it behind a tree, then returned to the fire.

“Is there any chance that I’m gonna get super strength in my hand? Because I’m not gonna lie. That would be stupendous,” Flynn said as he approached the fire while carrying an armful of branches. When he noticed Rapunzel looking away silently, he looked at her with concern. “Hey, you all right?”

“Oh. Sorry, yes,” Rapunzel lied, turning to face Flynn. “Just lost in thought, I guess.”

Flynn seemed to buy that. He set the branches down and struck up conversation with the girl.

* * *

Sora and Riku watched Rapunzel return to the fireside. They had seen parts of the confrontation between her and an older woman, who they guessed was her Mother, but they did not get to hear the exchange. Riku thought he saw a dark aura around the woman, but it was already so dark out that he could not be certain. However, they had seen enough to support their suspicions about the woman.

“We can’t let Rapunzel go back to the tower and stay alone with that witch,” Sora declared.

“I want to hurt her for the way she treats her,” Riku affirmed.

But at the moment, they could do nothing about the abusive old woman, so they went back to patrolling the perimeter.

Not too far off, though far enough to not be spotted by either the duo at the campfire or the patrol group, Mother Gothel and the Stabbington Brothers watched Rapunzel and Flynn intently from behind some trees. The brothers prepared to move in, take Flynn out and grab the satchel while no one was watching, but Gothel held her hand up.

“Patience, boys. All good things to those who wait,” she calmly told them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you all know, starting next chapter, I will be referring to Flynn Rider by his real name, Eugene in the narration.


	24. Chapter 23: The Lost Princess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to put anyone on the spot, but I would very much appreciate it if some of my readers left comments letting me know what they think. Thus far (on this version of the story, anyway; there have been a bunch of reviews on FFN), I've only gotten thumbs-up emojis from someone who has already been reading the FFN version of the story (which, by the way, really doesn't say much more than a kudos).
> 
> Thanks, and I hope you enjoy!

Sora woke up and crawled out of the tent that he, Riku and Kairi had pitched and slept in the previous night. He felt refreshed after a good night’s rest and like a proper traveler after setting up a campsite for the first time in months. Ten feet to the left, Mickey and Goofy were dismantling the tent that they had slept in while Donald and Rapunzel cooked breakfast at the revitalized campfire. Eugene was content with sleeping outside of a tent, and Rapunzel wanted to lie under the stars for at least one night, resting on the soft grass. Everyone else was fine with that, so long as Rapunzel slept between the tents so that they would be nearby in case something were to happen.

“Happy birthday, Rapunzel,” Sora called out to the girl with magic hair when he saw her. She waved back then focused back on cooking breakfast.

He found Riku doing sit-ups and Kairi practicing with her rapier, using a tree as a training dummy. He noticed that the rest of his main party was accounted for, but there was someone missing.

“Hey, where’s Eugene?” he asked aloud.

His question was answered when they heard a scream. Donald and Rapunzel flinched and nearly spilled the food, and Pascal quickly turned red and turned to see where the sound was coming from. They all saw Maximus, soaking wet, apparently having not gotten out of the flood until much later despite being in a more advantageous position than most everyone else. He grabbed onto Eugene’s foot with his mouth and was angrily dragging him backward, Eugene scrambling to find something to grab on the ground to try to stop.

“No! No! No! Put me down! Stop it! Help!” he shouted, panicking. Sora quickly ran over to them and grabbed Eugene by the arms. He pulled him back, engaging in a tug-of-war with the horse. Riku joined, but Maximus still held his own.

“Let. Him. Go!” Sora shouted, struggling to pull the thief free. The contest was only broken when Eugene’s foot was pulled out of his boot, causing Sora, Riku and Eugene to go flying in one direction and Maximus to go in the opposite direction, his mouth still clamped on the boot.

Unperturbed, Maximus charged right back at his quarry, but Rapunzel jumped in the way, followed by Kairi. “Whoa, whoa, easy, easy. Settle down,” she told him, first severely, then more calmly and entreating. “Easy, boy. Easy.” She finally managed to calm Maximus down, with added encouragement from Pascal and a smiling Kairi.

The horse looked at the girl and the chameleon on her head in confusion. “Now sit,” she commanded. Maximus uneasily squatted his hind legs. “Sit.” He sat, almost ashamed, much to everyone else’s disbelief. “Now drop the boot. Drop it.” He dropped it. “Oh, you’re such a good boy. Yes, you are!” she said, starting to pet the horse’s head like she would a dog. Kairi soon found herself stroking his mane, and the horse found himself liking the affection, wagging his tail. Riku tilted his head, perplexed, as he was quite sure that horses did not do that.

“You all tired from chasing the bad man all over the place?” Rapunzel asked, as if talking to a pouting and tantrum-throwing child. Maximus nodded, frowning.

“Excuse me?” Eugene asked in disbelief.

“Nobody appreciates you, do they?” Rapunzel continued. Maximus shook his head.

“Oh, come on. He’s a bad horse!” Eugene complained. Sora and Riku crossed their arms in wonder, but soon started to smile at what was happening. Mickey and Goofy joined them and started chuckling.

“Oh, he’s nothing but a big sweetheart!” Rapunzel shot back as she and Kairi continued to pet the horse. Maximus lovingly rubbed the side of his face against Rapunzel’s. “Isn’t that right… Maximus?” she asked her new friend while reading his name on the bridle, right beneath a design resembling the sun that must have been the symbol of the kingdom.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Eugene groaned, earning a glare from Maximus.

“Look, today is kind of the biggest day of my life,” Rapunzel began, entreating the horse, “and the thing is, I need you _not_ to get him arrested.” Maximus was taken aback and started to give her a glare. “Just for twenty-four hours. And then you can chase each other to your heart’s content. Okay?”

Reluctantly, Eugene held his hand out to shake on it, but Maximus stubbornly turned away. “And it’s also my birthday. Just so you know,” the girl added. Maximus let out a horse-sigh in defeat. He looked Eugene in the eyes and shook his hand with his hoof, though it was clear that neither horse nor thief was happy with this arrangement.

Rapunzel smiled, satisfied that they agreed to put their differences aside, but walked past them when something caught her eye. When she was not looking, Maximus punched Eugene in the gut with his hoof, and smirked proudly.

Sora approached him cautiously, his body language letting him know that he was a friend. “Hey, buddy. It’s nice to meet you. My name’s Sora,” he said, slowly getting close enough to pet him, which Maximus allowed. “Sorry about the beating we gave you back at the dam. We know you were just doing your job.”

After the party had become properly acquainted with the horse, they saw Rapunzel pointing at something past the trees. Sure enough twenty yards away, the line of trees ended, and the group could see a stone bridge spanning a lake, leading to a large city built on a small mountain. The houses in the city were built around the entire mountain, with a large castle surrounded by a stone wall at the top.

“What do you know? It was right there the whole time,” Sora commented.

“I suppose it was a good thing we got to dry off and rest before going in, though,” Mickey pointed out.

“Hold up, Rapunzel! We still have breakfast to finish, and we need to pack up the camping supplies!” Donald called out. Rapunzel thumped her forehead, embarrassed that she had forgotten, and returned to the site for breakfast, which Donald had finished cooking while she was negotiating with Maximus. Seeing that Maximus most likely had not gotten something to eat since before the flood, Goofy found an apple tree and punched the trunk with his shield, causing a reverberation that led to three apples falling off of their branches. Goofy held his shield up to prevent an apple from hitting him on the head. He gathered the apples and gave them to Maximus.

* * *

After breakfast, Sora, Riku and Kairi dismantled their tent and Mickey used the Safe Point to beam the camping supplied up to the Gummi Ship, much to Rapunzel, Eugene, Pascal, and Maximus’ amazement. Sora prepared to cast Blizzard on the campfire, but Mickey stopped him. Instead, he cast Aero, which created a vacuum of air around the blaze. When the fire consumed all of the oxygen available to it, it burned out and was gone.

Since Rapunzel could not contain her excitement any longer, the party left the site and began to cross the bridge into the city. Eugene saw a Wanted poster nailed to the side of the bridge next to him and quickly ripped it off and crumpled it up. Maximus glared at him, so Eugene shoved the parchment into his mouth. The horse spat it out onto Eugene’s face, and the two began to tussle. 

“Hey! Behave, you two!” Donald scolded.

When they crossed the bridge and entered town, Rapunzel took in the sights with wide eyes and a huge grin on her face, and Pascal was similarly amazed. Strewn between the buildings, they could see rows of purple banners all marked with the sun design that was on Maximus’ bridle. All around, people went about their daily activities.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy were also happy to take in the sights. It was not lost on Kairi that Sora was just as wonder-eyed as them all.

“What? In all your travels, you’ve never been to a festival like this before?” she asked him teasingly.

Sora shrugged. “To be honest, this is the most crowded town I’ve visited,” he replied.

Rapunzel tried to join the crowd, but jumped back in surprise when a cart full of goats flew by as fast as its driver pulled it. She then stumbled backward into a woman, and dodged to avoid a trio of ducks, though her long hair brushed by them and sent them into a panic. She bumped into a few more people, apologizing when she did so, and felt her head get yanked back as she walked, due to someone unknowingly stepping on the hair.

Seeing what was happening, Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Eugene helped her gather up her hair into large clumps, but it was still very cumbersome. Eugene scanned about for a solution, and saw four young redheaded girls sitting on the ledge of a fountain in the middle of the square, braiding each other’s hair. He whistled to get their attention and held up the hair for them to see. The girls gasped in amazement and wasted no time in coming to help.

The next few minutes were spent by the girls diligently braiding seventy feet of hair and decorating it with flowers until the hair was just barely off of the ground when Rapunzel stood up. The others watched this unfold, though Eugene hid behind a wall when a pair of guards made their rounds. Rapunzel admired her new hairdo and thanked the girls.

Eugene smiled when he saw the result, and Maximus gave him a teasing grin. Eugene shoved his face away, but Riku gave a knowing eyebrow-raise in his direction and Goofy chuckled at the reaction.

The group continued to explore the city. Rapunzel stepped away from the group when she saw a mosaic on the wall depicting what must have been the king, the queen, and their infant daughter. Kairi followed her gaze and got Sora and Riku’s attention, and they studied the mosaic curiously. Their main focus was on the baby girl, who had green eyes and shoulder-length blonde hair. They noticed an uncanny resemblance to Rapunzel herself.

Sora stumbled when a woman bumped into him. “Oh, heavens. I am so sorry,” the woman said. “Are you alright?”

Sora regained his footing. “Yeah. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it,” he replied.

The woman studied his features and the clothing he and his friends wore. “Oh. Are you new here?” she observed.

“You could say that.”

“Well, then. Welcome to the Kingdom of Corona. I hope you enjoy your visit.”

“Thank you. Say, could you tell us what this festival is for?”

The woman blinked. “Oh, of course. You see, eighteen years ago, Queen Arianna grew ill due to complications during her pregnancy. So King Frederic sent the guards out far and wide to find a way to heal her. They found a magic flower out in the forest, said to have grown from a drop of sunlight and nourished in a spot of life-giving soil. There were rumors, albeit unconfirmed, that the flower could heal the sick and even restore youth. They harvested the plant, and returned with it to the kingdom. The flower was made into a medicine that healed the queen and her unborn child. The queen recovered and gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The king and queen celebrated by lighting a lantern and releasing it into the sky.”

The woman’s expression turned sad. “But the night after that, tragedy struck. Someone snuck into the castle at night and stole the girl away. The king and queen were helpless to stop the abductor and when they sent the guards out, they were unable to find her. So now, every year on the anniversary of her birth, everyone in the kingdom makes their own lantern, and we release them into the sky in hopes that they will guide her home.” A tear went down her cheek as she gestured to a little girl placing flowers in front of the mosaic. “Well, I hope you enjoy your time here,” the woman said before leaving the group alone.

Kairi covered her mouth with her hands. “That’s so sad,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be lost from the place I was born. Only this princess has people available and waiting for her to come home.” She muttered the last part.

Sora and Riku put their hands on each of her shoulders comfortingly. They knew how, although she was happy at her home on the islands and remembered very little of her old home of Radiant Garden, when she was first returned there she found it a wasteland devoid of its original inhabitants, and her birth family was most likely gone forever.

They looked between the mosaic and Rapunzel, considering the resemblance between the princess and the girl, the likelihood of a newborn having a full head of hair, the circumstances of birth, and everything they already knew about Rapunzel’s past.

“So, that’s her?” Sora asked.

“Yup,” Kairi answered without hesitation.

“So, how do we tell her?” Riku questioned.

“I have no idea,” Sora admitted. “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

Then he considered what the woman had said about the flower’s supposed powers. The previous night, he had wondered how Rapunzel’s magic hair had been used for eighteen years. Now he had a pretty good idea as to the answer to that question, as well as an understanding of why her “Mother” had taken her in the first place.

“We can’t let that woman take her back,” Riku affirmed. “Rapunzel needs to know who she is, and she needs to come home.” This was met with agreement from his friends.

They decided to just enjoy the festival and wait for the lantern event. They explored the town, seeing what activities were available. A young boy wearing a backpack filled with purple flags gave each of them a purple handkerchief embroidered with the sun design. When people began painting the streets, Rapunzel colored in the sun emblem in the middle of the cobblestone road and painted an extravagant design around it, while Kairi added her own design nearby. Elsewhere, they were shown how to make the lanterns that would be released that evening, and they each got to make one of their own. After spending most of the day taking in what the city had to offer, they returned to the main square in the late afternoon.

Bouncing to the rhythm of a group of musicians, Rapunzel pulled various bystanders into a group dance. She got Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy to join as well. Eugene, Pascal and Maximus watched in admiration from the sidelines. Rapunzel invited Eugene to join in. He waved his hand as if to say _I’ll pass_ , but Maximus pushed him into the crowd with his rear. Before Eugene could give him a dirty look, a woman pulled Eugene into a dance. Everyone traded partners several times, and Rapunzel and Flynn tried to reach each other only to be pulled away by other dancers. As the music rose to a crescendo, they tried to pair up, only succeeding just as the song stopped. They looked into each other’s eyes, their bodies pressed up against each other and their hands clasped together. The spectating crowd cheered

“To the boats!” someone shouted. The party saw that the sun was going down and everyone was headed for the docks, gathering their lanterns.

“C’mon!” Rapunzel said, excitedly pulling Eugene by the hand and following the crowd. The rest of the group gladly followed.

Couples and families climbed into boats that had elevated decorative points at the bow and stern. Others boarded large barges, while the rest of the townsfolk returned home to enjoy the coming event from there. Merchants supplied candles to everyone, one candle per boat party. Rapunzel and Eugene climbed into a boat, with Pascal tagging along and Maximus remaining behind due to, well, being a horse. Sora and Kairi climbed into another; they insisted that Riku join them but Riku politely insisted that he “didn’t want to get in the way of [their] moment”, instead climbing into a third boat with Mickey, Donald and Goofy.

As everyone rowed away from the dock, Eugene looked back and noticed Maximus watching them go. “Hey, Max!” he called, throwing a sack of apples onto the pier in front of the horse. The horse looked at the snack with suspicion. “What? I bought them,” Eugene claimed.

Satisfied to know that his food was not illicitly gained, Maximus began chowing down on the apples.

“Most of them,” Eugene shouted back as he rowed away, a puckish smirk on his face.

“I paid for the rest,” Riku whispered to Donald, and the two of them started laughing.

“Where are we going?” Rapunzel asked.

“Well, best day of your life. I figured we should have a decent seat,” Eugene replied.

* * *

Night had fallen, and three boats floated in the middle of the lake, Eugene, Sora and Riku having steered them to make sure they stayed close enough. The entire kingdom was reduced to a quiet hush as everyone looked toward the castle.

Eugene noticed Rapunzel looking sad. “You okay?” he asked.

“Terrified,” she answered.

“Why?”

“I’ve been looking out a window for eighteen years dreaming about what it would feel like when those lights rise into the sky. What if it’s not everything that I dreamed it would be?”

“It will be,” Eugene reassured her.

“And what if it is? What do I do then?”

“Well, that’s the good part, I guess,” Eugene answered. “You get to go find a new dream.”

Sora and Kairi listened to their conversation. “Wonder where I’ll find mine,” Sora mused.

Kairi raised her eyebrow. “What about this?” she asked, gesturing to all around them. “We’d always dreamed about going on a huge adventure together. And for the first time, we are doing this together. Right?”

“I know. But… These adventures are great and all. And I’m glad to have you and Riku by my side in this. But I’ve already seen it all. Twice. And yes, there are some things I just haven’t seen yet. But there has to be something for me beyond all of this, in the long run. You know what I mean?”

Kairi nodded. “I understand. I mean, my biggest dream was to travel the worlds with you two. Three best friends, together to the end. But when you and Riku had hung up your tights after beating Xemnas, I accepted that I might not get that chance, but I was satisfied that we were back together. Now, who knows what will happen after we finish this mission?” She placed her hand over Sora’s. “But like the guy with the hook hand said, you’ll figure something out. And we’ll be right here with you.”

Sora smiled, and placed his free hand over hers. “Thanks, Kairi,” he said. They looked up and saw an orange dot rise up from the castle. As this happened, hundreds of lights began to glow from the castle courtyard. “Nobody should be alone on a night like this,” he mused, smiling at the beautiful sight.

Rapunzel was lazily placing flowers in the water and watching them float when they saw the first lantern, set by the king and queen, no doubt, in the water’s reflection. She and Eugene looked up and saw the lantern float through the air. She quickly shot to her feet, rocking the boat as she did so and forcing Eugene to hold on tight, and wrapped herself around the bow ornament, watching in amazement.

All across the city, lanterns were lit and released into the sky. More rose from the barges around them and some of the smaller boats scattered around. Soon, the sky was filled with thousands of the beautiful floating lights, which up close resembled Chinese lanterns folded into cylinders, rectangles, and broken spheres and lit with a candle flame in the center, which heated the air inside and allowed them to ascend. Rapunzel stared in wonder and amazement. She turned around to see Eugene holding two such lanterns, having just lit them. Happily, Rapunzel sat down in front of him.

“I have something for you too,” she said, taking out the satchel with the crown. Eugene looked at it expressionlessly. “I should have given it to you before, but I was just scared. And the thing is, I’m not scared anymore. You know what I mean?”

“I’m starting to,” he answered, pushing the satchel down and out of view.

Rapunzel took one lantern from Eugene and they pushed them both into the air, letting them float up and join the others. Their friends smiled when they saw this. Sora snapped his fingers and ignited the wicks in his and Kairi’s lanterns, which they set into the sky. Riku and Goofy used the candle to light their lanterns, while Mickey and Donald used magic to do so with theirs, and they all set their lanterns to fly.

Rapunzel went back to taking in the scene. She saw one lantern, this one decorated with a purple version of the kingdom’s crest, descend until it was just above the surface of the water. She held her hand out and waited for it to float to her, and when it did, she lifted it back up into the sky.

Eugene took Rapunzel’s hand. When she noticed, she took his other hand, and they sat facing each other, holding hands. They started to lean closer to one another. Pascal, sitting behind Eugene, turned a shade of purple and covered his eyes, though he quickly let one eye peek through his toes.

Seeing this from her boat, Kairi giggled as Eugene brushed Rapunzel’s hair at the side of her face, then guided her in for a kiss.

Sadly, this had no payoff, as Eugene noticed two bulky figures on the opposite shore. The one with the sideburns carried a spooky green lantern, making them quite visible against the shadows of the trees. When they were sure that Eugene had seen them, they walked back into the woods.

“Is everything okay?” Rapunzel asked, turning to see where Eugene was looking, but the men were already gone.

“Huh? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I just…” Glancing at the satchel, he came to a decision. He started rowing the boat to shore.

Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy saw the Stabbington Brothers, and they saw Eugene heading toward them, and silently agreed to keep an eye on them. Sora and Kairi looked toward them in confusion, unsure of what Eugene was doing.

“Leave it to us,” Riku assured them. “You head back to town. We still have to find clues about the artifacts.”

Sora and Kairi nodded. As the lanterns were already dispersing to follow where the wind would take them, Sora began to row back to the dock.

“So, where do we look first?” Sora asked.

“Well, I would suggest we find out more about the kingdom’s history,” Kairi suggested. “Want to see if the library’s still open?”

Sora sighed in disappointment. “I suppose,” he said in a tone that indicated that he most certainly did not want to.

* * *

When Eugene brought the boat onto the shore, he climbed out and grabbed the satchel.

“I’m sorry. Everything is fine. There’s just something I have to take care of,” he told Rapunzel.

Seeing his nervous expression, Rapunzel looked at him uncertainly. “Okay,” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he assured her before turning and walking away, satchel containing crown in hand.

Pascal climbed onto Rapunzel’s shoulder and they both watched Eugene go, fighting with their own doubts.

“It’s alright, Pascal,” Rapunzel assured the chameleon, while also doing the same for herself.

Neither of them noticed Riku rowing his boat up to the shore and him, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy climbing out.

Eugene approached one of the Stabbington Brothers, who was presently sharpening his knife.

“Ah, there you are! I’ve been searching everywhere for you guys since we got separated. Hey, the sideburns are coming in nice, huh? Gotta be excited about that,” Eugene said to try to ease his way in. The brother simply glared at him out of the corner of his eye.

Eugene cleared his throat. “Anyhow, just wanted to say I shouldn’t have split. The crown is all yours,” he said as he threw the satchel over to the brother, letting the bag fall open and the crown fall out. “I’ll miss you. But I think it’s for—” he started to walk away but bumped into the other Stabbington brother “—the best…”

“Holding out on us again, eh, Ryder?” the elder twin asked.

“What?”

“We heard you found something. Something much more valuable than a crown.” He stood up and approached Eugene, ignoring the crown. “We want her instead.”

Eugene could only stare in horror. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that,” he told them, trying to sound defiant and hide his worry. However, the other Stabbington hit him on the head, causing him to slump to the ground, unconscious.

Donald lunged out of the trees, screaming a battle cry, but the older thug simply swatted him into a tree. Goofy charged at them and managed to hit the same brother in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. However, the other brother grabbed him from behind by the neck and lifted him into the air.

A pair of Powerwilds materialized out in the trees. The older brother smirked. “Let them have him,” he told his brother, pointing his thumb toward the Heartless. The younger brother complied, throwing Goofy aside. He laid on the ground, panting to catch his breath. In the meantime, the Stabbington with the eyepatch lifted Eugene over his shoulder and carried him away, his brother following.

One of the Powerwilds slid leapt at Goofy, attempting to claw at him, but it was swatted to the side by a bat-wing-shaped sword. Mickey ran up to him and cast Cure, healing Goofy enough to breathe steadily again. Riku gave him his hand and helped him to his feet, then gave Donald a Potion and helped him up.

Before either animal could explain the situation, more Heartless, including an Assault Rider, materialized. The two Keyblade wielders, the court mage and the knight worked together and defeated the enemies as fast as possible. However, by the time the Heartless were vanquished, Donald noticed the Stabbington Brothers had doubled back and passed them again. Goofy realized that the Heartless were a distraction.

“They got Flynn! I mean Eugene. And they’re going after Rapunzel!” he warned the others.

“Goofy, you come with me and we’ll help Rapunzel. Riku, you and Donald go find Eugene and get him out of his bind,” Mickey ordered. The others agreed to these terms and split up accordingly.

* * *

Rapunzel was getting worried. Shouldn’t he have been back by now? What was it that had distracted him earlier? Why was he acting so strangely? Could he have abandoned her? Was Mother right?

She was put at ease when she saw someone approaching, though due to the fog and the poor visibility she could only guess who he was.

“Ah. I was starting to think you ran off with the crown and left me,” she admitted, embarrassed.

The figure, bulkier than the one she was expecting, split into two of equal size. Her look of relief turned into one of horror when the Stabbington Brothers came into full view, particularly after the next words spoken.

“He did,” the elder twin claimed, a sinister smirk on his face.

“What?” Rapunzel asked in disbelief. “No, he wouldn’t…”

“See for yourself,” the crook replied, gesturing for her to look across the lake.

Rapunzel saw a sailboat making its way across the water, and Rapunzel saw a familiar figure standing at the steering wheel. “Eugene?” she said uncertainly. “Eugene!”

“Fair trade, the crown for the girl with the magic hair,” the thug insisted, stroking at Rapunzel’s hair. She turned around to face the crooks in shock. “How much do you think someone would pay to stay young and healthy forever? Maybe we can see if the key kids are interested.”

He brought out a large bag and held it open. “No!” Rapunzel ran. She could not believe what they had said. She could not bear to think that Eugene had sold her out for the treasure. And what was it that they said about Sora and the others? That they were willing to exploit her?

_Eugene…_

But she could not think about that now. She had to escape those men. So she ran. She stumbled, forcing her to hike up her dress so she could flee without tripping over her garment. She hopped over a log, but her hair got caught on a branch stump. She desperately attempted to pull it free before the crooks could catch up to her but stopped in confusion when she heard something hit the men and knock them out.

“Rapunzel?” a woman’s voice called out to her.

“Mother?”

Rapunzel went back the way she had come and saw the crooks lying unconscious, with Mother Gothel standing above them, holding a large branch. When the woman saw her, she dropped the branch.

“Oh, my precious girl,” she exclaimed in a worried and relieved tone.

“Mother.” Rapunzel ran into Gothel’s arms.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?” Gothel held Rapunzel’s face and looked at her with concern in her eyes.

“But how did you—?”

“I was so worried about you, dear. So I followed you, and I saw them attack you, and…” She hugged Rapunzel again. “Let’s go. Let’s go, before they come to.” She led Rapunzel by the hand. The girl stopped and looked back out at the boat that was carrying Eugene away. She entered a thousand-yard stare, realizing that what the crook said about him must have been true. She had no idea where her other supposed friends had gone, but they had promised to keep her safe, and they were nowhere to be seen. Maybe Mother was right about them, too.

She turned back to Gothel, who was now carrying her lantern, which gave off a sickly green glow. The woman put the lantern down and wordlessly invited her with open arms. Bursting into tears, Rapunzel ran to her and wrapped her arms around her for comfort.

“You were right, Mother. You were right about everything,” the girl lamented.

Gothel hugged her back, stroking her golden hair. “I know, darling. I know.” She picked her lantern back up and they began walking off, the woman holding Rapunzel’s head close to her chest.

After they passed by, Mickey forced himself to his feet, no small task considering that Goofy was stunned and lying on top of him. He berated himself over how the old woman had snuck up on them so easily. Of course, he was surprised by her strength. At that age, she should not have been able to hit anyone, not the hulking thieves and not Goofy, with that kind of force. He sensed some measure of darkness. That was it. She had to have been boosted by some dark power.

When Goofy could see straight, Mickey helped him to his feet. “Come on, Goofy. We have to find the others,” he told him.

* * *

Across the lake on the dock, two guards were on duty, keeping watch from a stone guard tower. Since just about everyone had gone home and the dock was otherwise deserted, the guards had taken to making small talk.

“That lantern show was quite the spectacle, wouldn’t you say?” one of them said.

“You could say that again,” the other guard agreed. “But, you know, I don’t know why, but I feel like this one might be something else.’

The guards turned and saw a sailboat approaching the dock. They took a closer look at the helm and saw Flynn Rider, his hands tied to the wheel and the crown in his right hand. His neck and torso were wrapped in rope that was tied around the mast behind him, forcing him to appear as though he was standing upright despite not being conscious.

“Look! The crown,” the first guard observed.

Eugene came to, wondering what had happened. When he was aware of his surroundings again, he noticed his predicament. He looked around frantically, remembering what happened before he was knocked out.

“Rapunzel!” he called out. He soon realized that the two guards, joined by two others, were coming right at him. They jumped off of the dock and onto the boat.

“Tch!” Riku cursed as he and Donald approached the scene. He patted Maximus on the neck, getting his attention and alerting him to what was happening. They saw the guards restrain Eugene and pull him up onto the dock. Eugene was still calling Rapunzel’s name.

“Well, now what do we do?” Donald lamented.

Riku looked out across the lake. Maximus followed his gaze. “First, we make sure Rapunzel’s alright,” Riku said. The horse gave him a double take, realizing worriedly that something had happened under his watch.

“Then we get to work.”


	25. Chapter 24: Rescuing the Rogue

“There. It never happened,” Mother Gothel stated as she pulled the last flower out of Rapunzel’s now-unbraided hair. They were once again in the tower, and were seated on Rapunzel’s bed, the girl looking despondent. Gothel’s hair was once again completely black, free of gray strands, and her skin was flawless. Gothel had made Rapunzel sing the healing incantation to restore her youth as soon as they had returned.

Gothel stood up and started to exit the bedroom. “Now, wash up for dinner. I’m making hazelnut soup,” she said in a singsong voice. She stopped when Rapunzel did not respond, still lost in her own self-pity. “I really did try, Rapunzel. I tried to warn you what was out there. The world is dark, and selfish, and cruel. If it finds even the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it.” She closed the curtains, leaving Rapunzel alone.

Rapunzel sat silently, reflecting on how all of her hopes of a wonderful world, great friends, and being with Eugene were dashed painfully. She unfolded her crumpled-up handkerchief and stared somberly at the sun design. Pascal did what he could to comfort her. She let herself fall backward onto her bed and let out a sigh.

She stared up at her paintings on the walls and ceiling. But as she gazed at her artwork, she noticed miniscule details that she had hardly considered beforehand. She looked at the symbol on the handkerchief again, then back at her paintings.

Hidden within many of the designs, she saw that she had painted in the exact shape of the kingdom’s sun crest. And this was not just a rare coincidence; no, there were dozens in her room alone. As she recognized them, they appeared to glow in her mind’s eye, as she compared the seven-pointed curved star on the handkerchief to the seven-pointed curved stars hidden all over her bedroom.

As she came to this realization, a memory bubbled to the surface.

_The shape of the sun crest hanging above her head at the lowest point of a mobile that hung over an infant’s crib. She looked over to her right and saw a bearded man and a woman with long brown hair._

_She saw the same man and woman depicted in the mosaic in the town square._

_She saw her reflection, putting the crown on her head. It fit perfectly._

Rapunzel lost her footing. She stumbled backward, knocking over the stool and disrupting the mirror at her vanity table. She used the table to support herself as she caught her breath. She could not believe what she had just seen. What she had just found out about herself.

* * *

In a cell in the prison, Eugene paced back and forth, trying in vain to think of a plan. He knew he had to get back to Rapunzel, but he had no idea how. He was shaken out of his thoughts when he heard the cell door open.

“Let’s get this over with, Rider,” the captain of the guard said. He was flanked by two other guards.

“Where are we going?” Eugene asked.

In response the captain just stared at him without a change in expression. This was enough for Eugene to understand. “Oh,” he said, bringing his hand up to his neck. Things were not looking good for him.

Pretty soon, the guards were walking him down a hallway, one flanked by a row of cells. Eugene’s gaze was unfocused, as he was resigning himself to his execution. He could only hope that Rapunzel was alright.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Stabbington Brothers sitting in one of the cells. At the sight of them, he was overcome by anger. He shoved one of the guards into a cell door and headbutted the other, then hopped over the manacle cuffing his hands so that they were in front of him rather than behind. He reached into the cell, grabbed the elder brother by the shirt and pulled him against the bars.

“How did you know about her? Tell me, now!” he shouted in rage.

“It wasn’t us! It was the old lady,” the prisoner admitted, eyes filled with fear.

“Old lady…” Eugene realized what was going on. But before he could do anything, the guards grabbed onto him and tried to restrain him.

“Wait! No!” he protested. “You don’t understand. She’s in trouble!”

* * *

“Rapunzel?” Gothel called from downstairs, curious about the racket. “Rapunzel, what’s going on up there? Are you all right?”

Rapunzel stepped out of her room, staring at nothing. “I’m the lost princess,” she said to herself under her breath.

Gothel rolled her eyes. “Please speak up, Rapunzel. You know how I hate the mumbling.”

“I am the lost princess. Aren’t I?”

Gothel could only stare in shock.

Rapunzel’s gaze turned onto Gothel, anger bubbling inside her. “Did I mumble, Mother? Or should I even call you that?”

The woman regained her composure and tried to dismiss her claims. “Oh, Rapunzel! Do you even hear yourself? Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?” She moved in for a hug, but Rapunzel was having none of it.

“It was you! It was all you!”

Gothel began to glare at her sternly. “Everything I did was to protect you,” she claimed.

Angrily, Rapunzel shoved her way past Gothel. “I’ve spent my entire life hiding from people who would use me for my power.”

“Rapunzel!”

“When I should have been hiding from YOU!”

“Where will you go? He won’t be there for you.”

Rapunzel quickly realized that Eugene’s “betrayal” was another sham. “What did you do to him?”

“That criminal is to be hanged for his crimes,” Gothel declared without empathy or remorse.

Rapunzel gasped. “No…”

“Now, now. It’s all right,” she said in a soft voice. “Listen to me. All of this is as it should be.”

She went to pat Rapunzel on the head, but Rapunzel grabbed her wrist. “No! You were wrong about the world.” Her grip tightened, and Gothel struggled to try to escape. “And you were wrong about me! And I will never let you use my hair again!”

Dark fire flared up from the bangle around Gothel’s wrist, which she had neglected to remove upon returning. With the extra strength, she broke free from Rapunzel’s death grip, but stumbled backward. She knocked her mirror over, shattering it. Rapunzel gave her one last defiant look before turning to walk away.

“You want me to be the bad guy?” Gothel muttered to herself, holding in her anger. “Fine. Now I’m the bad guy.”

* * *

Eugene continued to struggle against the guards, who had to put all of their strength into holding him still to get him to stop. He fell into despair, as he realized that he would not be able to save Rapunzel. His despair turned to confusion when he saw a small object sitting in an alcove in the wall. It appeared to be… a ceramic unicorn?

Suddenly, the door in front of them slammed shut. The other doors closed, permitting no other exit. The keyhole on the door in front of them flashed a white glow, and the guards realized that it had been locked.

“What’s this?” the captain shouted in annoyance. He started banging on the door. “Open up!”

A slot at eye level on the door slid open, and the captain saw Shorty.

“What’s the password?” he asked before quickly closing the slot.

“What?” the captain asked in confusion.

The slot slid open again. “Nope.” Shorty closed the slot again.

“Open this door!”

“Not even close.”

“You have three seconds!”

This time, Donald opened the slot and made a funny face. “Try again!” he slammed the slot shut and froze it shut with Blizzard.

“One!” A hook reached down from the ceiling and grabbed the guard on Eugene’s left, lifting him into the air. “Two!” The side door opened and a large hand pulled the other guard, who was staring dumbfounded at the abduction of his friend, inside by the face, then the door shut again.

The captain turned to see what the commotion was, and realized that the thief was all alone. The door flashed white and was unlocked, and then it was opened. Attila, the baker thug, appeared and hit the captain on the head with the frying pan, knocking him out.

Eugene grinned. He never thought he would be glad to see any of the pub thugs. The door on the opposite end of the hall was smashed open, and four guards came running at them. Vladimir opened the side door and allowed Eugene and Attila to pass through.

The guards pursued them, but were stopped when they saw Ulf, the mime, performing an act right in front of them. First, he acted like he was inside of a box, then he glanced down the hall to the right. The guards followed his gaze, and screamed when they saw Goofy charging straight for them. The dog-knight plowed right through them, knocking them out in one go.

Eugene and Attila exited into a courtyard, but saw dozens of guards coming from the other direction. Hook-Hand picked Eugene up and put him next to him.

“Head down.” Eugene followed his instruction. “Arms in. Knees apart.” Eugene did a double take after the “knees apart” instruction, then realized that he was standing on a cart that was imbalanced and tilted down like a seesaw. Vladimir jumped from the upper level and landed on the raised section, launching Eugene into the air and over the wall.

Eugene screamed in terror as he flew, flipping three-hundred-and-sixty degrees about his side axis. He only stopped screaming when he landed, then realized that he was sitting perfectly in Maximus’ saddle.

“Max, you brought them here?” he asked in wonder.

Riku climbed up onto the patrol wall with them. “We all did,” he explained. “Though Sora, Kairi and Donald scouted the place out and secured extra horses. And actually, Maximus did most of the work in recruiting those guys.”

“How did he do that?” Eugene asked.

* * *

_Maximus pushed the pub door open, getting the attention of the thugs._

_“Eugene’s in trouble!” Mickey told them, stepping out from behind the horse._

_“Who’s Eugene?” Big Nose asked. Goofy scratched his head in confusion. Riku facepalmed when he remembered that they only knew him by his criminal pseudonym._

_Ulf approached the group curiously. Maximus stared at him seriously and snorted. Ulf posed as if to gasp, though he still did not make a sound. He turned to address the rest of the thugs and performed a series of gestures that left Riku, Mickey and Goofy confused._

_“Flynn’s been arrested?!” Hook-Hand gasped._

_“Set up to fall by Rapunzel’s wicked stepmother?” Big Nose continued._

_“At this rate, he’ll be hanged by noon. We have to save him!” Vladimir finished._

_Riku’s jaw dropped._

* * *

“Don’t worry about that,” was all Riku said in reply. Maximus smirked in confirmation.

“Thank you,” Eugene said. “No, really. Thank you. I feel this whole time, we’ve just been misunderstanding one another.”

The horse just gave him a snarky stare. Riku checked an imaginary wristwatch.

“Yeah. You’re right. We should go.”

Maximus charged as three guards came through the door behind them and started firing crossbow bolts. Riku cut the missiles out of the air with his Keyblade. More guards came to try to cut them off, but Maximus simply leapt off of the wall. Riku made a similar jump, bypassing the guards completely. Landing on a roof, the horse and the Keyblade wielder slid off of it and leapt out into the street.

They were quickly joined by three more horses, ridden by Sora and Kairi, Mickey, and Donald and Goofy. Riku pulled himself onto Mickey’s horse and took the reins, earning a quick thank-you from Mickey, who was too small to properly hold onto and lead a horse.

“So, here’s a question,” Eugene opened up. “I know that the old lady is bad news and that she set me up, but I don’t quite understand the urgency of the situation. Why would she lie to Rapunzel for all these years and go to such twisted measures to lure her back?”

“It’s not like she hasn’t done worse,” Sora replied.

“What do you mean?” Eugene asked.

“That woman kidnapped her when she was a baby,” Sora answered. Eugene’s eyes widened, and they would soon go even further. “Rapunzel’s the lost princess!”

“Well, then. We need to get to that tower, pronto! Giddy up, Maximus!” Eugene flicked the reins. Maximus neighed and started running faster.

The horses, at their riders’ direction, ran out of the city and into the forest, reaching the tower in less than an hour. When the horses had stopped in front of the tower, everyone dismounted.

Eugene ran up to the base of the tower. “Rapunzel? Rapunzel, let down your hair!” he shouted up to the window. He started trying to climb up, but seconds later, he heard the window opening. Rapunzel’s long, loose hair fell out and hung down at his level. Not wasting a moment, he grabbed onto the hair and began climbing up.

The others watched Eugene’s ascent, though there was an air of uncertainty. “Something’s not right,” Mickey voiced their concerns.

“You think it’s a trap?” Riku asked. Mickey nodded.

“Then we’ll split up,” Sora said. “Your Majesty, you, Donald and Goofy follow Eugene up. Riku, Kairi and I will try to get inside and go up from the inside. There has to be another way up that the woman used before Rapunzel could pull her up with her hair.”

“Then let’s move!” Kairi said hurriedly. She, Sora and Riku ran around the circumference of the tower until they found the door which had been previously hidden, while Mickey, Donald and Goofy climbed the wall using the vines.

Sora, Riku and Kairi clambered up the spiral stairs, ascending roughly eight floors’ worth of stairs in a few minutes. Kairi stopped when she saw a panel in the wall etched with a strange design. It appeared to be a circle with an X on the inside and several spikes all around the exterior.

Sora and Riku stopped when they noticed Kairi was distracted. “Kairi, come on!” Sora called.

“Sora, Riku, what do you make of this?” Kairi asked, pointing at the design. Her friends joined her and studied the etching. However, they had never seen anything like it.

“Who knows. Its significance might have faded with time, so it might not even matter anymore,” Riku said. “We’ll worry about it later.”

“Right. Sorry.” With that, the three of them resumed their ascent. They stopped when the stairway ended and it looked as though there was no way to go from there.

Sora scanned the ceiling and noticed a split in the stone. Realizing that it must have been a trapdoor, he pushed up on it. Just as he suspected, it budged upward slightly. Giving his friends a confident but serious smirk, he pushed upward with all his might, which was certainly more than enough. The stone flew to the ceiling and shattered into pebbles. Realizing what he had done, he cast Reflect, which created an umbrella for the pebbles to bounce off of, though the three of them had to cover their mouths and noses when the dust came down.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, his voice muffled by his hand. When the dust had settled, they grabbed onto the ladder that was hidden by the stone and climbed through the hole. Once they were inside Rapunzel’s room, they scanned the area for the girl and the thief, only to gasp in horror.

Rapunzel was chained by the wrists to a support pillar against the wall next to them, her mouth covered by a gag. By the window, Eugene lay unresponsive, and he had a bleeding wound in his chest.

Mother Gothel stood above him, a dagger in her hand. She glared at the newcomers and spoke, pure hatred in her voice.

“You supposed ‘Warriors of Light’ never learn. No matter. I’ll simply have to clean up your mess, Rapunzel.”


	26. Chapter 25: Magic Flower

Sora summoned his Keyblade and lunged at the woman. However, she lifted her lantern, which shot a bolt of green fire at him. This caught him by surprise, and he was knocked back by the dark magic. He hit the wall and slumped to the ground. Kairi helped him to his feet. Riku shot a blast of Dark Fire to destroy the lantern, then ran in to strike Gothel. However, with a dark aura covering her hand, she blocked his Keyblade with her dagger, then threw him back with a shockwave.

“I had certainly hoped that I would never use the power of this Bangle again,” Gothel lamented. “But if it means keeping my flower and putting an end to the meddling of Keyblade wielders—” Numerous Heartless appeared around her “—so be it.”

She pointed at Sora, Riku and Kairi, and the Heartless began to move toward them. However, balls of Fire, Blizzard, and Light, as well as a spinning shield, destroyed the monsters.

“You know about Keyblades?” Sora asked, dumbfounded. He had recovered from the hit, though he felt a stinging sensation in his left shoulder.

“I have seen the fruits of your labors,” Gothel answered. “I was there when hundreds of Keybearers gathered light, saying it was in the name of protecting the world from the darkness. I saw them wage war for their greed of the light. I watched them destroy the world in their selfishness. I had hoped to never see another Key. Well, I suppose this can be the last time.”

Donald screamed and threw himself at Gothel, but she turned around and held her hand out. Her bangle glowed and a Blizzaga spell hit him and threw him out of the window, encasing him in ice.

“Donald!” Mickey called. Fortunately, the duck managed to use Firaga magic to thaw himself out. Unfortunately, he still fell seventy feet and hit the ground hard. He gasped out a Curaga invocation the moment he landed, so he managed to drag himself to his feet several seconds later.

Gothel snapped her fingers, and six Dandelions surrounded the duck. “Infernal creatures,” the woman muttered. Goofy jumped out of the window and landed neatly on the ground below to come to Donald’s assistance. Immediately following this, multiple Powerwilds and Emerald Blues materialized to engage the remaining heroes. Due to the tenacity of the monkey Heartless and the close quarters of the battlefield, Sora, Riku, Kairi and Mickey soon found themselves backed into the wall. Sora and Riku were forced to guard against attacks from several directions. Mickey fared slightly better, due to his own small size and mobility, however he was still unable to get free. Kairi did her best to fend them off and even try to go on the offensive, but her arm guard permitted little freedom to retaliate and the rapier, while also being poorly suited for defensive purposes, was not of the same quality and strength as a Keyblade, not to mention the fact that she had next to no experience in battle.

“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Our secret shall die with them,” Gothel remarked coldly. Rapunzel kept trying to run to Eugene’s side, but she was still chained to the wall. “And as for us,” Gothel continued while disconnecting the chain from the wall and starting to pull on it, “we are going where no one will ever find you again!” Pascal came to Rapunzel’s defense, biting and pulling on Gothel’s dress. But, since he was a tiny chameleon, the woman simply kicked him away. Rapunzel continued to struggle, refusing to go where Gothel pulled her, but the dark power in the bangle boosted the woman’s strength. “Rapunzel, really! Enough already! Stop fighting me!”

Rapunzel’s struggling managed to cause the gag to fall off of her face, allowing her to speak. “No! I won’t stop! For every minute for the rest of my life I will fight! I will never stop trying to get away from you!”

This inspired the others into a boost of strength. Sora shouted “Aeroga!” which conjured a gust of wind that blew the Powerwilds away from him. He was surprised by this, as he had not used Aero magic in over a year; it was not a spell that he had re-learned after awakening from his memory slumber, but the third-tier level of that spell came to him naturally. However, he thought that the spell was supposed to create a defensive wall around him, but he shrugged it off. Riku conjured a planar shield to block the frontal assault of the Heartless, then took out the ones that came at him from the side. Kairi pushed back against an attacking Powerwild with her arm guard, then sliced the head off of another Heartless with her rapier. Mickey blasted his attackers away with a light spiral, while shouting “Faith!” However, the assault was still overwhelming: the Emerald Blues enemies were unaffected by the Aero magic and threw themselves at him while surrounded by their own wind funnel; Riku’s shield came down and the Heartless in front came at him with full force; a Powerwild slid right at Kairi, knocking her off of her feet and leaving her vulnerable; as for Mickey, his foes just kept coming, leaving him no opportunity to retaliate in a similar fashion.

Rapunzel’s breathing steadied, and she came to a decision. “But if you let me save him, I will go with you,” she said.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey gasped in horror when they heard this. “No. No, Rapunzel…” Eugene croaked, trying to crawl toward Rapunzel but being unable to do so.

“I’ll never run. I’ll never try to escape. Just let me heal him, and you and I will be together, forever. Just like you want. Everything will be the way it was. I promise. Just like you want.” This horrified Sora even more, as he remembered her saying that she never breaks a promise. Rapunzel looked to Gothel with pleading eyes, conveying the utmost sincerity. “Just let me heal him.”

“Rapunzel, no! Don’t go with her!” Sora pleaded while pushing back against attacks.

Gothel thought for a moment, then, without a word, unlocked the manacle around Rapunzel’s wrists. She went over to Eugene and locked the manacle around his wrist, connecting it to the wall. “In case you get any ideas about coming after us,” she whispered to him. She looked over to see that the others were still occupied with a score of Heartless.

Rapunzel ran over to Eugene. He winced in pain. She moved his hand and opened his shirt, and saw the blood-soaked wound.

“I’m so sorry. Everything is going to be okay,” she assured him.

“No, Rapunzel!”

“I promise, you have to trust me.”

“I can’t let you do this,” he pleaded

“And I can’t let you die,” she replied, tears welling up.

“But if you do this, then _you_ will die.”

She placed his hand on his cheek reassuringly. “Hey. It’s going to be alright.”

He looked around the room. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey were busy fighting Heartless that refused to relent. As they fought harder in desperation to save Rapunzel from Gothel, the Heartless got stronger, apparently fueled by the dark energy seeping from the obsidian bangle around the woman’s wrist. Eugene knew that they would not be able to intervene. So, he had to do something, in spite of the fact that he was about to die.

He felt around for something he could use and found something.

Rapunzel sighed and opened her mouth to start singing.

“Wait, Rapunzel…” Eugene muttered. He brushed back her hair, then grabbed the golden locks at a spot below her neck. With his other hand, he picked up a shard of the broken mirror and swiped it back, cutting right through her hair.

Having used the last of his strength, he dropped the severed length of hair as well as the mirror shard, his arms falling limp.

“Eugene…?” Rapunzel felt her now-short hair, which quickly turned brown.

Gothel gasped in horror. “No!” Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey stared in shock. Fortunately for them, the Heartless had stopped fighting when they recognized their summoner’s distress.

Rapunzel picked up one end of her severed hair, and watched it quickly turn brown. Gothel tried to gather her end up, pleading for the magic to not fade away, but in seconds it had turned completely brown.

“No! What have you done?!” the woman screamed, watching as her smooth-skinned hand turned wrinkled and decrepit. Her black hair turned stark white and her perfect features became wrinkled and sunken. She ran over to the broken mirror and looked into her reflection. She was horrified to see her gorgeous features fade away. She pulled the hood of her cloak down in shame. Her wails of agony turned into a roar of anger as dark fire flared all around her body.

Brought back into focus by the woman’s wails, Sora raised his Keyblade backward, his weapon wreathed in fire. He threw it, and it went straight through three Powerwilds. Those Heartless exploded in fire, annihilating the other nearby creatures. Riku spun around, slicing through each of the Heartless, then lunged through three more, blinking out of sight as he did so. The Heartless surrounding him exploded into smoke. Kairi delivered quick stabs into the Heartless in front of her, then ran over to check on Rapunzel and Eugene. Mickey jumped over his opponents and cut them down from behind.

Gothel picked her dagger up, and it was covered in a dark aura so thick that it turned completely black. “You insolent—” she screamed as she delivered nine powerful spinning strikes. However, Riku called up his barrier and Sora cast Reflega. When the darkness-charged strikes were finished, the spell dispersed, blasting Gothel with retaliating force.

Gothel, her resilience enhanced by the dark power emanating from the bangle, stood firm and tried to stab at Sora. However, he cast Fire, knocking her back and igniting her cloak. She screamed in pure hatred, the fire of her bangle burning hotter. Kairi grimaced and held back a gag when she saw the woman’s veins, painfully visible through her wasting skin and muscles, turn black.

Despite having already transformed beyond the age she was at when she originally discovered the flower’s magic, Gothel continued to lash out. Swords of light materialized over her head. The swords, tinged with a dark cloud, flew straight for her enemies, but Mickey deflected them out of the air, and they dissipated into sparkles and smoke.

Riku realized that the bangle was the source of her power, its own magic fueled by her anger and hatred. He ran at Gothel and slashed at her wrist. The bangle broke open and a gash was cut in the woman’s wrist. She gasped in pain as her power faded. Dark fire was still wrapped around her hand, but it was apparent that it was consuming it. In seconds, the already-frail hand disintegrated into dust. The dagger hit the floor with a clang.

Powerless and her anger left useless, Gothel stumbled backward in pain and terror, heading toward the window. Mickey stuck his foot out, causing her to trip and fall out of the window. Rapunzel gasped and reached her arms out, but she was too far away to catch her, and it would have been useless anyway. Gothel screamed as she fell, her voice fading quickly as she had no energy left to hold a breath.

Mother Gothel’s flaming cloak hit the ground, laying open, flat and empty as a cloud of dust and smoke flew out from it. Donald, Goofy and Maximus gasped in horror at the sight, realizing what had happened. Goofy refrained from vomiting.

Rapunzel stared in shock for a moment, then remembered Eugene. “No, no, no, no, no, Eugene,” she pleaded, lifting up his limp body. He coughed and his eyes opened briefly. “Look at me! Look at me! I’m right here. Don’t go. Stay with me, Eugene!” She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her head. “Flower gleam and glow. Let your power shine…” She quickly realized that it was not working.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey watched in horror. Sora raised his Keyblade. “Heal!” Sora called out. A green light fell over Eugene, but nothing happened. Frantically, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an Elixir. He made to uncork it, but Mickey put his hand over his.

“Cure and Potions can only do so much,” the mouse said sadly. “The wound’s too severe.”

Sora’s face fell, and he dropped the Elixir. A friend was dying right in front of him. And for the first time, he was helpless. For all his great power, he could do nothing to save him.

Eugene weakly touched Rapunzel’s face. “You were my new dream,” he whispered, his eyes barely able to focus on her.

Rapunzel grabbed hold of his hand. “And you were mine,” she replied, despairing.

Eugene slumped, the last of his strength leaving him, along with his life. Rapunzel held him, unmoving, for several minutes. She weakly recited the Healing incantation. The others in the room mourned silently. Kairi sought solace in Sora’s embrace, crying. He accepted, also seeking comfort. Donald and Goofy climbed into the room, having hurried up the inner stairway after seeing what was left of Mother Gothel. Goofy started to ask how everyone was but stopped when he saw what was going on.

Rapunzel finally broke down in tears. One of them fell on Eugene’s cheek. It sparked into a golden glow, then faded.

Rapunzel heard a series of gasps behind her and turned to see what caused the others to react in such a way. She noticed that the wound in Eugene’s chest was emitting a golden light. Yellow rays curled and spread about the room, all coming out of Eugene’s chest. A light image of a flower appeared over Eugene. With his keen eyes, Riku could see a shifting underneath the pattern, and he realized that the wound was healing.

The waving rays dissipated and the glow died down. Rapunzel checked where it had emitted. The wound was closed completely. The bloodstains had even disappeared. She looked back over at Eugene’s face anxiously.

Eugene’s eyes fluttered open, and he breathed. “Rapunzel,” he whispered.

Rapunzel gasped in delight. “Eugene,” she whispered back.

“Did I ever tell you I’ve got a thing for brunettes?” he joked.

Rapunzel and Eugene hugged. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy cheered at the miracle. They went up to Eugene to ask how he was feeling, and Sora helped him to his feet.


	27. Chapter 26: Rapunzel's Reunion

The guard opened the door to address the king and queen. The king stood at the window, staring pensively out to the city below, while the queen sat in a chair, reading a book. King Frederic was a tall, well-built man with a thick moustache and beard. He wore a blue suit with a raised collar and loose shoulder sleeves with blue and yellow stripes, an open brown vest, a wide necklace made of square and circular gold pieces inset with blue gemstones with a medallion shaped like the Corona symbol inside of a circle attached, a leather belt, and brown leather boots. Queen Arianna was a slender woman with waist-length brown hair. She wore a purple dress embroidered with pale vine-like designs on the front as well as a pearl necklace with three pink, teardrop-shaped jewels attached.

When the guard came in, the monarchs looked at him intently, hoping that he had come to deliver the news that they had waited years for. The guard simply nodded. The king and queen looked at each other, their eyes filling with hope.

They stepped out onto the balcony, where Rapunzel and Eugene looked out over the city, waiting for their appointment, holding hands. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy stood to the side. The couple turned around when they heard the door open. Frederic and Arianna stared at Rapunzel, taking in her features. Arianna approached Rapunzel and touched her cheek. She smiled, realizing that she was indeed who she claimed to be. She pulled her daughter into a hug, which Rapunzel reciprocated. Frederic happily joined in. Arianna looked to Eugene and held out her hand. He took it, but to his surprise she yanked him into joining the group hug.

Sora put his hands behind his head, crossed his foot behind his other ankle, and grinned. Riku put his hand on his hip and smirked. Kairi brushed some hair behind her ear and smiled. Mickey, Donald and Goofy chuckled.

* * *

During the next few hours, the king and queen as well as a detail of guards gave Rapunzel, Eugene, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy a tour of the castle. During the tour, the group exchanged stories, and the monarchs thanked the travelers graciously for helping them reunite with their daughter.

It was evident that the captain still did not trust Flynn Rider… Eugene after years as a criminal, particularly after the humiliation he endured over the past few days. However, he could see that Eugene cared quite a bit about Rapunzel, and he did help bring her home. He could also tell that the newcomers had their hearts in the right places, and he felt grateful when he found out that they had saved him and his men from the flood. For similar reasons, he had forgiven Maximus for helping break Eugene out of prison.

When the tour ended and they exited into the castle’s courtyard, they were greeted by Hook-Hand, Big Nose, Attila, Vladimir, Shorty, and the other thugs from the Snuggly Duckling. After they had helped Eugene escape, the guards had apprehended them, but they were pardoned. Hook-Hand began playing on a piano, and Attila brought out some cupcakes that he was allowed to bake in the guard station’s kitchen.

Sora felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see the captain of the guard. “You six have done much good for the kingdom,” the captain said. “And you have all proven yourselves quite capable. I would like you to become a part of the royal guard. What do you say?”

Sora blinked and traded glances with his friends before turning back to the captain. “We’re honored, sir. But, I’m afraid we’re going to have to decline,” he answered. The captain raised an eyebrow quizzically at this. “The thing is, we sort of have other kingdoms to help out.” Sora pointed to Goofy. “And he’s kind of the captain of his own knighthood.” He pointed over to Mickey. “And he’s a king who those knights serve. So, I don’t know how that would even work if we were to sign up.” The captain blinked in surprise and gave Mickey a quick bow. Sora snickered at this.

“Well, then I wish you good luck,” the captain said. “I hope you can visit again sometime, and maybe show my men some of your training patterns.” He held out his hand, which Sora gladly shook.

“I’ll think about it,” the younger adventurer replied.

King Frederic chuckled warmly. “Is there any way we can repay you for all you’ve done?” he asked in a deep, kind voice.

Sora realized that this would be an excellent opportunity to get some clues. He and Kairi had researched the history of Corona the previous night but had found nothing about any well-guarded artifacts. Perhaps the king and queen could help them.

“Well, we’re actually investigating something. You see, there are these people who are looking for some hidden objects. They’re supposed to be scattered all over the place and well-guarded, and I think there’s supposed to be one in this land. I know it’s supposed to be a big secret, but if these guys find all of these objects, some pretty bad things will happen. Do you think you could help us out with that?” he asked.

King Frederic rubbed his chin, considering what Sora had said. “I’m afraid that I am unfamiliar with such an artifact,” he answered. He traded a thoughtful glance with Queen Arianna. “But we will let you know if we find anything.” Arianna nodded in agreement.

“Well, then I guess we should keep searching elsewhere,” Mickey said. He shook hands with the monarchs of Corona. “It was great meeting you.”

“You’re leaving?” Eugene asked. He and Rapunzel were saddened by the news.

Sora turned to answer him. “Yeah. We kind of have a quest to carry out.”

“But you’ll be back to visit, right?” Rapunzel asked.

“Of course,” Kairi answered. “You two take care.”

Pascal gave her a glance that seemed to simulate a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, Pascal. You _three_ take care.”

Rapunzel gave each of them a hug. Eugene shook hands with them and even gave Sora and Riku a bro-tap. The pub thugs hollered and waved good-bye and good luck and Maximus let out an encouraging whinny.

Mickey led Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy to a Safe Point next to a grocer’s shop and, when he was sure that nobody was looking or would notice, beamed the group back onto the Gummi Ship.

* * *

Mickey took his place in the pilot’s seat, Sora sat in the Gunner’s chair, and Donald chose the copilot’s chair. Riku, Kairi and Goofy buckled themselves into the passenger chairs.

Sora and Mickey sulked, wondering how they were going to make any progress in their hunt. They did not even know what to look for. Not even the reigning monarchs of the Kingdom of Corona know about it. They had hoped that someone of such high authority would be the one to know about and watch over the items. If that did not fit the bill, then where would they even start?

Donald summed their concerns up quite nicely. “Well, now what are we going to do?” he groaned.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Goofy said. “Hopefully, this will mean that the bad guys won’t be able to find the items so easily.”

Riku disagreed. “Bear in mind that what little we know came from what that guy told the other villains,” he clarified. “We still haven’t found out what Ansem the Wise knew, but I’m sure that whoever is working with Maleficent, he knows far more than we heard. Odds are, he’s one of the people who were supposed to be guarding these things.”

Kairi busily sketched the symbol she found inside the tower and showed her drawing to Jiminy, who could only wonder at what it was. “Is there anyone we can ask who would know?” she asked.

“D’oh!” Mickey exclaimed, amazed that he did not think of it sooner. “Master Yen Sid! He should know something.”

“Who’s Master Yen Sid?” Kairi asked.

“He’s the one who taught King Mickey to use a Keyblade,” Goofy explained, “and he also taught him and Donald magic.”

“He watches over the state of the worlds, and he knows a lot about what’s going on everywhere,” Mickey added. “If anyone would be able to help us, it’s him.”

“And maybe he would be able to tell us about this,” Riku said, holding up the broken obsidian bangle. “He could tell us where that woman’s dark power came from.”

“Alright!” Sora cheered, then he took on a puzzled expression as he realized something that confused him. “Wait, are we going directly there, or will we have to go to Twilight Town and then taking the funny-looking train to get there?”

Mickey shot him a confused expression, then chuckled. “No, we can just go straight there. Yen Sid’s tower isn’t actually a part of Twilight Town or in a pocket dimension. It’s its own world; it just creates a link to Twilight Town,” he explained.

“Well, then what are we waiting for? Let’s get going,” Riku said. “It will be an honor to finally meet the wise master,” he mused.

Donald nodded and plotted the course in his console. When the map was lined up, Mickey put the ship into gear. He gunned the engines, and the Gummi Ship shot toward its destination.


	28. Chapter 27: Wise Master Yen Sid

Kairi felt a sense of vertigo when she took in her surroundings. The mustard-yellow tower bent off-normal and then back on-normal as she looked up at it. She realized that the entire clearing in which the tower was situated was a small, disconnected land mass with a few trees and bushes placed around the path and against the building. Said land mass floated in a surreal void in which flowed yellow and purple lights. She lost her balance from the sight and nearly fell, but Sora caught her.

“You alright?” he asked.

Kairi stood up with his help and shook her mind clear. “Yeah. Thanks. It’s just that this is so weird,” she told him.

Sora shrugged. “You’ll end up accepting that kind of thing. Wait ‘til you get inside,” he said with a smirk.

The tower had a green conical roof, with a thinner tower jutting out of it that had a similar roof attached. Another tower segment was attached to the left side of the edifice, with its own green roof, and there was a smaller version of the same design on the front of the upper portion of the tower. Windows were inserted around the upper section of the tower, and there were some with extruded frames built in elsewhere. At the front of the base was a tall set of wooden double doors with iron frames. The left door had a golden star design while the right door had a golden crescent moon design. On either side of the doors, a series of columns surrounded the circumference of the building. There was a set of miniature stairs in front of the tower, leading up to the door.

The party approached the tower and Mickey opened the door. Kairi raised an eyebrow, wondering if they were being rude by simply barging in. However, Mickey seemed to know what he was doing, and none of the others protested. They came into a circular room with a wide spiral staircase, surrounded by columns. In front of the light-blue-colored stairs with lilac walls were two objects that resembled blue conical wizard hats decorated with yellow star and moon designs.

Mickey led them up the staircase, and Riku and Kairi stared in confusion as what appeared to be a glowing green blob floated partway up the flight. Mickey, Donald and Goofy went through without hesitation, vanishing completely, but the teenagers were still perplexed. Sora snickered at this, stepped behind them, and shoved them through before walking in himself. They all found themselves on a section of stairway that floated in midair. The room area was much greater than in the section before. At the top of the section of stairs was a blue-green door with a golden star design. The area behind the door seemed to vanish into a similar void to the one they just stepped through.

The door led into a circular room with a green wall decorated with glowing star designs and a gray floor with a single large, barely-visible star outline. The green door ahead had an arrow design pointing up. Riku turned around out of curiosity and saw that the door behind them had an arrow design pointing down. The party went through the green door and found themselves back in the open area from before, on another section of stairs. These stairs turned counterclockwise rather than the previous section’s clockwise. Looking over the ledge, they could see the previous section of stairs beneath them, indeed disconnected from anything that would otherwise hold it up. Looking up, they could see a straight flight of stairs with a door on either end.

They stepped through a door with a golden moon design and found themselves in a room very similar to the Star Chamber, albeit with glowing crescent moon designs all over the wall, crescent moon outline on the floor, and a brown door with an up-pointing arrow. They passed through that door and found themselves on the straight flight of stairs. The door at the top had an isosceles triangle in the same place that the star and moon had been on the other doors.

“That leads into Yen Sid’s study,” Sora explained to Riku and Kairi, pointing up at the door.

“Cool,” Kairi simply replied.

The party climbed the final flight of stairs and Mickey knocked on the door. The door cracked open, and he opened it the rest of the way. They stepped into a circular room with a green floor and a dark-yellow wall. Several bookshelves were strewn about, some being simple ledges and others being unusually-shaped cubbies hanging on the wall. There were large yellow pots in several places against the wall, some of them containing brooms and staffs and others containing scrolls. On the opposite side of the room, two open windows were cut out of the wall, one shaped like a star and the other shaped like a crescent moon. On the right side was a green wardrobe, though Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy knew that it was actually a door to a larger dressing room. Across from the party was a wooden table with a skull-shaped candle on the corner. Behind the desk was a tall chair that rose over eight feet in height.

A tall old man with a long dark gray beard and large gray eyebrows sat in the chair. He wore a wide-sleeved blue robe with light blue trim, along with a blue cone-shaped hat decorated with star and moon designs. The man had sharp facial features and a constantly-stern expression. He had large eyes but small pupils, making him appear all the more imposing.

When the approached Master Yen Sid, Mickey, Donald and Goofy bowed immediately, with Sora remembering to follow a few seconds later. Riku was taken aback at the fact that Sora was actually showing respect, but soon followed suit. Kairi simply waved nervously. “Hello,” she said. Mickey, Donald and Goofy looked at her in shock. Sora chuckled under his breath, remembering something similar happening to him.

Yen Sid gestured for everyone to stand at ease, and they complied.

Mickey spoke up. “Master Yen Sid, we have come seeking your counsel,” he said. “Someone has recruited Maleficent and several others, and now they are looking for a bunch of artifacts that will let them change reality. We’re trying to head them off, but we have no idea where to start looking.”

Yen Sid closed his eyes pensively. “I have sensed this gathering, and I have heard of the threat it poses.” He hesitated for a moment. “However, I fear that there is very little I can do to direct your search.”

Mickey, Donald and Goofy gasped in shock. Not even the wise and knowledgeable Yen Sid could aid them? What sort of hidden power could even he not know about? And what did this say about the mysterious antagonist who sought these items and knew quite clearly of their nature?

However, Sora and Riku considered the sorcerer’s words with suspicion. He seemed to be dodging the question, but they could only wonder why he was keeping secrets. But they understood that something that could remake the laws of the universe was not something to be divulged easily, so they decided to respect his decision.

“When the stars showed me the alliance forming, I looked into the sinister benefactor and learned as much as I possibly could, though it is very little,” Yen Sid continued. “All that I was able to glean is that his name is Zeromast, and he appears to study the state of the worlds as much as I do. I cannot discern how much he knows, or how he knows so much about the worlds’ affairs, nor can I read what he intends to do with this forbidden power.”

His guests slumped and groaned in disappointment. The only thing they were getting out of this visit was the man’s name. Which was helpful, particularly when they return to Radiant Garden to update Leon and the others, but otherwise it did not help them understand what to do to stop him and Maleficent.

“I apologize for not being able to guide you, but perhaps I can prepare you for the struggle ahead,” Yen Sid said, regaining their attention. “Thirteen menaces align to a common ambition. These villains of a sort will use their dark powers and resources to attain their goal any way they can. This will be your greatest challenge yet, and the stakes have never been higher. For this reason, you will need new powers to ensure that you have what it takes to oppose this evil alliance. Sora, Riku, Kairi, step forward, Keyblade wielders of Destiny.”

Kairi blinked in surprise. “What?” she asked. Sora looked at her, confused. Mickey, Donald and Goofy traded bemused glances. “I’m a Keyblade wielder?”

Yen Sid nodded. “Yes. You were not awakened in your ability to use one, and the sole occasion in which you held a Keyblade, you did not know it was yours. But you have had the potential to use one since you were a child,” he explained.

Kairi turned to Riku, who she realized was the only one not surprised by the announcement. “Did you know?” she asked.

Riku nodded. “Do you remember when I gave you a Keyblade to help you fight the Heartless back at the Organization’s castle?” he asked. She nodded. “With Naminé’s help, I summoned that Keyblade from your heart. Then it vanished after you were done using it, because you unconsciously dismissed it.”

Sora’s mouth widened into a grin. “Wait, that’s what Kairi used to fight back there? That’s awesome! Do you know what this means? Now we’re all Keyblade buddies!” he exclaimed. Riku and Kairi laughed at his words, causing him to chuckle sheepishly.

Curiously, Kairi held her arm out, trying to summon a Keyblade. However, Yen Sid shook his head.

“I am afraid that you have yet to solidify your connection to your Keyblade,” he said, to Kairi’s confusion. He answered her questioning stare with a question to Sora and Riku. “Have either of you experienced a sort of dream prior to the awakening of your Keyblades?”

Sora crossed his arms behind his head and turned his eyes upward, thinking back to before he got his Keyblade. _Man, that seemed like so long ago,_ he mused. “I did have this surreal dream with stained-glass platforms where a voice told me to choose between a sword, a shield, and a magic staff,” he answered.

“Was that when you were snoozing on the beach when you should have been helping us with the raft?” Kairi asked teasingly.

Sora chuckled, embarrassed. “Maybe…”

“I had a dream like that a couple days after Sora woke up from his year-long slumber,” Riku said. “When I woke up to a Heartless ambush, I found that my sword, the Soul Eater—” Sora made a quip about its ‘nice name’ “—had changed shape, and grew a handle guard, an angel wing on the tip, and a keychain. When I saw that my weapon had become a Keyblade, I understood my place.”

Sora and Kairi paused for a moment to take it all in. Sora had wondered how Riku managed to get his own Keyblade for real, since the Kingdom Key, which he had claimed to have been meant for him (according to Ansem/Xehanort’s Heartless), rejected him and returned to Sora. Then again, he had absolutely no idea how the whole Keyblade thing worked, considering his Nobody was able to use the same Keyblade while he himself used it, and on occasion both he and Roxas had used two Keyblade simultaneously. Due to this, he never really pressed the topic.

“So, how do I awaken mine?” Kairi asked.

Yen Sid stroked his beard. “We must put you through into a Dive to send you into your heart to complete the connection,” he explained. “Forgive me for being abrupt.”

“What do you mean send me—” Kairi’s question was interrupted when Yen Sid waved his hand, causing his desk to break in half and slide apart. He then stood up quickly and closed the gap between himself and her instantly. He pressed his fingers against her forehead, pushing her head backward. She gasped as her eyes glazed over.

* * *

Her surroundings faded away, and Kairi found herself falling through a black void. Her panic subsided as she realized that her descent was slowing down rather than accelerating. She remembered a similar sensation when she found herself thrust into Sora’s heart nearly two years ago. She craned her neck down and saw a bright circle approaching.

Within moments, she landed on the platform, and saw that, like Sora described, the surface was made of stained glass. The background was mostly a blue-green color. Around the circumference of the platform, Kairi saw multiple smaller circles, each containing items familiar to Riku from the island, as well as other objects she did not recognize. What caught her eye was that the platform depicted a full-color image of a sleeping Riku, in profile, his legs and head bent as if he were to be leaned against the edge of the circle. Next to his head was a circle with seven smaller circles inside. Aside from the center one, which contained an image of the Heartless emblem without the thorny X, each circle contained an image of a person’s face, someone closely connected to Riku. There were Sora and Kairi, as well as King Mickey, Naminé, a man whose face was covered in red bandages whom she guessed was Ansem the Wise in his identity of DiZ, as well as someone she did not recognize. Based on his facial features, the stranger appeared to be slightly older than Riku, and from the shading (the images were all in tones of blue-green), she guessed that he had shoulder-length brown hair that came into some small spikes.

Three grey pedestals appeared around Kairi, drawing her attention away from the designs. Three items materialized, each of them floating over a different platform. One appeared to be a double-edged sword with a blue grip, a gold handle guard and pommel, and a Hidden Mickey in a red circle on the handle guard. Another was a pentagonal black shield with a red border and a scarlet Hidden Mickey symbol with a yellow outline emblazoned on the front. The third was a green rod with tan ends, a wide brown disc at the top and a blue crystal shaped like King Mickey’s head on top of that.

_Why is King Mickey’s head on so many symbols?_ she wondered.

She looked at each of the items and realized what she was supposed to do. She would choose one of them and determine how her strength would grow. And something in the back of her mind made her think that she would also have to give up one of those items. The sword would symbolize strength and offensive ability, the shield would focus on defense, and the rod would indicate magic capabilities. She studied each object intently, trying to decide what she would choose. Increased strength and offensive attacks held little value to her, and she would prefer to defend others and support her allies, so she decided that she would give up the sword when the time came. Developing defense would be beneficial, but she also valued agility, and she felt that remaining stalwart to constantly block attacks would limit her mobility. Besides that, she also wanted to work in conjunction with Sora and Riku, who were more offensive fighters and seemed to strike a balance between strength, defense and mobility. Lastly, she turned to the rod. She always thought it would be cool to be able to use magic. In terms of tactics and skills, if she became experienced enough, she could cast spells without compromising her mobility, she could hinder and overcome enemies while also providing support to her friends, and a mage who could hold her own in a sword fight would certainly complement Sora and Riku’s more warrior-oriented styles with some magic.

She stepped up to the rod and grabbed it out of the air. A voice rang in her mind as she held the staff.

_The wand of the mystic. Inner strength. A staff of wonder and ruin. Is this the power you choose?_

Kairi nodded, and the rod vanished in a flash of light.

_Your path is set. Now what will you give up in exchange?_

Kairi smirked, knowing that she had guessed right. She immediately went over to grab the sword.

_The power of the warrior. Invincible courage. A sword of terrible destruction. You give up this power?_

“I do,” she answered, even knowing that the voice was only in her mind. The sword faded away, and she found herself holding empty air.

_You’ve chosen the power of the mystic. You’ve given up the power of the warrior. Is this the form you choose?_

Kairi nodded. Just then, the pedestals sank into the ground, shaking the platform and causing her to stumble. She turned around and saw the stained-glass shatter. When the platform fell to pieces under her feet, she was sent falling into the abyss.

She soon landed on a blue-colored platform with the sleeping figure of Sora integrated into the design. The smaller circles around the edge all had the same crown shape incorporated within them. The circles near Sora’s head included head images of Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, Roxas, another boy who looked exactly like Roxas, and a dark-haired girl who bore an uncanny resemblance to a slightly younger Kairi. Kairi smiled warmly when she realized that her own image was in the center, but she found herself looking at the two Roxas-es and the raven-haired Kairi clone curiously.

She was soon shaken out of her thoughts by the voice from before as the Dream Rod appeared in her hand.

_You’ve gained the power to fight. Your magic is growing, and there will be times when you must use it to fight. Keep your light burning strong._

A Red Nocturne, a Blue Rhapsody, a Yellow Opera, and a Green Requiem appeared. Kairi smirked, as she knew how to handle these foes. The Nocturne and Rhapsody’s weaknesses were easy to exploit; the Opera could be harmed by Blizzard, but not to the same extent as the Nocturne; the Requiem absorbed all of the three main magic spells, so blunt attacks worked best. That worked fine for Kairi, since she wanted to be able to use physical sword-fighting along with incantations.

She decided to start with the Red Nocturne. She imagined a cold sensation, like touching metal, or eating ice cream and getting a brain freeze. She pointed the crystal head of the Dream Rod at the red Heartless.

“Blizzard!” she shouted. She knew that Sora usually said ‘Deep Freeze’, but it probably did not matter what she actually said. The ice crystal hit the Red Nocturne head-on and sent it through the air. However, the Green Requiem wasted no time in healing it.

Kairi turned and ran toward the green Heartless and jumped at it. She delivered a swift aerial combo that knocked it out of the air. Before it could regain its composure and heal itself, Kairi pointed her rod at it and, thinking of falling, like when Sora took her off the cliff in Corona, shouted, “Gravity!” A black hemisphere descended on the Heartless and pinned it to the ground, flattening it briefly. Kairi then leapt at it and brought the crystal head of her rod down on the Heartless, obliterating it.

The Yellow Opera surrounded itself in electric charge and threw itself at her, but she swung the Dream Rod like a baseball bat, hitting it and knocking it into the Blue Rhapsody. She turned around and cast Blizzard at the Red Nocturne. After the spell made contact, she ran up to it and jabbed the head of the rod at the Heartless, finishing it off. She then cast Fire at the Blue Rhapsody. She tried casting it a second time, but the crystal head went dull.

_Right, magic power isn’t infinite,_ she thought. _I’m going to have to let it recharge._

She rolled out of the way of a Blizzard spell cast by the retaliating Blue Rhapsody, cartwheeled away from a lightning strike, and leapt into the air to strike at the Blue Rhapsody, which dissipated when she dealt the combo finisher. The Yellow Opera hurled itself at her, once again wrapped in lightning. Instead of running away or trying to block it, Kairi ran toward it, then slid underneath it at the last second. The Heartless slowed down, confused. In the meantime, Kairi stood up behind it, then wheeled around and whacked it over the head. The final Heartless faded away before it hit the ground.

Before Kairi could breathe a sigh of relief, pools of shadow materialized on the floor, expanding until the platform was covered in darkness. Kairi began to sink into the pool, but she struggled.

_Darkness! Get off of me! Wait, I’m a Princess of Heart. Darkness shouldn’t hurt me,_ she thought.

With a burst of determination, Kairi lifted her leg, and the pool of darkness exploded into a burst of light.

When the light faded, Kairi found herself on a pink and purple platform. There was a deep red silhouette that looked a lot like her. The bordering circles depicted images such as flowers, a drawing booklet, Thalassa shells, and Paopu Fruits. A set of pale yellow double doors appeared before her.

Kairi approached the doors and instinctively held her hand out toward it. A tilted rectangle with jagged edges like a crown on one of the shorter edges flashed in front of her palm, then the doors cracked open, and beams of light seeped out. When the doors fully opened, Kairi covered her eyes from the blinding glare, then stepped through the door.

She found herself in a square white room, which soon transformed into a representation of the islet on which she and her friends played. Glowing white chains flew around the area, then transformed into phantom representations of Mayor Braska, Selphie, and Naminé.

Kairi approached the figure of her adoptive father.

“What are you so afraid of?” he asked.

Kairi thought for a moment. “Being indecisive,” she answered.

“Being indecisive? Is that really so scary?” the figure of Braska asked before fading away.

Kairi stepped over to Selphie. “What do you want out of life?” the phantom of her friend asked.

Kairi answered without hesitation. “To see what the worlds have to offer, alongside my two best friends.”

“To see what the worlds have to offer, alongside your two best friends, huh?” Selphie parroted, before fading away.

Kairi walked over to Naminé, who looked at her nervously. “What’s most important to you?” she asked.

Kairi smiled. “Friendship,” she said definitively.

“Is friendship such a big deal?” Naminé responded uncertainly, almost as if she was obligated to respond cryptically like this. Unlike the other two, she did not vanish after saying her piece. Instead, she continued talking. “You’re afraid of being indecisive. You want to see rare sights. You want friendship. Your adventure awaits. As long as the sun shines upon you, may your journey bear fortune.”

The setting faded into a white light, followed by Naminé. Kairi found herself back on the same stained-glass platform from before she stepped through the door. The only differences were that the silhouette in the middle now contained a full-color image of Kairi herself, and that next to the silhouette was a circle containing seven more circles, much like with the Riku and Sora stations. The center circle contained a representation of her Lucky Charm. The other six circles contained head images of Sora, Riku, Naminé, Braska, Selphie, and the mysterious raven-haired Kairi clone. Kairi saw that the doors had changed into a deep red coloration and also bore a different shape and design, with heart-shaped crystals taking the place of doorknobs.

Kairi approached the doors and pulled them open. She stepped into the light and everything went blank.

* * *

“What did you do?!” Sora shouted in horror. Before his eyes, Kairi stood motionless, with her head tilted back, mouth slightly open, and eyes glazed over. Her breathing was steady but very weak. Even her arms and legs were in the same position they were in when Yen Sid put her into the trance, as opposed to falling limp.

“She will be alright. I merely placed her into a Dive to the Heart to awaken her Keyblade potential. Once she completes the test she will regain consciousness and return to us unharmed,” Yen Sid explained.

Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy remained tense, watching Kairi’s form uneasily. Minutes passed with no change.

“So, uh, how long is it supposed to take?” Goofy asked.

“Rarely has it been for longer than thirty minutes,” the sorcerer answered.

“In the meantime, could you tell us about this?” Riku asked, taking the broken bangle out of his pocket.

Yen Sid stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I have found sparse mentions of that bangle, but I am afraid that items like it are from a time before measurable history, and their nature has faded into obscurity long before anything in my library was ever written,” he lamented.

“What? But that means it could only be from before the…” Mickey trailed off, remembering that Sora and Riku knew nothing of the event he was talking about.

“Before the worlds were divided?” Sora finished. Mickey, Yen Sid and Riku looked at him with surprised and confused glances. “When Kairi was in my heart, I saw her grandmother telling her a story about how people fought over the light only for darkness to grow in their hearts and consume the world, but the light survived in the hearts of children,” Sora explained.

“Ah, yes. That became known as the age of fairy tales,” Yen Sid said, secretly glad that he did not have to go into too much extra exposition.

“That woman must have lived a long time, if she had this in her possession,” Riku mused, deciding not to press the issue of her knowing about Keyblade wielders.

The conversation ended after that, and they stood in silence. They continued to wait for Kairi to complete her Dive. Yen Sid had restored his desk into one piece. Riku took to reading through one of Yen Sid’s books. He read through the chapter titled “The Beginning” with curiosity, perused “The Interlude” in a mix of boredom and confusion, and simply skimmed through “The Future Story”. He showed it to Sora, wondering what the point of it was, to which Sora simply shrugged.

Within twenty minutes of the test’s initiation, Kairi gasped and returned to her feet, startling her comrades.

“You alright?” Sora asked, rushing to her side.

“How did it go?” Donald asked, intrigue mixed in with his concern.

“Now, Kairi, do you feel the power of the Keyblade coursing through you?” Yen Sid asked.

Kairi held her hand out and imagined a Keyblade in her hand. Nothing happened. “I feel something. But how do I get it to work?” she questioned.

“Focus on the power within you. Reach out to it. Allow it to take shape, and call it to your hand,” Yen Sid instructed. Kairi tilted her head in confusion.

“Imagine what gives your heart strength,” Sora advised. “What is it you fight for? What do you care about? Or, to say it another way, think lovely thoughts.”

He grabbed hold of her hand supportively. Immediately, a flash of light appeared in front of Kairi. She found herself holding a Keyblade decorated with warm colors. One side of the hilt was formed in the shape of a breaking ocean wave, and the other side was formed of a vine of sand that wrapped around the shaft, which was yellow toward the handle guard but turned red toward the tip, resembling a sunset. The teeth were shaped like a bouquet of colorful flowers that entwined to create the outline of a heart. The Keychain was a line of red silk, and the token resembled a Paopu Fruit.

When Kairi recognized the Keyblade from her fight at the Castle That Never Was, she gave it a flourish, getting a feel for handling the blade. It was perfectly balanced for her fighting style, deft, lightweight and aerodynamic.

_Destiny’s Embrace,_ Kairi determined the name of her Keyblade’s form.

“There you go,” Riku said.

“Nice!” Sora complimented.

“Purdy,” Goofy chuckled.

“Excellent. Now, Sora and Riku, you must receive gifts of your own, that you may have the power to stand up to this new threat,” Yen Sid informed them.

Sora and Riku each raised an eyebrow curiously.

“Sora, you no longer require your Drive power to compensate for your imbalanced strength, now that your heart has fully sealed its synchronization to your body. But you will need to draw more strength from those whom you call friends than ever before. Enter through the wardrobe, where you will meet familiar faces and obtain new garments that will aid in unlocking this talent,” Yen Sid advised. Sora blinked and adopted an expression of worry and embarrassment. The sorcerer smirked, the first time he changed his expression at all during the meeting. “Do not worry. I have already helped them come to an agreement on the design.” Sora breathed a sigh of relief, causing Riku, Kairi and Mickey to look at him in confusion. Donald and Goofy, however, laughed amongst each other.

Sora, followed by his friends, entered through the wardrobe doors, which led to a round room littered with mirrors and mannequin torsos. The group saw three short old women with dark gray hair. They wore similar robes and pointed hats held on with thin sashes that wrapped under their chins, but they each wore a different color, either red, green or blue. They carried thin wands and had wings on their backs.

The Three Good Fairies turned around to greet the party. “Well, look who’s here, dears! Sora, Donald, Goofy, and King Mickey too! And you two must be Riku and Kairi,” Flora, the plump fairy in red, greeted.

“Oh, Sora, we are sorry about the colorful way we treated you the last time you were here,” Fauna, the thin fairy in green, said.

“But we’ve got it right this time,” Merryweather, the chubby fairy in blue, assured.

“Are you ready for your new clothes, Sora?” Flora asked. “I’m sure you’ve grown attached to your current garb and the powers that come with them, but you do need an update, if I say so myself.”

“Sure. Awesome magic clothes that let me absorb the power of a friend or two to transform and wield two Keyblades at once, with the occasional side effect of turning into a Heartless version of myself that is balanced out and rendered moot by a final form that lets me fly. So last season, right?” Sora joked.

“The rest of you might want to step back,” Fauna advised. “I don’t believe any of you would like to suddenly find yourselves in a ball gown.” This caused the others to warily step away.

“All together, now. One, two, three!” Flora instructed. The three fairies each sent a colored beam of magic straight at Sora. When they hit, his body lit up like a star, momentarily blinding his friends. When the dazzling glow faded, everyone stared in wonder at Sora’s new clothes.

Sora wore a black hooded short-sleeved jacket with grey pockets and red lining. There were three yellow buttons on either side, with the top buttons going through the upper flap. A dark gray stripe ran down either sleeve. The inside of the jacket had a plaid design, and underneath the jacket was a black V-neck shirt. He wore gray gauntlets with red lining, yellow buckled straps around the wrists, and grey circles on the back. His fingers and palms were exposed. He wore black baggy shorts with multiple gray pockets that had yellow buttons as well as a red strap going around each pant leg but stopping at the pockets. His pants were held up by a blue belt with a steel buckle. His shoes looked similar to the ones he wore before, but they were less baggy at the front and also lacked the blue straps and zippers. His crown pendant remained in place.

Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, as well as the three fairies, admired Sora’s new clothes. Sora did the same, flexing his muscles and moving around to test the feel of his new garments.

“Well, now that will do quite nicely,” Fauna commended.

“Now, we’ve got a little something extra for you,” Merryweather said. She waved her wand and a diamond-shaped spark of light appeared in front of Sora.

“Go ahead, dear. Grab the spark and think of one of your companions,” Flora advised.

Sora grabbed onto the spark. Energy coursed through his body. A soft halo also materialized around Goofy, which Mickey and Donald noticed curiously. Sora shook with the force of a new power coursing through him, with a whirlwind blowing around him as its effects took shape. A phantom image of Goofy appeared behind Sora.

Sora summoned his Keyblade, which to his surprise reshaped itself into a shield with a yellow outline, a silver front, and a crown design on the front. The keychain hung from the bottom of the handle.

“Awesome!” Sora shouted, impressed. “My Keyblade can change shape?!”

“Oh, yes. Unlike before, when you could change the appearance of your Keyblade with tokens in order to gain new abilities and adjust the power levels, you can form Dimension Links with your friends so your weapon can take on new functions based on the skills they possess,” Flora said.

“As an added bonus, you can take abilities and skills from your friends to use as your own,” Fauna added.

“Is that so…” Sora said to himself, then his face lit up with an idea. “Would you three mind stepping to the side?” The fairies looked at one another curiously and complied. Sora turned partway to the side, lifted his left leg, and threw his Keyblade Shield under his leg. The shield, facing upward, spun as it flew out the window, then stopped, while still spinning, then quickly returned to Sora’s hand.

“I can get used to this!” he cheered.

“But like your Drive Forms last time, that won’t last indefinitely; you’ll need to charge up your Dimension Energy by fighting alongside and bonding with friends,” Merryweather informed him.

Mickey seemed to look jealous. “Did Master Yen Sid happen to leave instructions to help others learn to do that?” he asked nervously.

The fairies frowned, embarrassed and apologetic. “Well, Master Yen Sid said that he had not seen a Keyblade wielder capable of Keyblade transformations in a long time, and he never learned to do that himself prior to abandoning the mantle, so this is more of an experiment for him,” Flora explained.

“Maybe you can figure it out from how Sora does it on your journey. Riku too,” Merryweather suggested.

“Speaking of which, you probably ought to get back to Yen Sid so Riku can receive his gift,” Flora said.

“Okay. Thank you,” Sora said, waving good-bye as he and his friends exited through the wardrobe doors.

When they had gathered in front of Yen Sid’s desk once again, the sorcerer pulled a strip of black fabric from his sleeve. “Riku, take this,” he commanded, throwing the fabric to the young man, who caught it. Riku examined it and recognized it as being very similar to the blindfold he had used when trying to contain the remnant of Ansem’s power.

“I am aware that the last vestige of Xehanort’s Heartless has been purged from your heart,” Yen Sid said. “That means that you are no longer tied so strongly to the darkness, and your power over it has greatly diminished, to the point where you can no longer conjure Corridors of Darkness. Wear that band. It will allow you to rely on your deeper senses, to recognize the light and darkness that surrounds you. It should reestablish your connection to the darkness, and you may access your dark powers once again.”

Riku nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said.

Yen Sid stroked his beard. “Now, the dangers you face have increased greatly. To even hope to match this new challenge, you must learn to use your newfound abilities. To that end, I have requested Merlin’s assistance in reopening the Mirage Arena. That training ground will offer every eventuality necessary to ensure you learn what is necessary. And what is more, time that passes within that field is compressed significantly, so a day of training will constitute a mere minute in this plane, and whatever relative rate of time occurs in the other worlds.”

The six heroes stood at attention and gave Yen Sid a respectful bow. “Thank you, Master Yen Sid,” Mickey said. The sorcerer waved his hand and a rift opened in the air behind them. The six guests turned around and stepped through the rift. When they had all gone through the rift shrank to a small pinpoint, and the former Keyblade Master was left alone to think.

_If this Zeromast character truly may be able to find the items, perhaps they should have been permitted to know the truth,_ he thought. _However, I have been sworn to secrecy, and I have sworn not to delve into the secrets kept by the others._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Sorry that Yen Sid was uncooperative, but he has his reasons. And besides, I can't go explaining everything just as the ball gets rolling. At this stage in the game, I had no idea what Sora's new duds in KH3 would be for, so I put my own spin on it. I don't think I was too far off, though I put more emphasis on the Formchanges. Let me know what you think of these developments.


	29. Chapter 28: Battle Rustling

Cruella spat in disgust as she tracked dirt and dust on her boots. She pinched the bridge of her nose to block out the smell of farm animals and their fertilizer. She marched past the gate leading onto the dairy farm, passing under the sign labeled _“Little Patch of Heaven”_ , but felt herself being yanked backward. She turned around and scowled when she saw that her coat had gotten itself caught on the fence. She angrily pulled at it to no avail. Doug removed the coat from the protruding wooden board, and she stumbled backward as it suddenly came free.

“I hate farms! All the mulch, bugs, and smelly animal pests!” Cruella complained. She then remembered that Doug, a sheep and therefore one such smelly animal, was standing next to her. “Ahem. No offense,” she muttered.

“No, go ahead. Let’s just get the job done,” Doug said bluntly. They walked over to the barn, and Doug pulled the door open. “You know, you could have changed into something less room-filling and less likely to get caught on something or chomped on,” he added.

“Never!” Cruella gasped, indignant. She scanned the inside of the barn, looking past the curious cows to try to locate the object she and Doug sought. “Can we be certain that it’s in here?” she asked.

“Based on Zeromast’s observations, quite likely,” the sheep answered. “Once the coast is clear, it should be simple to locate it with careful study in differentiating it from the other material. You just go distract the old lady.”

“Hmph.” Cruella went over to the farmhouse. She roughly threw the door open and stepped inside.

An elderly, overweight woman wearing a straw sun hat entered the room, glaring at the unexpected visitor.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” the farmer asked, her stern tone voicing her displeasure at the intrusion.

“Oh, hello. Are you the proprietor of this ranch?” Cruella asked, making little effort to act polite.

“That’s right. Pearl Gesner’s my name,” the farmer replied. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I was merely… admiring the livestock and produce you have put together here. You must be very proud of your work.”

“Why, thank you,” Pearl said, suspicious of the woman’s intentions. The fancy clothes, perfume and odor of tobacco gave her away as city folk, and someone with those kinds of furs and lacking the sense to wear more appropriate garb in this country would not have the best interests of the farm at heart. Pearl inched closer to the telephone, just in case.

Cruella thought back to the profile that Zeromast had given her on the farmer, as well as on the condition of the surrounding area, and decided how she would best keep the woman distracted. “You see, there are plenty of farms struggling around these parts, due to rampant cattle rustling,” she said in an entreating tone. “You don’t think you would mind selling some of your fine stock to help them back on their feet?”

Pearl was taken aback by this. She felt somewhat bad, though she was still a bit suspicious of the visitor. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t do that, ma’am. These animals are my family. I wouldn’t dream of selling a single one,” she answered apologetically.

Cruella smirked. “Now, I’m sure we can come to an agreement. How much would you like for them?” she asked, pulling a large wad of cash from her purse.

“What?!” Pearl all but screamed at Cruella.

While this was going on, Doug stepped into the barn and donned a gas mask with a transparent visor. Watched by the curious cattle, he took a metal canister out of his pocket. He punched a few buttons on the canister’s activation console and threw it into the middle of the barn. As a beeping noise emitted and a red light blinked repeatedly on the device, Doug exited the barn and hid to the side of the building.

The beeping stopped and the red light remained on continuously. The two ends of the canister expanded, leaving slight openings and allowing a red gas to billow out and fill the room. The cows breathed in the gas, and their eyes turned bloodshot. They convulsed and started roaring, thrashing about violently. 

“Why, I oughta—” Pearl shouted angrily, but her threat was interrupted when she and Cruella heard a destructive crash, accompanied by the thundering sound of dozens of hooves. Her attention taken away from the rude intruder, Pearl ran outside and gaped in shock. “What in tarnation?!”

All of the cows were stampeding wildly, plowing through the farmland. Somehow, they had gone completely berserk! Pearl coughed from the dust cloud that the bovines were kicking up.

“I gotta warn the sheriff!” Pearl declared before running back into the house to dial on the phone.

Smiling proudly, Cruella entered the barn and started chuckling when she saw that all of the cows’ stalls had been torn down in the escape. The red gas had either dissipated completely or been mixed with the dust, which had started to settle after the escape.

* * *

An obese man with long red hair, a moustache and a short goatee, who wore a large brown coat, boots, gloves, and a gray Stetson hat, sat in his caravan. Alameda Slim was waiting until nightfall, when he would use his yodeling to hypnotize the cows and steal them away from the nearby farm. He heard one of his triplet nephews climb into the caravan with him.

“Wow, Uncle Slim. I thought we was going to wait until nightfall to bring them cows to us,” he said.

“Whatcha talking about, fool?” Slim asked. His nephew pointed backward with his thumb. Slim climbed out to investigate, followed by his mercenary Rico. When he looked toward the _Little Patch of Heaven_ farm, Slim gasped in horror. The cows were all running straight for him!

Slim started to yodel in an attempt to pacify the cows, but realized that he had no time, and instead elected to run, followed by Rico and his nephews. However, the cows came too fast, and the crooks ended up caught in the stampede, and they had to wrap their arms around the cows’ necks for dear life.

In town, the sheriff had received Pearl’s call and already cleared the streets, then had tar poured out to catch the cattle before they could charge through town. As the cows came through, their hooves began to become stuck in the tar, forcing them to slow down to a halt. Fortunately, the gas that had sent them on a berserk run was wearing out of their system, so it was easy for the sheriff to calm them down.

Alameda Slim sighed in relief when he realized that the stampede had stopped, not even realizing that the sheriff was standing in front of him. He let go of the brown cow he held onto and dropped to the ground, making a splash in the mud.

This got the sheriff’s attention. “Well, if it ain’t Alameda Slim,” he said proudly. “Looks to me like you’ve got a date with the judge for all your rustlin’!”

* * *

Cruella and Doug searched the barn for the item they sought. Doug located a post, next to a fallen purple hat, that did not suffer a single bit of damage from the escape and picked it up.

“Mission accomplished,” the sheep announced.

“Hmph. What could possibly be so special about that piece of wood?” Cruella grumbled.

“If you paid attention, you would notice that, unlike the other boards and posts, this has suffered no weathering from age, not to mention the fact that in its current form, it is identifiably a different type of wood from the others, indicating that it is not from the same kind of tree as the others. And if you look at the holes or the edges, you would notice that it did not experience stress along the grain, meaning that it was not cut like this. Also, the markings on the side do not match the patterns of regular wood grain. All this evidence indicates that this post does not belong, and the stall was built in a way that would incorporate this and allow it to hide in plain sight,” Doug explained.

“I’ll admit, that was impressive,” Cruella said with a raised eyebrow, amazed at the sheep’s keen eye for detail and deductive reasoning.

“Well, let’s get back to base. Wouldn’t want anyone to figure out what we’re doing here,” Doug said. He took a piece of chalk from his pocket and, like Zeromast instructed, drew a line against the wall, long enough for him to step through the door it conjured. When the line was drawn, he and Cruella stepped through and returned to Villain’s Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go, another villain-centric chapter. It's about time that I say that one of the main issues I have with the story of the first game is that the team-up of the Disney Villains was barely a point, and they barely interacted, particularly with Ursula and Oogie Boogie, who only had a couple of obscured scenes with the other bad guys (and only one line from Ursula), so I wanted to give the bad guys more focus as a group throughout the story.
> 
> Next time, the heroes will head to Olympus Coliseum to practice their new skills. Also, be prepared to meet up with a new Final Fantasy character who has never appeared in a Kingdom Hearts game before.
> 
> Okay, I'll admit that I didn't put that much research into the setting to make it line up well enough with the movie. But, frankly, does anyone really care about _this_ one?


	30. Chapter 29: Hero Training

Two weeks had passed within the Mirage Arena while only fourteen minutes went by in the Mysterious Tower. Continuous hours of sparring gave Sora the energy to test multiple Keyblade transformations, trying out the forms of a shield, a magic staff like Donald’s, a frying pan, a Gunblade, and a Fuuma Shuriken, with the links of the keychain transforming into smaller shurikens. It took him a week, but Riku managed to regain control over his old dark powers, and he demonstrated by conjuring a dark fire shock blast from beneath Donald’s rear end. Sora, Riku and Mickey taught Kairi many of their skills, then Sora, Mickey and Donald taught her many of the spells they knew. Kairi proved to be a prodigy and mastered the first-tier spells, leading them to teach her the second level of the spells’ power. The party of six spent the following week training to work alongside each other, using the holograms created by the arena to recreate past battles against giant Heartless enemies. However, they found that there was still plenty of room to improve, and they could not do so on their own.

They left the Mirage arena, gave their respects to Master Yen Sid, exited the tower, and climbed aboard the Gummi Ship.

After leaving the world’s atmosphere, everyone sat in silence for a few minutes, thinking of recent events. Jiminy climbed out of Sora’s pocket and jumped over to the pilot’s console.

“So, Master Yen Sid seems to know more than he’s letting on,” Jiminy began. The others simply nodded in agreement.

“Something tells me that he didn’t want to, but he felt he had to,” Riku said. “Which makes sense, if the stakes are as high as they seem, and whatever the artifacts are, they need to be scattered that thinly.”

“So, then how are we supposed to beat the bad guys to the artifacts?” Donald asked.

“Maybe the bad guys are the key,” Kairi suggested.

Everyone turned to her, curious. “What do you mean?” Sora asked from right next to her.

“Well, this Zeromast guy probably knows where the artifacts are, and he needs the bad guys to retrieve them. He would have told them what to look for and how to find them. So, we just need to track them as we visit each world. We’re bound to find something eventually,” Kairi explained. “Besides, there are only thirteen villains, including Zeromast and Maleficent, and there are who-knows-how-many worlds out there; it’s going to take them a while to find them all.”

They mulled over her idea, and realized that it was all they had to go on. Sora, Donald and Goofy were quick to concede, since running into their enemies as they traversed the worlds was exactly how they found out more of what was going on.

“And we could also ask around, like we did with King Frederic and Queen Arianna,” Mickey added. “Sure, they couldn’t help us, but someone might be able to, and possibly willing. We’re bound to figure something out along the way.”

The others voiced their agreement. “And I will gather whatever notes we find so we can piece everything together. Someone’s gotta be able to keep track of what’s going on!” Jiminy declared.

Donald raised his hand, still having a question. “So, what do we do next? Where should we go?” he asked.

That gave the others momentary pause before Sora answered. “Well, I think we could work on some of our technique, and train more to work better with our new skills. We’ll only be able to improve so much on our own. I say we find someone who can train us properly,” he suggested.

Donald and Goofy grinned widely and nodded excitedly. “Yeah! And we know just the person to train heroes like us,” Goofy said.

Riku and Kairi looked at them, confused. Sora chuckled nervously when he remembered that they had not been there with him, and he may have left out a few details when recounting his adventures to them. Mickey, having read Jiminy’s Journals, understood, however.

“Alright, fellas. Let’s set a course for Olympus Coliseum!” the mouse announced. Donald charted a path, and Mickey launched the Gummi Ship onto that trajectory.

“Olympus Coliseum… That’s the place where you guys fought in those tournaments?” Kairi asked for clarification.

“Yeah. There’s this goat-man, Phil. He’s a famous trainer of heroes. Though, it took him a while before he saw us as ‘True Heroes’,” Sora explained.

“Well, then I can’t wait to start,” Riku said.

“I suppose I’d better strap in,” Jiminy muttered to himself as he dropped down and climbed into Mickey’s pocket.

* * *

Riku and Kairi gaped in wonder as the party approached the coliseum. They admired the architecture with the Doric columns and tall, decorated doors, the fancy burning braziers, and the towering bronze gladiator statues.

Sora, Donald and Goofy admired the structure, but for different reasons. “Good to see that they put everything back together,” Sora commented, earning surprised looks from Riku, Kairi and Mickey. “Long story,” he handwaved.

They crossed the courtyard, and Sora pulled the doors open. They walked into the vestibule, a small room with alcoves in the wall where fires blazed in pits to keep the room well-lit. On the opposite side of the room, there was a passage leading into the arena. A sign tied to either wall by rope read “CLOSED”. To the left of the passage, a bulletin board listed several rules, such as “Rule 95: Concentrate” and “Rule 96: Aim”. On the right was a bulletin board depicting a tournament bracket. A short, fat man with the horns and lower half of a red-furred goat stood on a stool shaped like an Ionic column, facing the bracket and writing a series of names for different contestants.

“Hey,” Sora greeted.

“Ah, good timing, kid!” the satyr said without turning around. Sora quickly realized that he was mistaking him for someone else… again. “I need a hand in setting up the next games. These are gonna be the first games since reopening, and I need it to be just right!”

Sora traded glances with his companions. “Well, I’m sure with a little heavy lifting, we should be able to get everything set in no time,” he said, playing along, changing his voice so he sounded like a musclehead. In the meantime, he took on different poses, flexing his muscles playfully. The others struggled to hold in their laughter.

“That’s great! We’re going to need to work extra hard in bringing in new heroes, though. Thus far, most of the sign-ups are those Heartless things. I still don’t know how they even know how to enlist themselves. Probably that hothead’s doing. I hear Hades climbed out of the River of Souls a few weeks ago,” the satyr continued.

Sora put his hands on his hips and put on a cheesy grin. “Well, I’m sure I can rope in a few guys to help put on a show.”

“That’s great to hear, champ! And don’t forget how to encourage them. Four words: Determination is strength!”

Riku, Kairi and Mickey gave a look of utter confusion, then everyone burst out laughing. The satyr turned around to figure out what the commotion was, and he realized that Sora, Donald and Goofy, as well as three newcomers, were right there.

“Well, look who it is!” he jumped down and gave Sora a fist bump. “How are my new true heroes?”

“How’s it going, Phil?” Sora asked. “I see you got everything put back together.”

“Yeah. Took some work, but we’re finally back in business. Now who you got here?” Phil asked, sizing up Riku, Kairi and Mickey.

Kairi in particular seemed to get his attention. “Well, hello beautiful! You here for the games, or…” he began, but he was interrupted when Sora cleared his throat and glared at him. “Oh, uh, is she with you?” he nervously asked Sora.

“Quite,” Kairi said seriously, though she maintained a playful smirk. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Kairi.”

“Riku,” the silver-haired boy introduced himself.

“Mickey,” the mouse greeted.

“Well, glad to see you brought some of your friends along. I’m Philoctetes, legendary trainer of heroes. You can call me Phil,” the satyr introduced himself. “So, what brings you guys back here?”

“Well, we kind of have some new abilities to work with,” Sora explained. “And Kairi’s new to the whole ‘hero’ thing.”

“And I see you got some new duds. We’re gonna need new action figures, heh. So, you came all the way to me for some mentoring!” Phil laughed cheerfully. “Well, I’m sure I can make room for you. And hey, Herc and the others will be glad to see you. Now, wait here while I set up some barrels, and you guys can show me what you can do, and then we’ll work from there.”


	31. Chapter 30: The Fallacious Wanderer

The grey-skinned god watched the key kids training with the old goat. He snarled to himself when he realized that the three of them were really getting the hang of their new powers. And since when did the Princess get a Keyblade of her own? He rolled his eyes and turned to exit the coliseum, unnoticed by his enemies.

_If only I had a powerful warrior under my control,_ Hades thought. _Then I could teach those twerps a thing or two._ As he crept over to the other end of the courtyard, he sighed. _But where am I gonna get someone like that?_

As he continued, someone passed him. Realizing this and sensing some kind of power, Hades turned to get a good look at him. The young man was slender and muscular, with brown hair and blue eyes. He wore a sleeveless blue shirt, gray pants, pointed boots, a blue sash around his waist, blue gauntlets that left his fingers and palms exposed, a thin brown headband with a blue gem, a pair of matching earrings with gems hanging off, and two waist-length capes held by a gray strap over his chest and a golden spiked pauldron on his left shoulder. In a scabbard, he carried a red and gold sword, and he also had a dagger sheathed at his hip.

“Hmm… Powerful, talented, naïve… He’s perfect,” Hades muttered to himself. He cleared his throat. “Yo, kid, hey, hold on.”

The young warrior turned around when the shady figure called to him. “Yeah?” he answered.

“Lemme guess. New around here? Here to join the big leagues? What’s your name, kid?” Hades asked.

“It’s Bartz,” the young man replied. “And yeah. I’m here to train with Hercules and Philoctetes.”

“Oh, well that’s great, kid,” the lord of the dead said with false kindness. “You just get here in preparation for the reopening Games?”

“Naw, Hercules scouted me out months ago,” Bartz said. Hades raised an eyebrow at this. “I was traveling around when I met him, and I took the long way to get here. So, the Coliseum just reopened? What happened?”

“Oh, you know. Maintenance, repairs, flesh-eating horses breaking loose, stuff like that,” Hades brushed that matter aside, leaving out his role in the Coliseum’s destruction weeks before. “Listen, Jer—Hercules is out of town right now, but he’ll be back later.”

“You know Hercules?” Bartz asked, curious, his attention fully on the god.

“Know him? I’ve known the runt since he was born! We go way back. Heck, I even watched over him on a lot of his fights, like with that centaur creep, and the bloodthirsty Hydra. And then there’s that punk with the giant key. Jeez, I was surprised when he didn’t come out on top in that one.”

Bartz’s interest was piqued. “Punk with the giant key?” he repeated. He was worried that there was a foe that had actually defeated Hercules.

Hades smirked wickedly, though he was careful not to let Bartz notice the sinister intentions behind the smile. “Oh, yeah. That troublemaker, always butting his head where it doesn’t belong. He killed a bunch of my old friends, and I think he’s back in town to do some more damage.”

“What?! If this guy beat Hercules and he’s back for more, I’ve got to do something!”

“Wait, you think you can take this guy on?” Hades asked, intrigued.

“Well… I have some… unique talents,” Bartz said, unable to hide a confident smirk.

Hades grinned as a plan came together. “In that case, come with me. I think I have an idea to draw him out.” He led Bartz out into the city, confident in his scheme.

* * *

Kairi leapt at Sora, twisting around in midair to deliver a spinning strike, but Sora blocked her weapon and stepped to the side. Kairi twisted too far as she fell forward, and she lost her grip on her Keyblade, which dematerialized as she hit the ground. Riku slid past Sora, raising a planar shield to defend against a possible strike from above. He spun out with his feet in an attempt to sweep Sora off of his feet, but Sora jumped over him, then shoved his Keyblade straight down onto the shield while he was upside-down in midair. As the energy charging from the shield tried to force him up, Sora cast Aero, creating a wind funnel that pushed down on Riku, who was pinned to the ground. As Riku’s shield dissipated, Sora applied an extra push to throw himself into the air. He twisted in midair to regain his balance and allow himself to land on his feet.

“Time!” Phil called out. He approached the trio as Riku and Kairi brought themselves to their feet. He faced Riku. “You’re doing great. You have finesse, conviction. You cover your side, and make sure to leave as few openings as possible. But you rely too much on others going for the obvious move. I saw your kip-up kick back then. You let yourself get thrown back and expect your enemy to take advantage of your apparent vulnerability and leave themselves open for a counterattack. But that doesn’t work when your foe won’t fall for it. Sora, I’m sure, had grown wise to that trick a long time ago, so he just stepped out of the way. You need to learn to cover all your bases, expect the obvious knee-jerk move but also the smarter, more focused moves. Don’t just plan for someone fighting recklessly, but also for someone who can see through those traps and respond to your strategy where it actually leaves you vulnerable. Got it?”

Riku nodded, a sheepish expression on his face. “Understood.”

Phil turned to Kairi. “You focus too much on your mobility. You try to deliver quick strikes and dodge attacks, but you aren’t balanced. If you don’t put your weight in your hits, or ground yourself when you attack, which would be preferable given your slight frame, you’ll just get tossed around like a rag doll.” He pointed to a nearby barrel. “Goofy, lob that at Sora.”

Goofy looked at him in confusion, but complied. He lifted the barrel and lobbed it lamely at Sora. Sora simply backhanded it without a thought, sending it out to smash against the wall.

“See what I mean?” Phil asked. “We can always work on building up your strength. But when you’re facing someone bigger and stronger than you, you can’t just throw yourself at them trying to strike faster than them. You use their size against them, and take advantage of the fact that you’re faster than them to hit them when they’re vulnerable. For now, we work on your strategy.”

“Got it,” Kairi agreed.

“Now then, let’s start with—”

He was interrupted by the sound of terrified screaming some distance away. They heard a thunderous rumbling and wooden stalls and carts being smashed. People were in danger!

“Heartless?” Sora asked.

“No. The Heartless never went into town,” Phil said. “You guys had better check it out.”

Without another word, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ran out of the coliseum and out into the town. When they entered Thebes, they were taken aback by the sight.

The threat was an enormous centaur with blue skin and fur, as well as black hair on the back of his head and a black pointed beard. The creature had enormous muscles. Behind his purple lips, he had a row of razor sharp teeth. He stood over ten feet tall and was clearly large enough to wrap his entire hand around a person’s body. The centaur charged across the road and crushed a fruit stall under his weight.

“That’s Nessus. He’s one of the first guys Herc fought,” Phil explained.

“So, I guess he’s looking for some payback,” Riku guessed. He and his friends summoned their weapons.

“Sora, Riku, you and I engage the target and lure him away from town. Donald, Goofy, Kairi, Phil, you lead everyone to safety,” Mickey ordered.

“Take him that way. It leads out to the waterfall,” Phil said before he ran out with the others to guide the crowd.

Sora, Riku and Mickey positioned themselves so that they were between Nessus and the way they were supposed to guide him. The centaur was facing in the opposite direction, laughing at the panic he was spreading. Sora threw his Keyblade, hitting the centaur on his rear end. The centaur flinched and stumbled, then twisted his torso around to see who attacked him. He snarled at the three Keyblade wielders.

“Okay, now we’ve got his attention,” Riku said dryly. “Now what?”

“We run?” Sora suggested. Nessus turned the rest of himself around so he was facing them and began to charge.

“Sounds like a plan,” Mickey agreed. They turned tail and ran, the vicious centaur in hot pursuit. They ran through town as fast as they could, which happened to be roughly the same as their opponent’s top speed. Within minutes, they had exited the town and were heading through the woods. Soon, they came upon a spring leading out from a waterfall. They stopped when they reached the cliff wall, and they turned around to face the centaur.

Nessus cackled, thinking he had them cornered. “So, you’re the friends of that muscleheaded lard he told me about,” he snapped.

“Says the pot to the kettle,” Riku whispered to Sora.

“Well, I was hoping I’d get some payback against him. But how about I just crush his friends, for now?” Nessus laughed again.

Sora traded glances with Riku and Mickey. “Should we tell him that I beat Hercules in a tournament?” he asked them.

“What was that?” Nessus asked, hearing Sora’s boast. He then snarled in rage and charged at the trio. He swung a haymaker at Sora, but the hero rolled out of the way and hit him in the side with his Keyblade, while Riku and Mickey similarly got out of the way. Sora ran away from the cliff face, but Nessus kicked him, sending him flying.

Riku teleported over to Sora and helped him up when he landed with a splash. Mickey jumped on the centaur’s back half and hit his humanoid back with his Keyblade, but Nessus bucked, causing the mouse to lose his footing and fall off. Riku charged in and shot bolts of Dark Fire at the blue brute, but Nessus galloped out of the way. He closed the gap between him and Riku in seconds and hit him with a giant-fisted punch as soon as Riku finished casting his spell.

“Stopra!” Nessus stopped moving, his arm still raised in the air. Time had stopped for him, and while he was still in a position where he should have kept moving, the water’s surface around him began to settle. Sora and Mickey turned to see Kairi, Donald and Goofy arrive. It was clear that Kairi was the one to cast the spell.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Regroup!” Kairi said. Sora and Mickey ran to join their friends, though Sora stopped to help Riku to his feet, and quickly cast Blizzard on the water around Nessus’ hooves.

A few seconds after that, the spell broke, but to Nessus no time had passed at all, so he was surprised when he saw his enemies in a completely different position, as well as the fact that his back hooves were trapped in ice. He stomped with his front hooves in an effort to break the ice.

This left him vulnerable to attack, so Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Kairi hit him with Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder spells. Riku decided against using Dark Fire, not wanting to break the ice faster and give the centaur an opportunity to counterattack. But despite the clear physical damage that the centaur was suffering, he only got angrier, and when he finally broke his legs free, he charged at the group furiously. They escaped his path quickly.

Kairi quickly noticed that while he was incredibly fast, he had more momentum than he knew what to do with. His modus operandi seemed to be vicious assault, and he was unprepared for someone who could fight back. Remembering Phil’s words, she decided that she could work with that. She ran back over to Nessus just as he was coming to a stop, and she slashed her Keyblade across his upper hind leg.

Nessus howled in pain and tried to kick at her, but she had already rolled out of the way. She noticed that he was almost as slow in turning as he was in decelerating. When he had fully turned around, Kairi broke into a run in the opposite direction, pointing a Fire spell behind her to vaporize some water to create a smoke screen, which Nessus swatted through angrily. Kairi smirked as she kept running. When the centaur drew close, she Dodge Rolled out of the way and shot a bolt of Thunder at his flank.

As Nessus slowed down to try to set his sights back on the girl, Goofy jumped onto the centaur’s back and hit him on the head with his shield before putting him into a chokehold. Annoyed, Nessus twisted his head to make Goofy slide off of his back and force him to dangle from his neck. He then wrapped his fingers around the knight, pulled him off, and threw him aside.

However, this turned out to be a distraction, as Nessus found himself face-first with the blunt end of Sora’s Keyblade. Enraged from the pain, the centaur punched out at him, but Sora had already jumped away and he only just grazed him.

“Sora! This way!” Kairi called, running to the waterfall. Trusting her instincts, Sora complied and followed her.

Nessus pursued. Sora and Kairi sent back Fire spells to slow him down and create smoke screens so that he would not catch up to them and also to keep him off balance to their tricks. When they were right in front of the waterfall, Kairi stopped, leading Sora to stop as well.

“Now what?” Sora asked. Kairi smiled and pointed to the charging centaur. Sora realized what she was thinking. “Got it. So, a big one? I’ve got the perfect trick.”

They took a step back so that their legs were engulfed in the crashing water. Sora pulled Kairi close to him. They waited for Nessus to come closer, then Sora raised his Keyblade.

“Raging Storm!” Sora shouted. A twenty-foot whirlwind of fire erupted around him and Kairi. The heat caused the water falling on them to vaporize, creating an enormous steam cloud that billowed out and obscured everything for fifty feet around them. Nessus was blinded by the dense cloud, and could not see an inch in front of him. He felt an intense heat as he passed through where Sora and Kairi had been, but he did not hear the sound of bones crunching under his hooves. He had one second to realize what was wrong, before he reached the end of his charge.

Sora and Kairi heard a loud crash, and realized that their trap had worked. They cast Aero to disperse the steam cloud and expose the area previously covered. They had dashed out of the way just before the centaur had reached where they stood, immediately after the flames had started to dissipate, allowing Nessus to pass right by. Joined by Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, they crept around the wall of water and looked behind it.

Nessus lay crumpled against a severely damaged cliff wall, nasty bruises all over his body. They could not tell if he was merely unconscious, but the fact of the matter was that he would try to hurt anyone anytime soon.

“Nice going, Kairi, using his momentum against him to trick him into crashing into the rock,” Sora commended.

“Glad to be of help,” Kairi said in reply. “Phil’s advice really helped.”

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” Donald added.

“Now that we’re done here, we should probably get back,” Riku suggested.

“But something’s bothering me,” Mickey muttered, drawing everyone else’s attention. “He said that someone told him about us. I wonder who that could have been…”

“Well, I have an idea,” Sora mused. “But what was the point? If Herc beat this guy before he even became a true hero, why send him to fight us?”

Their musings were interrupted when they heard an unfamiliar voice from behind them.

“So, you’re the ‘key kid’ I’ve heard about.”

They turned around and stepped out from behind the waterfall to see who had addressed them. They saw a young man none of them had ever seen before, carrying a red and gold sword.

“Hi. Can we help you?” Sora asked.

The young man simply glared at him. “I’m not going to let you cause any more trouble around here like what you did to Hercules.”

“Huh?” Sora was utterly confused. Before he could question him further, the stranger ran straight at him and swung his sword. Sora quickly summoned his Keyblade and blocked the attack. The instant the young man let up to try to deliver another hit, Sora swung back, pushing him away. He stomped his foot and conjured four spheres of light around him, which spun around and exerted energy that launched his assailant away.

Sora threw his Keyblade, but the young man dodged the strike raid. Sora summoned it back to his hand and threw it at his opponent again, but the next three throws were easily dodged. The stranger turned to watch the Keyblade spin by on the last throw, his eyes briefly turning grey as he studied the weapon. The Keyblade returned to Sora’s hand a second afterward.

“Nice trick,” the stranger said wryly. “My turn.” He held out his hand. His blue eyes turned grey again, and the shape of the Kingdom Key appeared in front of him. He grabbed out of the air a weapon that looked exactly like Sora’s Keyblade, minus the keychain.

Sora’s jaw dropped. “Should… Should he be able to do that?” he asked, bewildered.

Mickey was having a similar reaction. “No. No, he shouldn’t,” he answered. “Different Keyblades exist in different forms, but there’s only one of yours and mine.”

The stranger smirked and threw his new weapon directly at Sora.


	32. Chapter 31: Champion

Everyone ran to avoid the spinning Keyblade. Bartz summoned it back whenever it passed its targets and threw it again, sometimes aiming for Sora but other times aiming for his friends. Riku, Kairi and Mickey were able to avoid the attacks, but Donald and Goofy had much closer calls. Goofy managed to block the weapon with his shield, but he was sent flying back several feet.

Regaining his footing, Goofy threw his shield at Bartz. Bartz blocked it with his sword, but he was thrown off balance. Donald took advantage of the opening and cast Thunder, causing a bolt of lightning to hit Bartz in the foot, knocking him down. Goofy ran in, caught his shield, then threw it down and jumped on it. He slid across the water’s surface as if he were water skiing, and zoomed straight for Bartz just as he was picking himself back up. The shield hit him in the legs while Goofy’s flailing arms hit him in the chest.

When Bartz recollected himself from the attack, he raised his arm. His eyes flashed grey and a replica of Donald’s staff materialized in his hand. Yellow sparks surrounded the head of the staff. A bolt of lightning came down from above and hit Goofy, stunning him. Bartz dismissed the staff and conjured a shield shaped exactly like Goofy’s. He shoved the shield up against Goofy’s chin, sending him flying. He then threw the shield at Donald, hitting him square in the chest.

“Why are you attacking us?” Sora asked from across the spring.

“I heard you beat Hercules and have been causing trouble. Killed some people. I’m here to put an end to that,” Bartz answered, apparently trying to sound heroic. He threw the shield again, but Sora knocked it out of the air with his Keyblade.

“What? I think you’re mistaken. We’re fr—” But Bartz wouldn’t let him finish, as he summoned Donald’s staff again and cast Thunder at him, forcing Sora to flee the spell.

_No use. He’s not going to listen to reason like this,_ Sora thought. _Gonna have to fight._

Sora, Riku and Kairi jumped in and attacked Bartz from all sides, hoping to overwhelm him, but Bartz simply used his sword and the copy of Goofy’s shield to block the attacks, then kicked Riku in the stomach. However, this created a new opening, through which Mickey cast Pearl. Bartz was hit, but he landed on his feet and smirked. His eyes once again turning grey for a quick second, he conjured a copy of Mickey’s Keyblade, bewildering the mouse. He pointed the weapon at Mickey and shot a similar pearl of light at him.

Sora’s eyes widened when he realized what was happening. _He’s copying our moves, just like my Dimension Links. He’s not a Keyblade wielder or anything, just a copycat._ He dismissed his Keyblade and ran straight at his adversary. When he drew near, Bartz swung his sword at him, but Sora ducked to the side, vaulted himself over with one hand, and kicked Bartz in the stomach. Bartz took a step back to recover from the hit, then conjured two shields and punched at Sora with them.

“Hey, you’re pretty good,” Sora complimented, blocking each hit with his hands, though he could feel the pain and realized that he could not keep this up forever. So, instead, he shoved each shield to the side as they came in for a hit, then threw himself at Bartz, putting all of his weight into a brunt force shove with his upper arm, pushing him off-balance.

Kairi appeared and tripped Bartz while he was flailing about, then Riku grabbed him by the arm and threw him out of the spring and into the wooded area. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy followed him.

When they entered the woods, Bartz attacked with both Keyblades, but Sora and Mickey countered with their own. Since they were the genuine article, along with their own strength which was superior to their opponent’s, they easily overpowered him. Sora dismissed his Keyblade and shoved him with both hands into a tree.

“Gravity!” Kairi shouted, though instead of raising her Keyblade up and bringing it down on him, she pointed it forward, causing the black hemisphere to push g-forces horizontally, pinning Bartz against the tree, which started to creak as the force tried to tip it over.

“Now that we can actually talk now,” Sora began, approaching Bartz, “what made you think we were enemies of Herc?”

Bartz sighed. “Some guy with a flaming head told me that you beat Hercules in a fight, that you’d been butting your head where it didn’t belong, and you even killed some of the guy’s friends.”

“Was it a blue fire?” Sora asked.

“Yeah. And bluish-gray skin. He wore a dark robe.”

“Hades,” Sora, Donald and Goofy said at once.

“Hercules is a friend of ours. We actually teamed up with Herc to fight Hades,” Sora explained. “Hades kidnapped Herc’s girlfriend and sent the Hydra to destroy the Coliseum.”

Bartz’s eyes widened. “Aw, man. I can’t believe I let myself get tricked like that,” he lamented.

“Don’t beat yourself up over that. That’s something Hades just does. He finds a promising warrior, makes them an offer they can’t refuse, and tricks them into fighting for him.”

Bartz slumped, which made him realize that the Gravity spell’s effects had worn off. He picked himself back up and dusted himself off. “Well, sorry I attacked you like that,” he said. “I’m Bartz. Bartz Klauser.”

Sora shook his hand. “Sora,” he introduced himself.

“Riku.”

“Kairi.”

“Mickey Mouse.”

“Donald Duck.”

“Goofy.”

“It’s nice to meet you. And I’ve gotta say, you guys are pretty good in a fight,” Bartz commended.

“You’re not half-bad yourself,” Sora replied. “How did you copy our weapons and abilities like that?”

“Mimicry,” Bartz said with a proud grin. “Whatever skills and powers I see in action, I can recreate. This involves using a copy of the weapons and items used to carry out those skills.”

“That’s pretty cool. So, are you here to train with Herc and Phil?” Sora asked.

“Yeah, I am. I was just about to head in when Hades showed up,” Bartz answered.

“Well, I suppose we should head back and introduce you to Phil,” Sora said. Bartz nodded and joined them as they passed through the woods and reentered Thebes.

* * *

Phil saw the seven warriors enter the Coliseum courtyard and wiped sweat off his brow. “Phew. Glad to see you took care of that centaur all right. Don’t worry. Everyone’s safe. The people are even starting to pick up the damage that Nessus caused,” he informed them. He then did a quick double take as he realized that there was an extra person with them. “And who’s this guy?”

Bartz waved. “Hi, I’m Bartz. I’m the guy Hercules recruited months ago. He told you about me, right?”

Phil thought for a moment, but then remembered. “Ah, yes. Herc did tell you about me. He said you were going to take a while to get here. To be honest, I started training another guy about your age, thinking he was the guy Herc told me about, until he realized my confusion and cleared it up.”

By then, the party of six plus Bartz had met up with Phil in the center of the courtyard. “So, you’re the legendary trainer of heroes, Philoctetes?” Bartz asked.

“I’m your guy. Call me Phil,” the satyr replied. “Herc said you had a lot of potential. I’d like to judge that with my own eyes.”

Just then, several Heartless appeared around them. There were Large Bodies, Neoshadows, and Soldiers, as well as three other types: Lance Soldiers, skinny humanoids wearing what appeared to be bronze armor and carrying conical iron lances with zig-zagging tips and jagged “mouths” cut out; Trick Ghosts, white blob-like floating creatures with dangling arms, a jagged purple mouth, a pair of eyes above and a pair of eyes below the mouth (almost as if it could have a face both ways), and a striped stocking cap; and Aerial Masters, flying humanoids with purple armor, a pair of black, curled wings, and brass knuckles on its hands. Sora was not sure how the Aerial Masters seemed familiar, since he had never faced them before, but decided to worry about it later.

“Well, Bartz, now would be a good time to show off your skills,” Riku said before attacking a Lance Soldier. The lance jabbed forward, apparently of its own accord rather than its wielder’s. This grazed Riku’s side, but he retaliated by slashing at its head, putting a substantial dent in the helmet. The lance bounced around angrily and flew around, taking the flimsy Heartless with it. _It’s like a Berserker Nobody,_ Riku thought, recalling the brutes’ cursed hammers. Riku dodged the point as it flew at him and grabbed the handle, kicking the Heartless free. The lance dragged him through the air, but Riku threw his own mass around to steer the living weapon, eventually driving it down onto the Lance Soldier. Lance Soldier and lance exploded into smoke. Immediately after landing on the ground, Riku turned around and slashed through a Soldier Heartless.

Bartz conjured a Knight’s Shield and threw it at an Aerial Master, clipping its wings and dropping it out of the sky. He dismissed the shield and pulled out his own sword, which he used to stab the Heartless in its exposed face, making it dissipate. He sheathed the sword, cupped his hands, and vaulted Kairi into the air and over a Large Body, allowing her to slash at the lumbering Heartless’ exposed back when she landed.

Donald cast magic on the Trick Ghosts while they were engaging Mickey at close range. Noticing the attacks, they flipped upside-down and drew out candled. Floating away from Mickey, they started blowing fireballs at Donald, forcing him to run and Goofy to come to his defense. Mickey took the opening to close in on the now-long-range-focused Trick Ghosts and cut through them.

Sora defeated two Neoshadows, but was knocked down by a Lance Soldier’s attack from behind. Another Large Body jumped, hoping to harm Sora and everyone nearby with a shockwave, but it suddenly exploded in a cloud of darkness. When the cloud disappeared, Sora saw a familiar face.

Where the Large Body once stood, there was now a very muscular man with broad shoulders. He wore sleeveless orange-brown armor on his torso as well as a metal kilt of the same color, brown knee-high sandals with cross-shaped straps, brown wristbands, a reddish-brown headband, a blue cape, and a brown belt with a gold emblem etched with a thunder cloud and lightning design. He had blue eyes, auburn hair, and a friendly smile.

“Hey, Sora,” Hercules greeted. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know. Fighting Heartless, saving people from horse people, the usual,” Sora replied, bringing himself to his feet and immediately stabbing a Soldier Heartless behind him with his Keyblade.

“Yeah. I heard about that on my way in. Sorry I couldn’t be there to help, but I guess you took care of it without me.” Hercules punched another Large Body, this time hitting it in the armor-covered front but still defeating it in one hit. When the smoke cleared, he saw a familiar figure. “Hey, is that Bartz?”

Bartz turned around and waved to Hercules. He conjured a copy of Kairi’s Keyblade and delivered quick slashes at a Neoshadow, then he switched to Riku’s Keyblade and launched a ball of Dark Fire at an Aerial Master.

“I see you’ve gotten yourselves acquainted,” Hercules said, throwing a Soldier through two Aerial Masters. An Aerial Master divebombed him, knocking him to the ground, but Sora helped him up and cast Fire to destroy the attacker.

The fighting continued until the courtyard was cleared of Heartless. The eight fighters took a minute to catch their breath. Hercules took notice of the three others who were fighting alongside Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Bartz.

“So, they’re friends of yours?” Hercules asked.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Hercules, meet Riku, Kairi and Mickey. Riku, Kairi, Y—” he rolled his eyes as he caught himself before he addressed Mickey by his royal title “—Mickey, this is Hercules.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kairi said.

“Likewise. So, Sora. You guys on another adventure?” Hercules asked.

“Yep. We’re all together this time. Our best friends by our side, saving the worlds from whatever threatens them, which happens to include a group of powerful villains that Hades himself is aligned with,” Sora replied.

“If that’s the case, then you’re going to need to get as strong as you can,” Hercules said.

“So we’ve been told,” Sora said with a grin. “So, Hercules, how do you know Bartz?”

Hercules aimed a smile at Bartz. “Well, some months back, Phil sent me to scout out warriors to train to be heroes. While I was out, I heard that a town was being terrorized by an Erymanthian Boar, pretty much a giant boar. So, I set out to hunt it down. It took me by surprise, and proved to be one tough customer. That’s when Bartz came in. He threw some rocks to get its attention and got it to chase after him, then ducked out of the way at the last second and sliced its leg. This incapacitated it and gave me the opening to finish it off.”

Curious, Goofy turned to Bartz. “Gawrsh, what were you doing hunting the Eri… the Ermine… the giant boar?” he asked.

Bartz shrugged. “I wasn’t. To be honest, me and Boko were just passing through,” he answered.

“Boko?” Kairi repeated, wondering who he was referring to.

“My chocobo. A faithful friend and trusty steed,” he explained. “I always wanted to go on adventures with my father when I was a kid. So, after my parents passed away two years ago, I climbed onto Boko’s back and rode off to see the world. Me and my chocobo just go wherever the trail leads us. I fought some monsters and bandits terrorizing people as I went, and I began to hone my powers. When I happened upon Hercules fighting that boar, I jumped in and helped him.”

“I told him he had skills, and suggested that he come here to train and become stronger with them,” Hercules continued from where he left off.

“And I agreed, after checking with Boko, of course,” Bartz picked up from there. “But I told him that we were going to take the long way and see what we could see, and it would be a while before we made it.”

“Well, you made it, kid,” Phil said. “So, how ‘bout we head inside and start training?”

As the nine of them turned to enter the vestibule, Hades stood in the corner, watching. He was not happy with the way things turned out.

He sighed. “Jeez, Louise, I’ve got to stop underestimating these heroes,” he muttered to himself.


	33. Chapter 32: Lord of the Dead

Hades stepped onto the rocky path that arched over the Acheron, the river casting a sickly green glow in the air around him. Spirits swirled through the water, each one resembling an emaciated, dried-out corpse. The overseer of the afterlife, who did not care much for his job, had not cared enough to process the spirits into more suitable post-death arrangements, and as such they simply gathered and cluttered into the vast depths.

Hades walked across the path, passing over the River of Souls, where many spirits glared up at him in contempt. He dragged a mortally-wounded pig behind him. When he reached the top, he snapped his fingers and a set of doors opened. He climbed the stairs, still dragging the bloodied swine. He entered into a circular room made of black stone carved with haunting designs that brought to mind demonic imagery.

He approached a round window on the opposite side from the door and whistled with his fingers. An enormous black dog, with three fearsome heads, three pairs of blood-red eyes and three sets of razor-sharp teeth each as long as a human arm, approached the window, sniffing the air and snarling.

“Here. Got something for you,” Hades said, throwing the pig out to his pet, Cerberus. The right head grabbed the pig by the leg, and the other heads immediately began fighting over the meal, disregarding the fact that they all shared the same stomach and it did not matter which head chewed and swallowed the meal.

Hades walked over to his throne and sat down, slouching while Cerberus ran off with the meat. He pointed at a screen mounted on the opposite side of the room, and the screen lit up with a live video of the latest tournament in his own personal battle arena, the Underdrome. When the Coliseum was rebuilt following the destruction that he arranged at the same time as his plan to trick Sora into reopening the Underdrome for him, Hades realized that he would lose most of his competitors and living audience, so he repurposed the arena to let deceased warriors fight, and he also had a Jumbotron installed so the souls in the Acheron could have some entertainment. As it turns out, and as Hades began to understand, floating about in a pool of your own essence for eternity was pretty boring. He had also had to tone the violence down so that Zeus would not lock it up again.

Hades watched three centurions fight against two Vikings and a gorilla. However, he could not bring himself to be interested. The fights among the dead were not nearly as spirited, entertaining, or diverse as the ones that would be up in the Coliseum.

_And I just gave them another strong warrior, on top of making an enemy out of him. As if a god didn’t have enough headaches,_ he thought. He yawned as the gorilla tore one of the centurions in half.

“Pity. I had hoped that the gorilla would have made things interesting,” Hades heard a new voice say sarcastically. The dour deity glanced to the right, where he saw Kuja watching the show, eating from a bowl of popcorn.

Hades groaned. “What are you doing here, Pretty Boy?” he asked.

“Observing your methods,” Kuja answered. “Clearly, the Keyblade master is too much of a benevolent influence for your deception of impressionable warriors to earn any long-term victories. Or short-term, even, particularly if you recall the failed guardian who simply rejected your offer. And yet you command the vast armies and powers of the dead. Why don’t you simply unleash all of your monsters and demons to overwhelm and destroy your enemies?”

Hades turned to scowl at him. “For starters, if I let the dogs out to destroy everything in their path, Zeus and the other gods will take notice. I was only able to gather monsters and enact my plan to free and control the Titans because Zeus thought I was a loving brother who wouldn’t dream of betraying him. Now that I’m exposed, the only thing I can do to stay off his radar is to sign fiends and Heartless up in the Coliseum and hope an ‘accident’ happens to Herc the Jerk,” he explained.

Kuja nodded in understanding. “I see. I prefer the theatrics, anyway, but I would rather have them be effective.”

“You have something to say, Pretty Boy?”

“If your breed of monsters and trickery fail, then how about we try one of mine?” Kuja suggested. He raised a finger, and the air in front of Hades shimmered. Four enormous, red, clawed fingers reached out of the fold in space, startling Hades before they receded back where they came from.

“What was that?” Hades blurted in shock.

Kuja chuckled. “A little something I conjured out of the Mist between planes of existence,” he answered. “I have been experimenting with these phantoms. They do not ‘live’ by the same definition as the rest of us, and they do not follow the same laws of magic as the Heartless or your monsters. I would be quite interested to find out how they stand against the wielders of the Keyblade.”

Hades stroked his chin, considering the offer. He wanted to get any edge on his enemies that he could get. He shrugged. “Eh, why not? Let’s give it a try.”

Kuja smirked. “Do try to show some enthusiasm. We have no reason to despair.”


	34. Chapter 33: Reunited Researchers

Leon picked up the broken capsules and placed them on top of the bookshelves, making sure that the sharp edges of the broken glass were pointing down. Ienzo had spread fabric over the top face of the bookcases so that the glass would not cut or scrape the surface. Ienzo swept up the dust, glass shards and rubble crumbs and dumped them all in a waste bin.

In the computer room, Even was in the process of running an antivirus software. He was disgusted at the fact that, in ten years of Heartless influence and whatever Xemnas had been doing, so many of the files had become corrupt. Did that fool Xehanort not know how to use a computer? The installation had succeeded with no problem, so now he was waiting for the program to locate malware, which probably included the Program Heartless that he had been told about, and repair the data as best as it could.

“Thank you for allowing us to reclaim our old positions in the castle,” Ienzo told Leon. “I will be glad to renew my research. Though, I feel as though we don’t deserve it, after all the trouble we caused.”

“What do you mean?” Leon asked.

“We all betrayed our teacher, Ansem the Wise,” Ienzo admitted. “And we conducted the research that allowed Xehanort to release the Heartless upon this world, destroying your home and forcing you all into exile, on top of helping Xemnas with his plans.”

Leon shrugged. “We’ve all done things that we regret. We all have our failings. And Riku and King Mickey seem to be the only ones who know anything about what you did while in Organization XIII, and they seem to forgive you.”

“That doesn’t change what I did, what we all did.”

“Listen, Ienzo,” Leon said, putting his hand on the younger scientist’s shoulder. “You did bad things in the past. But you want to make up for everything you’ve done. That’s what matters. Now, you can beat yourself up over your past mistakes, or you can help us out here. We could really use all of you.”

Ienzo thought for a moment, then nodded. “Understood. Thank you,” he said, allowing himself to make a small smile.

* * *

Dilan and Aeleus opened a set of double doors and entered a dark room consisting of a circular area with a rectangular area extending out up to the door they entered. Aeleus approached a torch mounted on the wall. He pulled two blocks of flint out of his pocket and hit them together to create sparks until he ignited the torch. He took the torch off of the wall and walked around the perimeter of the room, lighting the other torches until the chapel was lit once again.

This place of faith has been poorly maintained,” Aeleus observed, noticing the heavy coating of dust and the signs of damage, some of which being burn marks from Sora’s battle with Maleficent.

“This place would have been of little good in a barren waste of despair,” Dilan commented. “A domain of darkness that none who had any faith would call home.”

Aeleus shook his head. “Every place deserves to be a home for faith,” the stoic soldier argued.

Dilan placed his hand against the back wall, feeling the air flow through the room. He quickly regretted it as he realized that he was covering the palm of his glove in ash and dust. “I feel a draft through the cracks in the wall. There is a room beyond here,” he said.

“Of course. Don’t you remember the botanical garden in the chamber beyond?” Aeleus asked. Dilan shook his head. “High priest Marcel Funebris maintained the plants and sometimes held sermons in there.”

“To be honest, I was never a very religious man in my old life,” the lancer lamented. “I would presume that this new player would not have been hiding out in here for so long.”

“If this man were as secretive as he seems, I would argue that he would have been found already if he were in there.”

“We are nearly at the top of the castle, and we have yet to locate this man’s hiding place,” Dilan growled.

The former castle guards had taken it upon themselves to search the castle for the residence of the mysterious character who had allied with Maleficent. The men who were once apprenticed to Ansem the Wise had concluded that, if he were to have known about the files kept on Ansem’s computer, then he would have to have lived within the castle walls. However, even though they were searching every nook and cranny for a hidden entrance where they could find his seclusive residence, their search had yet to turn anything up, and the guards were becoming increasingly frustrated. What sort of secret passage had any right to be concealed from the people whose job was to defend the castle from any threat, external or internal?

“Perhaps it is not to be accessed by traditional means,” Dilan finally said after a long silence, realizing something that they had not yet considered.

“What do you mean?” Aeleus inquired.

“You recall how there was no traditional passage by which to enter the Round Room in the Castle?” Dilan asked. Aeleus nodded. “We simply wrapped ourselves in a dark pod, and materialized upon our thrones.”

“You believe that there is a hidden room that is completely sealed off, only accessible by some mode of teleportation?” Aeleus began to understand. It would make sense: if someone were living in the castle and wanted to make sure that nobody would ever have any chance of finding him, he would make sure that no one could access his chamber by any traditional means.

“But if the room exists and is simply closed off…” Dilan began, leaving an opening for Aeleus to finish.

“Then it can be found in the architecture” Aeleus gasped in wonder. “And if I am not mistaken, the computer has a copy of the architectural layout.”

Dilan sighed. “But I’m afraid that was one of the many corrupted files that the Restoration Committee has tried and failed to access,” he said resignedly.

“But Even is in the process of repairing the damaged files,” Aeleus reminded him.

“Are you certain that he will succeed? We cannot be certain as to the extent of the corruption. Some of the data could be lost forever.”

“I am confident in his coding skills, almost as confident as he is.”

“Then let us return to the study and share what we have found,” Dilan decided. Aeleus agreed, and together they walked down the chapel’s hall back to the doors. Dilan raised his arm and clenched his fist, causing a powerful gust of wind to extinguish the candles.

As they were leaving, Aeleus turned and gave one final glance to the darkened chapel. “It has been too long since any of us have been here,” he mused.

“Perhaps,” Dilan agreed. They stepped through and closed the doors behind them.

* * *

“About time!” Even shouted. Ienzo entered the computer room to see if the academic had discovered anything. “The files were repaired as best as possible, and we can finally access all of them. Now we can figure out what we’re missing.”

“Well done, Even,” Ienzo commended. “While we’re figuring out what Maleficent and her new allies are up to, how about we uncover some other secrets?”

“What are you suggesting?” Even asked.

“You know what I want to know. Braig knows things about the Organization’s plan that we have been locked out of the loop on. Even Saïx… Isa… he didn’t know. Xemnas kept things from us. For ten years he had been manipulating us. I want to know why.”

Even nodded. “I do not like when people keep things from me. I end up feeling as though my vast intellect is wasted on falsehoods, questioning if my confidence in my brilliance is misplaced. It makes me feel like…”

“A tool?” Ienzo finished. “A trinket to be thrown away once its use has been dealt with?”

“Yes!” Even brought his fists down on the keyboard. A message box appeared, saying PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN. The academic glanced back and forth in embarrassment. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around that,” Ienzo admitted. He clicked the X to make the message disappear and then began typing into the search bar. “Let’s try something we have heard about and see if we find anything there.”

Aeleus and Dilan appeared from the passage. “Hello, Ienzo, Even,” Aeleus greeted. “Where is Leon?”

“Mister Leonhart returned to the town to oversee construction efforts,” Even answered. “Have you uncovered anything?”

“I’m afraid that we were unable to find any hidden room,” Dilan replied. “There were no hidden doorways.”

“But we believe that there still is a secret room that he has been entering and exiting without using a door, by way of teleportation,” Aeleus added.

“Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” Ienzo said. “We were just in the process of seeking out a hidden room as well.”

As he spoke, he finished typing “chamber of repose” into the search bar and hit ENTER. Only one result came up. Ienzo clicked on it, and a window with a text box opened up.

“Hmm… Only one text box. If I recall correctly, the original password to the DTD server was the names of the seven Princesses of Heart. But this one is for Xehanort only. What could he have made the password to be?” Even wondered.

“Try ‘Another’,” Dilan suggested.

“Pardon?” Even asked, having no idea where that idea came from.

“It is ‘Xehanort’ rearranged but without the ‘X’. It is a worthy guess, considering when we became Nobodies, he rearranged the letters in our names and added an X. It would be easy for him to remember, and it would indicate that it was something that he was keeping from us, by disconnecting it from the pattern of our names. ‘No Heart’ would be to a similar effect but I doubt that spaces are permitted. Along with that, he was obsessed with finding the Chamber of Awakening for years, and this, the Chamber of Repose, is ‘another’ hidden room. It’s worth a try,” Dilan explained.

Even and Ienzo could only stare in amazement, surprised that Dilan worked through such thorough logic so quickly. Even typed it in and hit ENTER. The window changed so that there were now six text boxes. This was not at all mentally taxing to figure out. In each box, not caring for the order but expecting that it was probably the correct one if there was one, he typed the names of Ansem’s six apprentices, in the numerical order of what Even considered to be their rank of authority in the Organization: ‘Xehanort’, ‘Braig’, ‘Dilan’, ‘Even’, ‘Aeleus’, ‘Ienzo’. When he switched to the next text box each time, a line extended from the box and connected to a circle in the middle. After typing in the last name, he hit ENTER. The text boxes and circle disappeared and a message appeared, saying “SYSTEM START”.

Even was confused when nothing seemed to happen. Aeleus looked out the window into the Heartless Manufactory. He saw a shape light up on the floor down below. “Down there,” he said, calling their attention to it.

They all looked out and craned their necks to get a good look. They traded understanding glances.

“Doesn’t that lead to our old secret laboratory where we studied the Heartless?” Ienzo recalled.

“Let us hurry and get down there!” Dilan said. The four researchers ran through the door to the right and entered the elevator. The elevator brought them down to the lower level. When they stepped out, Even stood on the glowing shape. When he did so, a large rectangle briefly lit up on the floor in front of them and two halves of the shape receded, revealing a hidden level beneath the floor. A ramp appeared in front of them, prompting them to descend. Once they had all gone down the ramp, the hidden door closed above them and the ramp vanished behind them. They found themselves on a path that spiraled around a wide circular shaft, going down so far that they could not see the bottom.

“I always hated this walk,” Ienzo quipped, shrugging. They walked, following the path for several minutes until they finally reached the bottom. To their right, they saw a set of double doors, which slid to either side once they stood in front of it.

They entered a white hallway lined with a row of metal cell doors on either side, each one having a diamond-shaped window with iron bars sealing the only view inside. Next to each door was a device with a screen and a keypad, requiring an entry code to open the door. Ienzo grimaced, remembering shamefully how he was the one who persuaded Ansem to construct the laboratory with which to research the darkness in people’s hearts, which Xehanort had repurposed to perform experimentations on innocent people and create Heartless. Even turned his gaze to the floor, not wanting a reminder of how their pursuit of knowledge had caused so much suffering.

At the end of the hall, they finally reached a set of doors decorated with black chain designs. As they drew near, the doors quickly slid apart, opening the way in less than a second.

The circular room was designed in a way very reminiscent of the Castle That Never Was, with sections of the wall and floor cut out to expose pipes. There were chain designs going up and down the wall and across the floor, sometimes connecting to a black version of the Organization XIII sigil. The room was empty save for a white metal armchair with three spires on top.

“Curious. Xigbar told me that, while he had been eavesdropping on Xemnas, he heard him talking to a ‘friend’, even though his was the only voice he heard,” Ienzo mused. “But there is nothing here.”

“Perhaps whatever is in here is meant to appear only when he has taken a seat,” Even suggested. “Notice how the chains are black when they are usually white, as if the mechanics of this room are inactive?”

“In that case, would you do the honors of testing your hypothesis?” Aeleus asked.

Uncertainly, Even stepped in front of the throne and sat down upon the metal seat. Instantly, a circle surrounding the chair lit up in a bright white, and a similarly white light extended from the circle along the chains. A panel against the opposite side of the room vanished, and a platform rose up to take its place.

Everyone gasped when they saw what rested on the platform. They saw a pile of blue armor with some silver, black and purple parts. The armor was dusty, cracked and rusted from disuse. Judging from the shape of various pieces, they guessed that it had been worn by a woman. Next to the helmet, a uniquely-shaped weapon, made with the same color metal as the armor, stood up, the tip embedded into the floor. The general shape seemed reminiscent of a certain other weapon that they were rather familiar with.

“I recognize that armor. Master Ansem, Braig and I found it at the same time and place when we first found Xehanort, in the central square on the day after the storm,” Dilan said.

“So, this is Xehanort’s ‘friend’,” Aeleus muttered. “If so, then who was she? Who was Xehanort?”

“Would Braig know what this was?” Ienzo wondered.

“Well, we are not going to get an answer out of him,” Even asserted. “But this is quite intriguing.”

“We should tell Leon and the others,” Aeleus suggested.

“I believe this would be more suited to Sora and Riku’s inquiry,” Even argued. “For now, we should leave the armor here for safekeeping.”

The other researchers nodded in agreement. Even stood up, deactivating the mechanism and causing the armor to descend back down into its hiding place and become sealed off by the floor panel. They exited through the sliding doors and proceeded back up to the study.


	35. Chapter 34: The Prelims

Kairi stood her ground, waiting for her opponent to make a move. Bartz stood in a far corner of the square arena, his hands grasped onto a barrel as he waited for an opening. As he had discovered during their previous trial, their opponent could easily be stunned by a barrel to the head if he were distracted. Otherwise, he hoped to witness his enemy make a move that he could study and mimic in a way that would counter the opponent’s immense strength and also break through the godly yellow aura that rendered him invulnerable. Phil had advised him to not use the tricks he had copied from the other heroes during the previous day’s fight, so he was left with his own sword training and whatever abilities he could hope to glean from Kairi or his foe.

Hercules grunted and ran at Kairi, throwing a punch, which he had gauged so that it would not deal too much harm. Kairi smirked and ducked out of the way. As she did so, she stuck her Keyblade out in front of Hercules’ legs, tripping him.

“Now!” Kairi shouted. Bartz lifted the barrel over his head and threw it at Hercules, hitting him right on the noggin. Having lost focus, Hercules’ godly aura faded, signaling an opening to whale on him.

When Hercules’ head stopped spinning, he swung backward with his arms, throwing Kairi and Bartz off of him. Bartz drew out his dagger and spun around on his heels, moving around like a top as he went straight for Hercules. But the demigod drew his sword and deflected the blade as it drew near, knocking Bartz off-balance. Hercules shoved him across the arena, forcing Kairi to catch him.

“Try this on for size!” Hercules shouted as he jumped into the air, his godly aura reforming around him. Bartz stepped back and let his eyes turn grey. Hercules came down, slamming his fists to the ground as he landed. A wide hemisphere of golden light shot out of him, shattering most of the barrels and causing Bartz and Kairi to tumble backward.

Kairi cast Cura on herself and Bartz and helped him to his feet. Bartz smirked. “You might want to stand back,” he advised. Kairi complied. Bartz ran around the stage, kicking the remaining barrels at Hercules, who blocked them with his arms. But this was all the distraction Bartz needed, as he leapt high into the air, his eyes turning grey and his body emitting a golden glow. Hercules looked up to see what was happening, and gasped in horror as he realized that Bartz was using his own god-powered move against him. He backed away as Bartz came down, but the shockwave and aura blast that exploded outward as the boy slammed into the ground. Although it was not a direct hit, which might not have knocked him out anyway, it was still enough to blast him into the back wall, creating a sizeable dent in the bars closing off the entrance to the hypogeum.

Hercules regained his composure and brought himself back to his feet. He smiled at Bartz’s strategy before charging back into the fray. Kairi, having charged her magic back up, used Aero magic to push back against Hercules’ fists while she ducked out of the way. She cast Gravity, but he powered through the extra gravitational force as if it were nothing. She cast Thunder, but despite the fact that the lightning bolt made a direct hit it had absolutely no effect.

“Oh, sorry. That’s kind of my father’s area of expertise. Doesn’t work on me,” Hercules explained. Kairi hit him with Blizzard, which did have an effect, but not much of one.

Bartz ran in, his hand on his sheathed sword, to try to hit Hercules from behind, but Hercules ran up to Kairi and backhanded her back into Bartz. Both went tumbling down.

“Time!” Phil shouted as the two of them were struggling to their feet. The satyr stepped onto the square arena and addressed Kairi, Bartz and Hercules.

“You guys are fast learners. You recognized that your own skills held no weight against an opponent superior in strength and skill, but you watched and took every opening you could find. And although in the end it looks like you would have lost the fight, you held your own for five minutes against the reigning champ,” Phil commended.

“Not bad,” Sora congratulated, him and the others coming up and giving Kairi and Bartz some Potions.

“You have a lot to show, you two,” Phil continued. “And I know a place where you can test your might. How would you like to sign up for the Preliminary matches?”

Kairi and Bartz shared a confused glance. “What are the Preliminary matches?” Bartz asked.

“I’m glad you asked. You see, before I can properly sign prospective warriors up for the real deal, I’ve got to see if they have what it takes to go up against a wide variety of competitors. When Sora, Donald and Goofy came in the first time, I put them through my training course to see what they could do, and then I signed them up for the prelims. The seven-seed run tests the mettle of the fighters, and the audience and I judge who has what it takes to get into the actual tournament. Usually, it’s the last two or four groups, unless, in the case of some groups being Heartless, they don’t live to the end of the match. But since this is the entry course, that only happens to the Heartless. So, what do you think?”

Kairi and Bartz traded another glance, this time a confident one. “We’re in,” they said in unison. Sora pumped his fist in the air and Mickey, Donald and Goofy chuckled.

“Great. Say, how ‘bout another guy joins you? That way you have a party of three,” Phil suggested.

Kairi and Bartz looked around at their friends for a moment, considering who to invite onto their team. But it was Sora who spoke up with an idea.

“Riku, how about you join them?” he asked his best friend. “You can get more experience with working in a team, and you also have more skills to practice with than any of us save for Kairi.”

Riku smiled and shrugged modestly. “Okay, why not?” he replied. He raised his eyebrow at Kairi and Bartz.

“I’m game if you are,” Bartz said.

“Welcome aboard,” Kairi saluted.

“Ha-ha! That’s the spirit!” Phil cheered. “I’ll get it all set up. There aren’t really that many guys flocking in to sign up, but I guess we can let the Heartless be placeholders. Whatever makes you stronger and keeps the crowd entertained, I guess.” He turned around and walked off to the vestibule. “The matches start in the morning!” he called back.

The group laughed together and playfully showed off their moves. “So, anyone know a good place to spend the night?” Bartz asked.

“Actually, there is this inn we stayed at when we were in the Hades Cup. It was fifty seeds, so it went on for a few days. I’m sure the innkeeper will be glad to see us again,” Sora said.

“Well then, let’s go book some rooms for the night,” Riku affirmed. The others agreed, and they exited the Coliseum and headed into town.

* * *

As it turns out the townsfolk were very happy to see Sora, Donald and Goofy again. Not only were they famous as champions in the Coliseum, but they were hailed as heroes who helped out Hercules and even saved the town from Cerberus and the Hydra, and more recently, Nessus the centaur. The trio’s fans were eager to meet their friends who had come to join them in the Games. Mickey realized that with the crowd that had formed around them as soon as they entered town, Phil was going to have quite the audience turnout in tomorrow’s Prelims and the upcoming tournament.

As they squeezed their way through the crowd and finally reached the inn, they noticed a woman in her mid-twenties leaning against the wall, as if she were waiting for them. She had a thin waist and arms and wide hips, as well as thick brown hair tied into a ponytail. She wore a long pink dress with shoulder straps, orange sandals, and a loose purple sash around her waist.

“Well, look who’s here,” the woman said. “Good to see you again, junior heroes.”

“Hey, Meg,” Sora waved back.

“Junior?” Riku repeated, surprised and confused.

“Hey! We really _are_ ‘true heroes’ now!” Donald retorted.

“Yeah. Didn’t you see the stars? And Phil even called us that yesterday,” Goofy reminded her.

The woman mockingly recoiled as if visibly taking her words back. “My bad. So, you brought some friends with you this time. Hi. Name’s Megara. My friends call me Meg,” she introduced herself to the others.

Sora took it upon himself to introduce his friends. “He’s Riku, she’s Kairi, he’s Mickey, and this guy’s Bartz. Bartz actually came separately, but we ran into each other yesterday,” he explained. Everyone traded pleasantries.

“I take it you saw the Coliseum,” Meg guessed. “Back in business. Really takes a load off my mind.”

“What do you mean?” Mickey asked.

Meg sighed. “If I hadn’t let myself get kidnapped, then Wonder Boy wouldn’t have had to leave the Hydra alone without making sure it was dead. Then it wouldn’t have destroyed the place and killed who knows how many people.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up. You couldn’t have controlled what happened. That was all on Hades, not you!” Sora consoled. “And Hades had been wearing Herc down with constant monster fights, so something like that would have happened eventually.”

“He’s right,” Riku agreed. “You can’t go blaming yourself.”

Meg sighed and shook her head lightly. “I guess you’re right.”

“So, you’re Hercules’ girlfriend?” Kairi guessed.

Meg looked flustered, then chuckled. “Busted,” she quipped, smirking. “And you’re Sora’s?”

Kairi threw her hands up as if she were caught by police. “You got me!” she replied.

Meg looked her over thoughtfully. “So, I hear you’re signing up for the Games?”

“Prelims first, then Games,” Kairi corrected.

“Well, good luck,” Meg said, before she started to walk away. “I’ll see you around.” With that, she was gone, lost from view in the crowd.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Bartz watched her go, noticing at the same time that the sun was going down.

“We ought to get settled,” Sora said.

* * *

At eleven o’clock, the seats were filled with chattering people. Men, women and teens had come to see the seven-stage tournament that would introduce newcomers into the line-up for the Games. Though the Preliminary matches were rarely as exciting as the main Games, they were something to look forward to as they introduced new competitors into the public eye. Those who earned the approval and applause enough to be allowed to compete in the Games were brought to the attention of the plebes, and some, such as the super-strong hero Hercules and the synchronized trio of Sora, Donald and Goofy, and the brooding Cloud had become dark horse contenders among the audience. And with three new competitors, all of whom appear to be friends with Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Hercules, the people were excited to see what they had to show.

Sora, Donald, Goofy, Mickey, and Hercules sat in the club seating section in a balcony above the vestibule, watching as Riku, Kairi and Bartz stepped out onto the field. Phil stepped out into the center of the square stage.

“Welcome, all. Today, we introduce some new fighters. Will they make it into the Games? Or will they be ejected in humiliation? Well, I certainly hope you nincompoops didn’t come all this way for such a disappointment. Now, let the matches begin!” Phil shouted, his voice carrying out to everyone in the Coliseum. “For the first matchup in the first seed, we have the newcomers Riku, Kairi and Bartz!”

This was met by an enthusiastic peal of cheers and applause from all around them, particularly in the balcony above.

Phil waited for the cheering to die down before continuing. “And on the other side of the field,” he announced as the bars, which had been replaced or beaten back into shape so they appeared good as new, rose up to open the entrance to the hypogeum, “these little devils call their team ‘Soldier Legion’. Let’s see how their military might stands up, eh?”

Five Soldiers and an Armored Knight stepped out of the shadowed chamber. The Armored Knight brandished its sword. In response, Riku and Kairi summoned their Keyblades and Bartz drew out his sword. The humans and Heartless all stepped onto the stage. Phil looked back and forth from one team to another. He then raised his arm, indicating the beginning of the fight. He then turned and ran past Riku, Kairi and Bartz, heading for the door so as to stay out of the way.

The Armored Knight charged forward and swung its sword at Riku, but he deflected and pushed back, knocking the Heartless off-balance. Two of the Soldiers ran for Kairi and clawed at her, but she deftly dodged their swipes and hit one of them back with her Keyblade. The other one tried to strike at a perceived opening, but Kairi cast Aerora, creating a tornado around herself that lifted the Heartless off of its feet and spun it around her before throwing it away. Bartz defeated a Soldier with a sword strike and closed in on the one Kairi knocked away. He made sure to keep the other Soldier that had been targeting him within his peripheral while he matched his current adversary’s claw swipes with his dagger. When the other Soldier spun on one foot and threw itself in a sideways flip, swinging its other foot at him, Bartz jumped back and let it hit the Heartless that he had just been fighting.

The crowd cheered at his cunning, but he was not done. While the Soldier was delivering the cyclone, Bartz had studied the move with his Mimic ability. When he had backed up a good enough distance, he turned to the side and replicated the move. He vaulted himself in on the Heartless, who were struggling to separate themselves, and struck one in the head with his ankle, sending it tumbling away. As soon as he landed, he brought his sword out and cut through the other Soldier. This was met with even louder cheers.

The Armored Knight backed up, then jumped, and thrust itself toward Riku, pointing its sword for a stab. However, Riku dodged the attack and brought his weapon down on the Heartless’ blade, forcing it to go down and get stuck in the ground. While the Knight struggled to pull its sword out, Riku sliced it in two with his Keyblade, then spun around to obliterate the Soldier behind him.

Kairi delivered several quick strikes to her opponent, ultimately damaging it enough that it could not hold its body together and letting it disintegrate. She turned to the last Heartless, the one that Bartz had knocked away with his Mimicked Cyclone. It was trying to pick itself up and attack Bartz again, but Kairi cast Gravity, pinning it to the ground. With that, she strolled up and stabbed down into it, finishing it off.

The crowd broke into more cheers, rooting as Riku, Kairi and Bartz won the first match. Phil ran out to meet them and address the crowd. He declared the obvious, and led them back into the vestibule to make room for the next set of contestants to duke it out and see who moves on to the next seed.

The tournament continued, though whenever the main team of focus was not on the pitch it was either warriors fighting against the Heartless or Heartless fighting each other. There was one instance where human warriors went up against other human warriors. Whenever a Heartless team won the match against a human team, Hercules had to step in to make sure that the Heartless did not consume their opponents, much to the shadows’ evident frustration.

The second round put Riku, Kairi and Bartz against a team called “Wild Pride”, consisting of two Shadows, two Powerwilds, and two Bouncywilds. The main team got to show off more of their skills, such as by deflecting the Bouncywilds’ slingshot bolts, and Bartz even got to Mimic the attack to get one over on the hairbow-wearing Heartless, conjuring a slingshot with similar ammunition. Riku countered a Powerwild’s fierce attacks with his Dark Shield, and even cut through it with a darkness-infused Keyblade slash at superhuman speed. Whenever the others needed a pick-me-up, Kairi cast Cure. Bartz prevented a Shadow from escaping into the ground by throwing an Aero spell beneath it, lifting it into the air and allowing Kairi to finish it off.

The third round brought in “Spell Squad”, consisting of all of the spell-slinging Heartless that the team had faced thus far, along with a new breed called Violet Waltz, which even Sora and Mickey failed to recognize. However, from the color, Kairi correctly deduced that its specialty was in Gravity magic, and extra g-forces would heal it, so she decided to counter its tricks with a Magnet spell. Riku dispatched the Blue Rhapsodies with a barrage of Dark Fire spells. In the process, Bartz was able to learn and Mimic all of the basic spells. Physical attacks served them well as well, particularly against the Green Requiems, Emerald Blues and Violet Waltzes, and they let their magic recharge and whaled on the enemies whenever they ran out, with Kairi only using one Ether on herself.

The fourth round pitted them against “Shockwave”. This team was made up of two Large Bodies and an Assault Rider. All of their previous opponents were apparently ground-based fighters and Heartless, allowing them to take full advantage of their shockwave-inducing attacks. Since contenders rarely took the time to heal in between matches, particularly not the Heartless that did not have a Green Requiem, the damage dealt by previous opponents who had managed to get around the Large Bodies’ protected fronts allowed for one of them to be vanquished by a single attack from behinds courtesy of Bartz. Fortunately, the Large Bodies’ armor did not defend against magic spells, so Kairi and Bartz took the last one out with Fire and Blizzard magic. Riku then fought against the Assault Rider. While its frontal attacks were a pain, Riku managed to keep it busy and draw enough attention so that Bartz could attack from behind. When it hopped up to create a shockwave, Kairi called down a bolt of lightning, and Riku sent a dark orb that dispersed the lightning to all over the Heartless’ body, frying it.

The fifth round brought in “Death from Above”, consisting of four Aerial Masters and two Yellow Operas. Well-placed Gravity and Magnet spells completely took away what had given them an advantage in previous fights.

By the sixth round, Riku, Kairi and Bartz were the new sensation, to the point where the cheering was so loud that nobody could hear Phil announce the name of the rival team, but those that had paid attention to the matches where the Heartless won knew that they called themselves “Cold Death”, a rather chilling name but a befitting title for two Trick Ghosts and four Blue Rhapsodies. But the audience only cared to see their warriors win, which was exactly what happened.

Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey met Riku, Kairi and Bartz in the vestibule after their last fight. The V.I.P. audience congratulated the competitors for their skill and performance, though Donald appeared nervous. The court wizard was thinking of the monster that was likely to be their next opponent.

“The duck’s right,” Phil agreed. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s supposedly called a ‘Mistodon’. I have absolutely no idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

“It doesn’t look like a Heartless,” Sora noted. “And it’s pretty powerful. We saw it shred an Assault Rider with a single swipe from its claws.”

“Then I guess we’d better give it our all,” Riku said. Kairi and Bartz nodded in agreement.

“Good luck out there, fellas,” Mickey told them as Phil led them out onto the field.

Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey returned to their seats on the balcony, their gaze focused on the stage below. Phil stepped into the middle of the stage while Riku, Kairi and Bartz approached the square.

“And now,” Phil shouted for all to hear, “the match you’ve all been waiting for. The final round in the Preliminary tournament. In this corner, we have Riku, Kairi and Bartz! And in this corner, is the menacing Mistodon!”

But rather than the gate opening and the monster stepping out, a plane of air appeared to solidify, then shatter as a hideous monster crawled out. It appeared to be a shambling mass of blue scales, onion-red flesh, red and white feathers, and green fur. It had five scaly green spikes sticking out of its “head”. The “face” consisted of clouds of shadow in which hid roughly a dozen yellow eyes. Rather than feet, six enormous, bony fingers protruded from the base and pulled the body along, letting the tail drag along the ground.

Riku, Kairi and Bartz could feel a strange energy in the air, apparently emanating from the monster. Riku sniffed, then shook his head.

“Uh, what’s that mean?” Bartz asked.

“It means it’s not a being of darkness,” Kairi answered, worrying that they were facing something beyond their frame of reference.

Behind the gate to the hypogeum, Hades and Kuja watched with anticipation. “Hoo, boy. This is going to be a doozy of a fight,” Hades said with an evil grin. “You save any of that popcorn?”

“No,” Kuja answered. Hades growled, causing Kuja to smirk.

Phil raised his arm, signaling the moment in which the match would commence. Riku, Kairi and Bartz brandished their weapons. A hush fell over the audience, as everyone wanted to see what would happen. Phil ran back to the door to watch the event from afar.

With a terrifying pace, the Mistodon scurried forward. Kairi and Bartz dove out of the way, but Riku stayed behind. He stabbed his Keyblade into the ground, the weapon wrapped in a dark energy. As soon as the blade sunk into the stone, a pillar of dark flame shot up from directly beneath the monster. It was pushed into the air, but it did not go far and landed soon after. Instantly concerned by the durability behind the creature, Riku ran to the side. Fortunately, this trick had managed to disrupt it enough that it paused for a moment to figure out how to walk again.

It scurried right at Bartz, who dodged out of the way at the last moment, but it spun on its fingernails rapidly, hitting Bartz with its tail and smashing him into the wall beneath the audience stands. Bartz conjured the Way to the Dawn and repeated Riku’s trick, but this time jabbing at the edge between the ground and the wall, creating a pillar of dark flame that launched it several feet away. While it was regaining its mobility, Kairi struck down on one of the fingers, slicing a gash into it. Riku launched a Dark Fire blast into its “face”, which caused it to recoil. Kairi immediately jumped up to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability, leaping into the air and thrusting her Keyblade into the Mistodon’s face. She pulled back out and cast Fire in the same spot. When she landed, she and the others prepared to launch another attack, but they suddenly felt a strange disorientation, the strange energy that they had felt when the monster appeared being increased exponentially. This gave it time to recover and scurry backward, before going right back to charging at Riku and Kairi.

Phil clambered into the stands to get away from the monster attack. Kairi ran out of the way while Riku ran up the wall and leapt off and over the monster, swinging his blade at the spikes on top of its “head”. He managed to chop off the top part of the center spike, but the monster did not seem to react to the amputation. One of the beast’s fingers scraped Kairi’s leg, causing her to stumble and fall to the ground. Before the Mistodon could think to bear down on her in her weak state, Bartz jumped in, spinning a copy of the Assault Rider’s staff fast and hard enough to cut off two of the monster’s head spikes. It turned to face him, but Bartz thrust the head of the staff into its face.

Free to act without threat of harm, Kairi cast Cura on herself. The green light washed over her, filling her with an energizing warmth and closing up the cut on her leg. However, her moment of tranquility was cut short when she heard a terrible squeal coming from the Mistodon. She turned and saw that three of its fingers had shriveled up as bright tumors exploded from various parts including the joints, causing the fingers to crumple up.

While disturbed by the sight and curious by the incident, Kairi quickly realized that this had limited its mobility, and it was open to attack. “Boys, now!” she called out before downing an Ether.

Taking the hint, Riku and Bartz both stabbed their version of Way to the Dawn into the ground, creating an even stronger dark burst, which Kairi boosted with an Aerora spell, sending the Mistodon high into the air.

“Watch and learn, Bartz!” Riku called out. His aura turned purple and he began to float above the ground, his arms outstretched. A dark energy emanated from his body, depleting the ambient light. “Welcome, oblivion,” he muttered as soon as he was at the same height as the Mistodon.

Then, faster than anyone could realize it, he dashed right through the Mistodon. He teleported to a different point and shot through it again, wrapped in a powerful dark aura. This repeated eight more times, dealing painful-looking damage to the monster, before Riku at last appeared above it. “It’s over!” he shouted right before dropping straight through the creature, driving right through and striking the ground with a shockwave that shot rows of dark energy in all directions.

Bartz wasted no time in repeating the process. The barrage of dark cuts was just as brutal as before, even though they were not as strong as Riku’s. The audience stared in awe as the vicious attack cut pieces out of the Mistodon and bludgeoned it to a pulp. When Bartz finished the attack, the Mistodon crashed to the ground, slain, and disintegrated into fog.

The crowd cheered, enthusiastically applauding the trio. Sora, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Hercules traded high-fives. Down in the pitch, Phil climbed back down to the ground and led Riku, Kairi and Bartz onto the stage. The three fighters took in all the applause they were receiving.

Hades was fuming. “Are you kidding me, Pretty Boy? You promised me something that would crush them! But it hardly gave them trouble at all!” he complained.

Kuja smiled and brushed his hair back. “Calm down, my flaming friend. There’s more where that came from, I assure you. I simply wanted to see if they were worth the trouble for my Mistodon creations,” he told him. Hades raised an eyebrow at this.

“Bah! I can’t watch any more of this,” the god grumbled before he vanished in a puff of smoke. Kuja conjured a Corridor of Darkness behind him and backed through, not taking his eyes from the winners of the Prelims until he was enveloped in darkness.

When the cheering finally died down, Phil addressed the crowd. “Now, wasn’t that a show?” he asked. This was met with more cheering. “Give it up for Riku, Kairi and Bartz, our new Coliseum contenders!” He turned around to face the three fighters. “You’ll all be back for the next Games, right?” he asked.

They nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it,” Riku answered. “And I’m sure Sora, Donald and Goofy will be happy to join, too.”

“That’s great to hear,” Phil said. He looked back up to the audience. “Thank you all for coming, and thanks for your support. Be sure to come back here for the first tournament of the re-opening season, the Phil Cup! Stay tuned!”

The uproarious cheers resounded around the Coliseum. Kairi and Bartz waved to the crowd, with Riku resisting but joining in within moments. They looked up to the balcony and saw their friends applauding them as well. This made them smile even wider than before. Phil soon led them back into the vestibule, which signaled the audience to begin filing out of the arena. The V.I.P. guests went downstairs and met their friends in the vestibule. When they met, Sora, Donald and Goofy could not contain their excitement.

“That was awesome! You were like, BAM! Then again, BAM!”

“Then you went up and whoa! Then SLASH!”

“Then you went and did that spinning-thing, then POW!”

“And man, that darkness rush attack. That still haunts me from when Ansem did it, but you did it back-to-back and it was epic!”

“You did great!”

“Nice work out there, pals!”

Megara, who had been standing in the back corner next to the door, chuckled. “Not bad, you three,” she commended.

Kairi giggled. “Why, thank you,” she replied.

“We did our best,” Riku said modestly.

“That Mistodon thing really was something, right? My dad’s seen a lot of monsters, but he never mentioned anything like that,” Bartz said, thinking back to the nature of the fight. “And you’re right, it was nothing like the Heartless.”

“Maybe one of Hades’ new allies loaned it to him,” Mickey guessed. “If so, then this guy must have access to a power we’ve never seen before.”

“So, what do you mean, ‘new allies’?” Hercules asked. “I know you mentioned that Hades was part of a new evil alliance, but who are they? What are they after?”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy turned to Hercules. Bartz simply looked confused, as he had forgotten that Sora had said such a thing due to it having no relevance to him.

“Well, someone teamed up with our old enemies Maleficent and Pete. You remember Pete,” Sora explained. “And they recruited a bunch of other bad guys, one of them being Hades. We don’t know who the others are, though one of them claimed to be a god from ‘Asgard’. Anyway, from what we understand, they’re after a bunch of artifacts, one on each world, and if they get them all together, somehow they’ll …” He trailed off and decided that Phil and Bartz are better off not hearing the last part. He inched in closer to Hercules and whispered into his ear. “They’ll have the power to change reality.”

Hercules’ eyes widened in shock at this. He thought over what he was saying for a moment. “Well, I haven’t heard of anything like that. But I’m sure my father, Zeus, would know. I’ll ask him when I get the chance,” he told Sora. Sora nodded in thanks.

“Well, I guess we’ll be seeing you at the Phil Cup,” Phil guessed.

“I suppose so,” Sora said. “We’ve got quite a mission ahead.”

“Well, I know whatever it is, you can handle it,” Hercules assured them. “In the meantime, we have someone to start training. Isn’t that right, Bartz?”

Bartz’s eyes lit up. “Yes, sir! Glad to be on board,” he said enthusiastically.

“Good luck out there, heroes,” Meg said. She locked eyes with Kairi. “You keep him out of trouble, understand?”

Kairi nodded. “Don’t worry. I will.”

“You gonna take the Safe Point?” Phil asked, gesturing to the swirling circle of green light surrounding Meg’s feet.

Meg raised an eyebrow, confused, but then she realized where she was standing. “Oh, my bad. Didn’t realize this was here.” She stepped out of the circle and moved to the other corner.

Hercules nudged Bartz with his elbow. “Check this out,” he told him with a knowing look in his eye.

Mickey stepped into the Safe Point, with the rest of the party standing around him. He took out his device and sent a signal up to the Gummi Ship. A pillar of green light enveloped them and carried them away. Bartz stared, mouth agape.

“Alright, chump, quit staring! We’ve got to set some regulations for the training,” Phil barked, snapping Bartz out of his shock and making him stand at attention.


	36. Chapter 35: Suspicions

Zeromast climbed a ladder leaned against the wall in a tall, circular room. He ascended until he was next to an alcove marked with a placard labeled “LA CITÉ DES CLOCHES”. Several of the alcoves in the storage room were fitted with similar placards, marking the worlds where the items were retrieved. The scholar placed a crossbearer’s staff, condensed by magic to fit without difficulty, into the slot in the alcove, then climbed down. He stepped off of the ladder and found himself standing next to Maleficent.

“Well, it took more attempts than I would have liked and a few lessons in discretion, but this one is in our possession,” Zeromast told her.

“Yes. Who would have imagined that sending the Horned King into a church would cause such an uproar,” Maleficent said dryly. She looked up at the small collection they had thus far gathered. Five of the artifacts were in their possession, including the Mysidian Crystal that Zeromast had been watching over. They had yet a long way to go.

Diablo placed the stall post from Pearl Gesner’s barn in another slot, then flapped down until he was standing once again on Maleficent’s shoulder. He glared up at the empty spaces in the wall, disappointed that they were making what appeared to be good progress but actually had barely scratched the surface. He glanced at Zeromast. The enigmatic scholar’s stoicism annoyed him, as he was never able to get a read on him, and for an animal who had the purpose of spying on enemies that was the ultimate torture. He remembered when his mistress only had to collect seven girls and had been invading other worlds in the meantime. He knew that he ought to be patient, even with the minions he was forced to work with to get what Maleficent wanted, but he was starting to get irritated that they had to collect so many objects, each step seeming to come ever closer but actually not by too much, before he would even get an idea what they were for. But, alas, he was a mere familiar, a constant companion and enforcer of discipline but lacking in power to influence decisions or force inquiry.

“I can tell that you have a question,” Zeromast said aloud, without making eye contact. For a moment, the raven feared that he could read his thoughts, until Maleficent answered.

“How is it that you know about the whereabouts of these artifacts?” the fairy asked, also avoiding any attempt at eye contact.

Zeromast waited a moment before answering. “The same way that I know about all of you, and how I know everything that has happened before this endeavor began,” he said cryptically. “Your exploits are quite well explored. I know these things by studying the history of all. And I have an innate curiosity and a keen mind for the little details, ‘Horn girl’.”

Maleficent’s eyes widened in surprise. Although her memory of that age did not concern her in the slightest, it struck a nerve in that he knew so much about her past, particularly a detail that minor. It angered her that he would know everything about her but she knew absolutely nothing about him. She could not be sure what he was hoping to get out of the arrangement, and she knew that if she tried to get him to tell he would only dodge the question.

She was left to wonder what was going on in Zeromast’s mind while being forced to rely on him for intel on the other artifacts.

* * *

Above the storage room, in the chamber which had been unofficially made into the meeting room for the assortment of evildoers, a number of the villains were taking advantage of some downtime. Doctor Facilier assisted the Horned King in conducting a ritual to convene with what the lich claimed to be “demons”. Doug bided his time mixing chemicals. Loki walked by and, while Doug was looking away enough for the trickster god to be outside of his peripheral vision, in a single fluid motion, switched two bottles. Moments later, Doug grabbed one of the bottles and mixed some of its contents into a beaker containing an amount of another chemical. Doug stopped pouring and mixing when the solution began to release steam when it should have been an endothermic reaction, and stumbled backward when the solution crystallized and started bursting in sparks. Incensed at the tampering and Loki’s snickers, Doug grabbed a nearby knife and ran at the trickster with it, but Loki simply teleported out of the way.

Hämsterviel was studying the screen of a handheld computer device, clearly frustrated, while Pete looked over his shoulder nervously.

“Nothing! Merely simple details on the Crystal and theories on its nature. There is nothing in any of these files concerning Zeromast!” Hämsterviel complained.

“Well, like the guy said, the only information Ansem had to connect the Crystal to him is his old man telling him not to get more info on it,” Pete reminded him.

“That does not change the fact that we know nothing about this man. How does he know so much about all of us? I am not even from this pathetic stink-hole of a World yet he knew who I was. What are his intentions, even? I do not like when there is something that escapes my knowledge, particularly variables which I cannot control.”

“Yeah, I don’t trust him either,” Pete agreed. “But we’ve got a long way to go before we get what we’re after. I’m sure we’ll figure something out eventually.” However, this clearly did nothing to placate the arrogant gerbil, whose red eyes tightened in anger.

Doctor Facilier slinked over to the duo, having concluded his business with the Horned King. “Have you ever considered that perhaps there are more ways to gain knowledge than from your ‘computers’?” he asked, enunciating the last word due to not really understanding the system.

“What do you mean?” Pete asked, confused.

The Shadow Man grinned. “Well, the man is a scholar,” he said. “And, at least where I’m from, scholars use a different way to find the information they desire. He lives in the castle; there is a library in the castle. Perhaps try some of the books. You might find something of interest.”

Pete and Hämsterviel thought it over. “You sure he’d have an autobiography sitting on a shelf where anyone can read?” Pete countered.

“Perhaps not something so easy. But you never know what you could find. It could be enlightening,” Facilier suggested, pulling a book from behind him and opened it to a seemingly-random page. The title on the cover read _Poetic Edda_. “Let’s see… _‘Speak now, Eldir, for not one step farther shalt thou fare; what ale-talk here do they have within, the sons of the glorious gods?’ Eldir spake: ‘Of their weapons they talk, and their might in war, the sons of the glorious gods; from the gods and elves who are gathered here no friend in words shalt thou find.’ Loki spake: ‘In shall I go into Aegir’s hall, for the feast I fain would see’_ —”

His excerpt-reading was interrupted when Loki materialized next to him and yanked the book out of his hand. “Petty ramble of those who did not know what they were talking about,” the Asgardian commented before throwing the book out of the window.

Pete scratched his chin thoughtfully. “You know, you may be right. We’ll just hafta search the library whenever we can. And if we can’t find anything there, well, nobody can hide things forever,” he said.

“And if he attempts to prevent us from prying…?” Hämsterviel wondered.

“Gyah hah ha!” Pete laughed. “Like Maleficent said before, he can’t just get rid of us; he needs us for this as much as we need him. He’s just gonna have to put up with it.”

Satisfied, Hämsterviel opened another program on his device and began to hack into the castle’s computer network to develop a plan for when and how to sneak into the library to begin their investigation.


	37. Chapter 36: The Cursed Prince

The next world that the Gummi Ship arrived at appeared to have a prominent Gothic castle, separated from a provincial town by a dark forest. Sora, Donald and Goofy smiled on seeing this world, as it was one that they knew quite well.

Kairi noticed this. “So, who’s the master of this house?” she asked.

“The Beast,” Sora answered.

This confused Riku and Kairi, but they felt that he was sure this ‘Beast’ was someone they would be familiar with. Then, Kairi remembered something. “Was he the hairy animal guy who covered our escape from Hollow Bastion?” she asked, remembering the noble monster who fended off the Heartless to allow her, Sora, Donald, and Goofy to flee the flood of darkness.

“That’s him,” Sora answered. Mickey selected the DISEMBARK command. Everyone climbed out of their chairs and walked over to the circle of light.

Riku quickly remembered something as well. “Hold on… When you first got there, he was there demanding that I return someone named ‘Belle’, one of the Princesses, I presume, to him. Oh, man. He is not going to be happy to see me…”

They beamed down and appeared in a parlor with a lit fireplace. They stepped out through an already-open door and into the vast entrance hall. Riku, Kairi and Mickey stared in wonder at the architecture, which had an elegant but haunting feel.

“So, where do you think we’ll find him?” Mickey asked.

“Well, if they’re doing their own thing, Beast would probably be in his room in the West Wing and Belle would be in the East Wing,” Goofy explained. “Together, they could be in the ballroom or the dining room, though I don’t know where the dining room is... Hmm…”

“We could just ask them,” Donald interjected, pointing toward the stairs.

“Who?” Kairi asked.

“Them,” Donald repeated. His companions squinted as they looked in the direction he was pointing. Two small white items hopped from one stair to the next. As they drew closer, the party could identify them as a teapot and a teacup.

“What in the world?” Riku wondered, utterly bemused at the sight.

“They were human,” Sora explained. “An enchantress cursed the prince for his selfishness and turned him into the Beast while turning the servants into appliances and ornaments. There’s a wardrobe with a face and a talking clock. Those two over there are Mrs. Potts and her son Chip.”

Riku and Kairi simply looked at each other, simultaneously mouthing _Wow_. Sora smiled to himself as he saw their reaction. He remembered his utter surprise when he first met the cursed servants; he was only able to wrap his head around it once he learned how they came to be that way.

He walked over to the teapot and teacup. “Hey, there,” he greeted.

Mrs. Potts and Chip turned to see where the familiar voice came from. “Hi, Sora!” Chip greeted back cheerfully.

“My, it’s nice to see you, Sora,” Mrs. Potts said. Sora crouched when he reached the two. Donald, Goofy, Mickey, Riku, and Kairi joined him seconds later. “Oh, and who are these dears?” she asked.

“Well, you know Donald and Goofy. And these are our friends, Riku, Kairi, and K—Mickey,” Sora introduced them, gesturing to each one as he said their names.

“Gosh, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mickey said politely, holding his hand out. He pulled it back awkwardly when he remembered that they lacked the hands with which to shake.

Chip giggled at this. “It’s nice to meet you, too,” he said.

“How are things here?” Goofy asked.

“Quite well, thank you. The master’s behavior is certainly turning for the better, and he and Belle are growing closer by the day,” Mrs. Potts explained.

“Hey, that’s great! Where can we find them?” Sora asked.

“Well, the master is showing Belle around the library,” Mrs. Potts explained. “He decided to give it to her just yesterday.”

“Oh, that’s so romantic,” Kairi commented. Donald and Goofy chuckled.

“Yes, it certainly is,” Mrs. Potts agreed. “How about we take you there? I’m sure that they would be delighted to see you!”

Sora grinned. “That would be great!” he told them. Riku still looked somewhat nervous.

“Follow us, then!” Chip ordered. The sentient pieces of chinaware turned and hopped up the stairs. Sora grinned back at his friends and the party began following their guides.

* * *

The six visitors followed their guides through a door into a vast room. They all marveled at the size and contents, as the room was lined wall-to-wall with tall and vast shelves filled with books. There were even spiraling staircases all over the place leading up to another level to access even more books. To the left, there was a desk with a row of books lined up between bookends and a cup of ink with a writing quill. To the right, there was a globe set on a stand where it could be rotated to see the whole representation of the World. Mickey found this to be curious, as, while he had a similar globe in his castle, the layout of the worlds did not fit the globe format. Perhaps the globes remained from before the worlds became divided. Against the back wall, the endless bookcases were separated by two tall, thin windows with green curtains as well as a fireplace mantel that was nearly half the height of the room.

Two figures stood in between the two chairs in front of the fireplace. One was a slender brunette woman with hazel eyes. Her hair was tied into a low ponytail with a blue ribbon. She wore a medium-length sleeveless blue dress with a white long-sleeved button-up shirt underneath, a white apron on her waist, and brown ballet flats. The other one was a hulking creature whose body was covered in brown fur. He had the head shape and horns of a buffalo, the arms and body of a bear, the jaws and mane of a lion, legs and tail of a wolf, and the tusks of a wild boar. The only part of him that looked at all human-like were his blue eyes. He wore dark gray breeches, a white undershirt, and a purple cape with a golden circular clasp. He stood upright rather than hunched over as he had before, giving the appearance of being more refined than animalistic.

Belle stood next to the Beast, the bookworm holding a book open so that both she and the cursed prince could read. She read the words aloud, slowly, but at certain intervals he joined in, as if she were helping him learn, or relearn. A mantel clock and a candelabra with a golden body and three wax candles stood on a nearby staircase, watching them bond over their reading. The candelabra looked up for a moment and grinned with surprise, the lip of the center candle holder which made up his lower lip curling upward around the sides.

“Look, _mon ami_ , what a splendid sight,” the candelabra, Lumière, whispered, nudging the clock, Cogsworth, with his “arm”.

“I can see it, Lumière. I can see the petals of romance blossoming,” Cogsworth retorted, annoyed. The candelabra pointed his candle “hand” in the direction that he was referring to, so Cogsworth looked in that direction. He smiled when he saw who had arrived. “Oh, this is a wondrous turn of events!”

Beast and Belle heard them talking and turned around to see what they were talking about. They each broke into a smile when they recognized Sora, Donald and Goofy. “Sora, Donald, Goofy, it’s so good to see you,” Belle greeted them warmly. Beast nodded in agreement. However, his expression turned sour when he saw a familiar head of silver hair.

“You!” he snarled. Angrily, he charged at Riku and swiped at him, forcing him and his friends to scatter. “Have you come to take everything away from me again? You and the Heartless are not welcome here!”

“Beast, wait!” Sora tried to reason with him, but the Beast would not hear reason. Not wanting any collateral damage in the library, they ran out into the hallway, where the Beast pursued them. He nearly took Riku’s head off with a swipe, but Riku teleported out of reach, landing right next to Kairi.

“So, what happened between you two?” Kairi asked.

Riku scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. “Well, when he tried to fight me to try to rescue Belle, I sort of… stabbed him,” he admitted.

“I guess he never found out that you’re not a bad guy anymore,” Mickey said. He gasped when he saw Beast barreling toward them, and he and Kairi dove out of the way, though Riku was not fast enough. Beast grabbed him by the neck and pinned him against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” Riku croaked. But Beast did not seem to hear him; he only began to tighten his grip. However, his hold on him broke when he felt a blunt force hit him in the back.

Beast whirled around and glared at Sora, who was holding his Keyblade in a battle-ready stance, though his face indicated that he did not want to fight. “What are you doing? He hurt you too!” Beast reminded him.

“He’s my friend! And he’s not like that anymore!” Sora countered.

Beast roared. Sora sighed and rolled his eyes. He knew that once he got worked up, it was not easy to calm him down. He nodded toward Donald and Goofy.

Goofy kicked his shield under Beast’s feet, causing him to stumble and fall to the ground. Donald cast Graviga, holding Beast to the floor. Beast struggled in an attempt to bring himself to his feet, but Mickey and Kairi cast their own Gravity spells.

Riku drank a Potion and stood back up. Cogsworth ran up until he was standing face-to-face with Beast. “Master, please! Compose yourself,” he pleaded, soothingly. Sora and Riku crouched in front of Beast, having dismissed their weapons and making sure their body language indicated that they had no desire to fight.

“Riku’s on the right side now,” Sora explained. “He saw the error of his ways and helped us stop the Heartless from flooding the worlds. He’s been fighting his own inner darkness and now he’s helping to protect the worlds. He’s not an enemy anymore.”

Beast finally relaxed on hearing his words. He looked at Riku suspiciously, as if wanting to make sure that what Sora had said was true. He saw the sincerity in Riku’s eyes, and nodded himself. Donald, Mickey and Kairi lifted their Gravity spells so Beast could stand up.

“I’m… sorry. I should have heard you out. I have been trying to keep my temper in check,” Beast said nervously.

“Well, your anger wasn’t exactly unjustified,” Riku said, shrugging. “I’m sorry I stabbed you.”

“You what?” Belle asked, shocked.

Riku chuckled nervously. “He healed,” he joked.

“Too soon,” Sora whispered, his mind heading back to the events in the Kingdom of Corona.

Kairi walked up to greet Belle. “You must be Belle. I’m Kairi,” she said.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to meet back at Hollow Bastion,” Belle lamented. “But I’m glad you managed to get to safety before the darkness began to flood out.”

Beast noticed Mickey and politely bowed before him. “It is an honor to meet again, your Majesty,” he said respectfully.

“Gosh, there’s no need for that. We’re both royalty. And I’m the one visiting your castle. You can just call me Mickey,” the mouse king held out his hand to shake.

“Huh?” Beast gasped in confusion, before standing up and shaking Mickey’s hand. “Very well, Mickey.”

“I mean, it wouldn’t really be right if you called me ‘your Majesty’ and I just called you ‘Beast’, especially since I don’t know your actual name,” Mickey added.

Sora blinked, realizing that he never even considered finding out Beast’s real name. He looked over to Belle, who simply shrugged in embarrassment.

Beast hesitated, struggling with his memories of his human persona, who one could say was more beastly than he was now. “Adam. My name is… Adam,” he finally responded.

Mickey smiled. “Well, it is nice to meet once again, Prince Adam.”

“So, Sora, how did your quarrel with Xaldin’s Organization conduct?” Cogsworth asked, turning back to Sora.

“We beat the Organization and released the hearts they had gathered,” Sora recounted. “Leon and the gang are investigating to see if there are still any remnants of their plans, but right now we’re looking into something else.”

“Oh? And what pray tell is that?” Mrs. Potts inquired. She, Chip and Lumière had joined the group in the conversation.

“Well, first off, Maleficent’s back,” Sora began. Beast and Belle flinched in surprise. “She’s actually been back for several months, but for a while the Organization and the Nobodies were more of a priority. But now, she and several other villains have banded together, Maleficent’s regained control of the Heartless, and they’re up to some serious trouble now.”

Beast paused for a moment, thinking of what he had just been told. Belle sighed and held her head in one hand, apparently having trouble taking in the fact that the witch who had taken her captive and allowed her heart to be removed from her body was alive once again.

“Actually, things have been quiet lately,” Beast told Sora. “The Heartless have stopped coming here shortly after Xaldin was slain. There are no other monsters here.”

Belle swooned, losing her footing and falling, but Kairi caught her. Kairi helped her to her feet, but immediately after began to feel a migraine. Her Keyblade materialized in her hand.

“What’s the matter?” Goofy asked, noticing this.

“There’s something… here… in the castle,” Belle answered faintly. “A… strong darkness.”

Everyone tensed up. Cogsworth screamed when he saw the eyes of a gargoyle statue turn yellow and the head shift. Six statues gained a life of their own and broke off of the floor on which they had been mounted. All six statues had a tall square pedestal for the lower half. The three Gargoyle Knights had the upper bodies of monsters on top of the pedestals. They each had a pair of wings growing out of their backs and square curled horns on their heads, and each one carried a sword. The three Gargoyle Warriors appeared to be wearing heavy armor, though it was all the same stone from which they were carved, and they each carried a double-bladed axe. Clouds of darkness shimmered around the bodies.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mickey saw a glint of metal. He turned to the right and saw a razor-sharp foe charging toward them in a flash.


	38. Chapter 37: Castle Invaders

Mickey blocked the sword strike from the Heartless that was dressed in silver and blue armor. A two-foot-long sword extended from each of its wrists, completely replacing its hands. The Zip Slasher swung its other bladed arm at Mickey, but Sora blocked that. Both Keyblade wielders pushed back, throwing the Heartless off-balance. Sora slashed at it and sent it across the hall.

The servants, being ordinary appliances, wisely fled back into the safety of the library. Belle followed them, with Kairi covering them and blocking a strike from a Gargoyle Knight. She stabbed at the chest and managed to make a crack that was an inch deep in the stone. Smirking, she stepped back and cast Blizzard right at its chest. Ice formed in the crack and expanded, creating a wider crack. She dodged a few strikes, though a few managed to connect. She retaliated by stabbing her Keyblade back into the statue’s chest, taking advantage of the enlarged split to make the Keyblade push everything around it apart, blasting it to pieces.

A Gargoyle Warrior spun around, swinging its axe with it as it struck out at Goofy. The canine knight blocked its attack, however, and punched back with his shield. Several punches later, the stone broke apart and collapsed in a pile of rocks. A cloud of black smoke with a red mouth and white eyes floated up and dissipated.

Riku looked up at the vanishing cloud in confusion. Jiminy hopped out of Sora’s pocket and jumped onto Riku’s shoulder. “Possessors. Looks like they’ve mixed in with the enchantment on the castle and gained the power to take command of statues and effigies,” the cricket explained. “Behind you!”

A Gargoyle Knight jumped into the air and dove at Riku, its wings helping it glide somehow and its sword pointed right at him. However, Riku struck the sword with his Keyblade, breaking the tip off and disrupting its aerial balance. It landed on the ground and the Possessor within it poked out, losing its hold on the statue.

“So if I just use the Keyblade’s magic to make the Possessor release its hold…” Riku considered as he pointed his Keyblade at the statue. A white light shot from the weapon into the statue’s chest, and the Possessor was launched out of it. As an effect from the whiplash of dark and light energy, the statue exploded into dust. Riku covered Jiminy with his hand to protect him from the debris.

Beast stood against two Gargoyle Warriors. The animated statues hefted their weapons, but Beast simply brought his hands against the sides of their heads, throwing them into each other and causing them to break into pieces. Donald jumped on Beast’s back and vaulted off of him, much to the latter’s annoyance, and leapt over the third Gargoyle Knight, then cast Fire at it from above. When he landed, he hit it over the head while it was recoiling from the blast, then cast Blizzard, freezing the wings. Mickey joined in and struck it right where the frozen wings met the body, shattering the wings and breaking the body to pieces, forcing the Possessor to flee.

The Zip Slasher returned, performing a lunging slash which Sora blocked. Before the Heartless could counter, Sora struck out at it. It hopped backward and delivered a spinning attack which knocked Sora back. In its brief pause after the attack, Riku teleported behind it and struck out. His attacks caused it to falter, and he followed his attack up with a Fire spell. However, the spell had absolutely no effect, and the Zip Slasher regained its footing and struck back at him.

Beast ran up and grabbed the Heartless from behind before it could hit Riku and lifted it above his head. He spun around and threw it to Mickey, who swatted it in the chest with his Keyblade, knocking it to the ground. It picked itself up and made efforts to block and counterattack strikes from Keyblade wielders on all sides. Eventually, it fell from the barrage of attacks and dissipated into black smoke, releasing a crystal-like heart.

After taking a moment to relax, in which Kairi cast Cure to heal any injuries, Donald and Goofy walked along the hall to check and make sure there were no other possessed statues in the area. They returned and reported that those were the only ones there. By then, Belle, Cogsworth, Lumière, Mrs. Potts, and Chip had finally come out of the library to rejoin those who had fought off the Heartless. Jiminy finished writing his dossier on the Zip Slasher and returned to Sora’s pocket.

“Is everyone alright?” Mickey asked. Everyone nodded an affirmative.

Beast, however, was livid. “Heartless? In my castle?! I will show those creatures that they are NOT welcome here!” he shouted.

“So, I guess that if the mid-class ones are the starter pack, someone must have come here and brought them along,” Riku surmised.

“It looks like it,” Sora agreed.

“But where could they be?” Goofy wondered aloud. “This is a big castle. They could be anywhere.”

“Gosh, then I guess we’ll just have to split up,” Mickey suggested. “Sora, Kairi, Belle, you three search the East Wing. Donald, Goofy, you and I will check the courtyard, and—”

“Riku’s with me,” Beast interjected in an affirming tone. Sora, Riku and Mickey looked at him in surprise. “We shall search the West Wing for the intruders.”

After a brief silence, Cogsworth chimed in. “Very well, then. We shall wander the hidden tunnels. The Heartless should be unfamiliar with those crawlspaces,” he said.

“You sure you’ll be alright?” Belle asked.

“But of course. We ought to be beneath the notice of the invaders. If we find them, we will find the nearest group and let you know,” Lumière assured her.

“Okay, then, fellas. Let’s go!” Mickey directed. The groups each went their own way, with Sora and Mickey’s trios heading down one path while Riku, Beast, and the servants went the other way. Sora and Mickey’s groups diverged when they reached the stairwell at the entrance hall; Sora, Kairi and Belle went up the stairs to the opposite end while Mickey, Donald and Goofy went down the stairs and out to the door leading outside.

As they walked through the hall, Goofy realized something. “So, uh, your Majesty, how is it that you know the Beast… er, Prince Adam?”

Mickey stopped, realizing that he had not told of everything he had done during the last year. “Well, it was actually the last time you were here,” he admitted. Donald and Goofy each raised an eyebrow in confusion. “You see, after you guys woke up from your year-long sleep, I took to watching over you, making sure you stayed safe. Whenever you got yourselves into a jam, I was ready to help you out. I didn’t have to directly jump in very often. There was that time I saved you from the Nobodies in Twilight Town, but I was going to give you the Munny and the crystal orb anyway. The most I did aside from that and fighting in the Showdown at Hollow Bastion was when you were fighting Xaldin.

“His berserker rage proved to be too powerful even for you, and you guys barely held on. When he turned his lances into that dragon thing and hit you with the wind blast, you all were knocked into the side of the bridge, and Sora was knocked off. I grabbed him before he fell and threw him back up, but he was hurt pretty bad. You were all barely conscious. I fought Xaldin off and, in between hits, I gathered energy until I could heal you all to full health.

“After you guys beat Xaldin, I stuck around until after you were gone. Before I left, however, Adam stopped me. He saw me helping out during the fight, and wanted to know what I was doing there. So, I explained myself. I told him what I knew about him, how he helped you guys out at Hollow Bastion the year before. We developed a kind of respect for each other.”

Donald and Goofy remained silent for a moment. All that time, the King had been watching over them, and he even saved their lives at least once. “Gawrsh, we had no idea,” Goofy said. “Thanks, your Majesty.” Donald smiled and nodded.

“Just, could you please not tell Sora or Riku about that?” Mickey requested. The duck and dog nodded.

They continued their search, scanning around the hall and searching each room. On one side of the hall there was the parlor in which they landed as well as a lavatory and a kitchen, while on the other side the three doors led into the dining room. There was not a soul in any of the rooms, though they did fight off a few Shadows and Soldiers. Bizarrely, they found a Shadow on the toilet, which they were relieved to find was not also an enchanted servant.

“Well, I guess we ought to check outside,” Mickey decided. They walked through the large double doors, which had opened on their own accord for them. They paused for a moment before proceeding, wondering how far the castle’s enchantment actually went.

They stepped out into a vast courtyard surrounded by high stone walls. On the far wall, Mickey, Donald and Goofy could see an enormous door which they knew would lead out to the bridge from which they could leave the premises of the castle. As they stepped out into the middle of the area, they took notice of gargoyle statues placed around the courtyard. Donald and Goofy were not sure if those statues had been there previously; the first time they had been in the courtyard, they ignored the scenery as they were in a hurry to stop Xaldin from fleeing with the Beast’s rose and Belle, and afterward they were focused more on Beast and Belle sharing a dance.

They scanned the area for anything suspicious, but there was nobody in sight. While Mickey and Donald wondered where the intruders could be, Goofy turned around and looked up at the front face of the castle. “Huh?” he muttered when he saw a strange man dressed in colorful clothing dancing around on the balcony of Beast’s room. Mickey looked up in the same direction as Goofy, but before he could register the sight, he heard Donald shriek in fright.

Mickey and Goofy turned their focus to what had drawn Donald’s attention, Keyblade and shield respectively in hand, and they found themselves surrounded by animated Gargoyle statues.

* * *

Riku and Beast crept into the West Hall, which had a much brighter ambient feel than the rest of the castle, with the tan walls and dark red carpets. Riku noticed two rows of knight’s armor in front of him and worried that the setups would be possessed by Heartless and come to life.

Beast saw his concern. “Don’t be afraid of the armor. They wouldn’t stay together if something tried to control them. And besides, they are Cogsworth’s domain, rather than decorations,” he assured Riku. This caused the young man to relax, though he continued to keep an eye out.

They continued down the hallway and turned right into the wide-open room. Farther along the left wall was a green door which led to the undercroft. To the right, there was a wide stairway flanked by two statues of muscular satyrs holding up green columns.

Riku and Beast stopped in front of the stairs, and Riku admired the statues. He looked over at Beast, his guilt of his previous behavior and actions rising up again. “Look, I’m sorry for what I did back at Hollow Bastion,” he said solemnly. “I was trying to protect someone, too. But I let my arrogance and jealousy cloud my judgment and I hurt people, including my best friend… and you. I let my darkness consume me, and allowed a psychopath to possess my body. But Sora continued fighting to save me, and he eventually managed to free my body. Since then, I’ve been fighting my inner darkness, helping Sora from the shadows, but ashamed to let him see my face. I thought he would never forgive me for what I’ve done… I couldn’t even forgive myself. But he did, and he, Kairi, and Mickey encouraged me to do the same.”

Beast nodded. “I know how you felt,” he replied. “As a boy, I was selfish and cold. When the enchantress trapped me in this form, I was ashamed of myself. I threw tantrums, but that settled nothing and gave me no satisfaction. I fell into self-loathing, hating myself for the way I had been and feeling that my new face truly did fit who I was. The condition that the enchantress placed to lift the curse tortured me the most. ‘To love and be loved in return.’ But who could ever learn to love a beast?”

He sighed. “Belle was the only light in the darkness. I acted monstrously to her, but she came to see… something within me that I was sure did not exist. She helped me believe that I could be something more than just a horrible, monstrous beast. And she gave me hope… that I could be human again.”

Riku smiled, feeling a kindred spirit within the enchanted prince. “If it counts, I think that day won’t be far off, Prince Adam,” he assured the Beast.

“Thank you,” Beast said back. He breathed in, then his eyes widened as he smelled something. He sniffed further and his eyes narrowed. “This way!” he told Riku before running up the stairs, turning left to run up another set of stairs, and into the West Wing corridor. Riku quickly followed him.

They ran through the corridor, blasting aside any possessed statues that tried to attack them, and entered the Beast’s room. Riku looked around in surprise. The bedroom was a wreck; furniture was broken and split, wallpaper and sheets were torn and shredded, and books and debris were strewn all over the place. Riku saw a painting of a young prince’s face, but there were enormous claw marks that ripped through the image; he surmised that the Beast had damaged it himself out of shame.

His attention was drawn to the window, where, mounted on a small table, he saw a glass jar containing a glowing rose that floated in midair. The base of the jar was covered in dull petals, which appeared to have lost their magic, and the rose only had a few petals left. As soon as he had taken that in, Riku noticed two flamboyantly-dressed men standing to either side of the rose. One wore a slim suit and a top hat while the other was dressed like a court jester.

“Well, what do we have here? The Magician and the High Priestess,” Doctor Facilier said. “It is an honor to stand before the ruler of this domain.”

“Who are you?” Riku asked sternly, giving the two intruders a fierce glare.

“And what are you doing in my castle?” Beast added, his voice filled with rage.

Kefka Palazzo laughed. “Now, now. Is that any way to treat your guests?” he teased.

“Maybe if you hadn’t broken in and sent Heartless to attack us, we might be a tad bit more receptive,” Riku snarked.

“I suppose so, but would you have accepted our company anyway?” Facilier countered.

Beast growled. Riku scowled. “Depends. Are you with Maleficent and Zeromast?” Riku interrogated.

Facilier shrugged. “I’m impressed. You know who our ally is. Then I suppose that you know what our goals are?”

Kefka clapped to distract him from divulging too much. “Eh, there’s no need to concern him with that. They’re lower than the dirt on the bottom of my boot. Or perhaps the dirt on the bottom of that dirt!” He let out a chortle, one of such distinction that Riku and Beast were both taken aback by the strangeness of it. He turned a sly glance to his left and grabbed the jar containing the enchanted rose. Beast let out a gasp in horror, which transformed into a snarl of rage. “But this is something. I could just suck its magic dry. Oh? Are you fond of it? Yuck! Oh, well. Might as well burn it. No point in keeping it around. It’s not what we’re looking for, anyway.”

Facilier slipped the jar out of his hands and slid it back onto the table. “Now, now. No need for that,” he scolded the clown. “Like you said, what we’re looking for is not here, so let us conduct our business elsewhere. In the meantime, let us leave these two to our friends on the other side.”

“No!” Beast roared, lunging at the two villains, but Doctor Facilier and Kefka vanished through a Corridor of Darkness. Several Heartless materialized around Beast and Riku. The Heartless resembled blue bats, but instead of feet they had red hooks hanging from their bodies.

“Tch,” Riku grunted, summoning his Keyblade as he and Beast stood back-to-back against the Hook Bats.

* * *

“So, wait, you traded your freedom for your father’s?” Kairi asked for clarification. Belle had just told her and Sora how she had come to live in the castle.

Belle nodded. “When Beast refused to let him go, I offered to take his place. He agreed. Though at first he left me in the tower, he changed his mind and brought me to a room in the East Wing.” She chuckled. “I think Lumière convinced him to offer me more suitable accommodations.”

“It can’t have been easy,” Kairi commented, amazed at the ordeal she had gone through.

Belle shook her head. “For a while, I was terrified. And I was miserable, since I had signed my life away to save my father. The Beast appeared cold and unforgiving. I didn’t come out of my depression until Cogsworth, Lumière and the others invited me to dinner and put on a show to make me feel welcome. After that… I may have gotten a little confident, and a few days later I asked them to give me a tour of the castle. And later, in spite their warnings and the fact that the Beast had previously told me it was forbidden, I went into the West Wing.”

“So he gave a bookworm an open-world experience of the castle but specifically said ‘don’t go in this one place’ without explanation. Wise,” Kairi joked.

“Specifically his room,” Belle added.

“I see where this is going,” Sora said. “You find the rose, he roars at you and thrashes about, scaring you off. Is that right?”

Belle nodded. “I ran. I fled the castle, not caring what I promised. I climbed onto Philippe and rode into the woods. But then we were cornered by a pack of wolves. That would have been it, but then, he appeared. He fought the wolves to save me, but he got hurt. I was getting ready to get back on Philippe and head home, but…”

“You couldn’t leave him,” Sora finished. “Even after everything he’d done, you couldn’t let him die.”

Belle shook her head. “I brought him back to the castle, and Mrs. Potts helped me nurse him back to health.” She stopped walking and held her hand up, indicating for Sora and Kairi to stop as well. They turned their gaze to the right and realized that they were standing at the door to Belle’s room. They had been so engrossed in Belle’s story that they had not been watching where they were going; in fact, at an earlier part of her tale, Sora had nearly walked into the wall before Kairi reminded him to turn left.

“Well, I suppose I’ll finish that story another time,” Belle said. “Now, if you would follow me…” She opened the door and led Sora and Kairi inside.

Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Nothing was out of place, and there did not appear to be anyone who did not belong. The only other person in the room was the Wardrobe, who was previously the lady-in-waiting before the enchantment was placed.

Sora sighed, disappointed that their search of the East Wing had turned up empty. However, he quickly noticed something off about the Wardrobe. She appeared to be rather sullen, but her eyes held a sense of distress within them.

“Hey, are you alright?” he asked. Kairi and Belle quickly noticed her condition as well and looked at her with concern.

The Wardrobe did not answer, her expression unchanging. Instead, her doors opened up. Sora, Kairi and Belle gasped in shock and horror when they saw that instead of clothing, there were four white creatures hanging from her coatrack. The creatures were of a silvery off-white color with purple lines going down their sides. Their arms and legs narrowed into points. Their mouths appeared to be composed of zippers, and they lacked eyes, ears or noses. Each one had a flat forehead with a peculiar insignia printed on it, one resembling an upside-down white heart with two circles cut out of the sides and a cross-shape attached to the tip. The three of them were all too familiar with those creatures.

“Nobodies?” Sora exclaimed in confusion. Before he could question further, the Dusks slithered out of the Wardrobe and stood on their pointed feet. The Wardrobe gasped and slunk back into the wall next to Belle’s bed.

Sora and Kairi summoned their Keyblades. “Belle, get back!” Sora ordered. Belle nodded and ran to the balcony. The Dusks took long steps toward their quarry, moving as if they had no bone structure whatsoever. They started to slither around Sora and Kairi, preparing for an attack. However, Sora slid his way around to behind the Dusks. They were confused, wondering where he had gone. They shrugged it off and moved toward Kairi. She did the same thing as Sora, and the sudden reversal confused the Nobodies further. Sora and Kairi took advantage of this opening and attacked from behind. Pretty quickly, the Dusks exploded into white and grey flecks.

Sora traded a confused glance with Kairi. “What gives? I thought the Heartless and Nobodies hated each other,” Kairi asked.

Sora shrugged. “And I’m pretty sure that Maleficent isn’t a huge fan of the Nobodies, considering the whole Organization XIII situation.”

Before they could consider the matter further, Kairi’s eyes widened in terror. “Sora… Behind you!” she warned.

Sora was about to turn around and see what she meant when he felt a hand covering his mouth and nose and an arm wrap around his neck. He struggled against his assailant, but his eyes grew as wide as Kairi’s when he saw a Neoshadow rise up behind her and swipe her on the back of the head, causing her to fall to her knees. Sora tried to fight off the Neoshadow holding him, but two more and held his arms down. Due to the Heartless blocking his breathing, Sora’s vision turned fuzzy and he soon lost consciousness. The last thing he saw was one of the Neoshadows picking Kairi up and hoisting her over its shoulder.


	39. Chapter 38: Shadow Dance

The Gargoyle Knights and Warriors closed in on Mickey, Donald and Goofy. The king, wizard and knight looked around at their adversaries, who remained still, as if both parties were waiting for the other to make the first move.

Mickey nodded to Donald and Goofy. One of the Gargoyle Knights stabbed at Mickey, but the mouse blocked the stone sword downward with his Keyblade, using it to vault himself into the air. Donald stood close to Goofy and cast Firaga, holding the statues back with a revolving circle of flame. Goofy held his shield up and Mickey bounced off of it, launching himself higher into the air.

“Faith!” he shouted, pointing his Keyblade down. He spun around and emitted a burst of light which released multiple orbs of light that showered upon the possessed statues. This damaged the statues and immobilized them, having countered the Possessors’ influence over them. Donald cast Magnera, pulling the statues up into a vortex that was just above Goofy’s head. Goofy stood in the eye of the storm with the Heartless revolving rapidly around him. He performed a tornado spin attack, spinning in the opposite direction to the Heartless, and broke through the rock with his shield. Before the vortex began to disperse, Goofy ducked out of the way and Mickey dropped down, driving the point of his Keyblade into the center of the spell. This created a blast that emitted radially from the disrupted vortex, shattering the stone into dust and dispersing the Possessors into specks of smoke.

Mickey, Donald and Goofy took a moment to catch their breath. “Everyone alright?” Mickey asked. Donald and Goofy nodded. “So, the intruders aren’t here, but they expected some of us to fall into a trap out here. That means they knew we would split up to cover more ground.” His eyes widened at the realization. “The others are in trouble!”

Goofy pointed up at the window to the Beast’s room. “I saw someone up there,” he informed Mickey.

Donald looked up to where he was pointing and gasped in shock. He saw two Hook Bats fluttering outside of the window, and realized that this could only be because there was not enough room in there for them. “Riku and the Beast are being swarmed!” he announced.

“Then we’d better get up there!” Mickey declared, running over to the west side of the castle. Donald and Goofy followed, running as fast as they could, though neither of them could tell what he intended. Mickey held his left hand out, palm face-down. He then tilted it upward ninety degrees so that his palm was facing the wall. “Graviga!” he invoked. A black-purple energy orb shot out of his hand and hit the castle wall. The surface and the vertical parts of its decorations turned black, though the slanted and curved surfaces retained their normal color, and a purple plane extended from where Mickey’s hand was. The air between the plane and the wall was filled with shimmering purple particles that flitted about. When Mickey, Donald and Goofy stepped through the magic plane, they felt a strange force pulling them to the wall. They were lifted off of their feet, no longer being pulled to the ground, and their bodies turned until their feet were pointed at the wall. They landed feet-first on the wall, feeling as though they had simply jumped from a slightly higher ledge.

“Nice trick,” Donald complimented, looking around to get an understanding of the spell that Mickey had used. Mickey had used a Gravity spell to distort the field of gravity in the localized area to change the direction of the gravitational force, specifically by ensuring that all objects within this area were drawn toward the south wall of the castle, while ensuring that the field ceased at the wall so that nothing beyond, particularly the foundations of the structure, were caught in this modified flow.

Mickey nodded, accepting the compliment, and began running up the wall as easily as if he were running on level ground. Donald and Goofy began to do the same. Donald suspected that Mickey would have been able to scale the building in almost the same way without a specialized Gravity spell, but he chose to account for his comrades following him. As they approached the balcony, Donald wondered if Thunder magic was affected in this field in any way, and decided to experiment on the Hook Bats, which had to their befuddlement found themselves floating sideways. The lightning appeared above the Heartless, appearing to be in front of Donald and his friends, and shot toward the ground. Mickey and Goofy had to frantically run to the side to avoid getting struck by bolts that flashed right past them. Donald chuckled nervously while still running. Of course lightning would not be bound to gravity; electricity would follow a path of conduction, and it would flow through the air or any interfering objects until it inevitably reached into the ground. He figured as such, but he probably should have considered that he and his friends would be in the path of the magic lightning.

Mickey leapt over the balcony ledge and pushed against the railing to vault himself over. He looked into the room and saw Riku and Beast completely surrounded by Hook Bats, and they barely had any room to move. Before he fell into the window, he shot a Pearl spell into the room. The sphere strafed a few Hook Bats and forced all of them to disperse, giving Riku and Beast room to breathe, at which point they started fighting the Heartless. Mickey dropped into the room, and normal gravity took over, dropping him into the ground. He quickly jumped in and joined Riku and Beast in fighting the Heartless. Donald fell in next and shot a few Hook Bats with Blizzard. When they tried to close in on the group and limit their range of motion, Donald cast Aero to scatter and disorient them. Goofy fell in next and threw his shield to destroy two Hook Bats. Between Riku and Mickey’s Keyblade strikes, Beast’s claw swipes, Goofy’s shield, and Mickey and Donald’s magic, it was not long before the Heartless were all gone.

When the fight was over, Mickey, Donald and Goofy turned to Riku and Beast. Beast roared in anger, indignant. Riku was covered in scrapes and cuts. Donald cast Cura on him and Beast.

“What happened?” Mickey asked. Goofy was busy trying to calm Beast down.

“A clown and a witch doctor were here. They’re definitely with Maleficent,” Riku explained. “Whatever they were looking for wasn’t here, and the rose was of no interest to them.”

“We were just ambushed by the Gargoyle statue Heartless things,” Goofy told him.

“By now, Sora, Kairi and Belle must have fallen into a trap as well,” Mickey warned. The mention of Belle in danger reignited Beast’s fury.

Before the Beast could enter another outrage, Cogsworth and Lumière entered. At first they peeked in nervously, but they were relieved to see that whatever danger the group in the room was facing had passed. Everyone turned to meet the servants, eager to receive whatever news they came to bring.

“What is it, Cogsworth?” Beast asked.

“Ahem. I regret to say that Sora and Kairi have been taken captive by the Heartless,” the timepiece majordomo revealed.

This took everyone aback. “WHAT?!” they shouted.

“What about Belle?” Beast asked, worried.

“Alas, we did not see her,” Lumière answered. “We only saw a group of the tall Shadows carrying Sora and Kairi off. I suspect that they are bound for the dungeon.”

“Wak! We’ve got to save them!” Donald said. He started to run for the door, rudely stepping past the clock and candelabra.

“Wait,” Mickey ordered. Donald stopped instantly, his hand only inches from the door. All eyes turned to Mickey, curious to hear what he had to say. “If Sora and Kairi are being taken to the dungeon, that means the Heartless are under orders not to kill them or at least take Sora’s heart, and the clown and witch doctor have no interest in taking them back to the Vale. That means the most they plan to do with them is to get them out of the way of their search and maybe distract us by letting us plan a rescue effort. They will be fine, and I doubt they wouldn’t be able to get out on their own. In the meantime, Belle is still unaccounted for, so it is entirely likely that she avoided capture and is on her own in a castle filled with Heartless. Not to mention, two members of Maleficent’s cabal are roaming around the premises in search of something, leading the Heartless. We need to coordinate our efforts on the infiltrators and thwarting their machinations.”

Riku nodded. “I hate to leave Sora and Kairi in their predicament, but Mickey’s right,” he concurred. “We need to stop these guys and make sure the castle stays safe from the Heartless.”

After a moment, Donald, Goofy and Beast nodded in agreement. “So, uh, where do we look?”

No one answered for several moments. They were thoroughly stumped. Then Cogsworth had an idea. “Well, there are a few places that we have not searched that they might not have been…”

Sora and Kairi struggled against their bonds. The two of them had been shackled by the wrists and the ankles, the manacles holding their limbs together and the chains pulling at them so that they were both stretched to their maximum length. Despite his great strength, the iron was still secure enough and his position was compromising enough that it served no use to him. Neither he nor Kairi were in any position to summon or wield their Keyblades.

Sora sighed in exasperation. “Well, this is a fine mess,” he griped.

Kairi chuckled. “You know, when I imagined going on adventures with you, I did not imagine it would involve this much trouble,” she told him, wiggling her wrists to make the chains jangle.

Sora did his best to shrug. “To be honest, it’s never been this difficult,” he admitted. “I mean, there was this time I had my memories messed with, but I don’t even remember that and I only have secondhand accounts from Lea and Even. But really, I’ve never been prone like this.”

They laughed together for a moment, then fell silent for a minute. It was a boring minute, and they both had trouble keeping their minds off of the uncomfortable feeling of their joints being stretched and the chafing of their wrists and ankles.

“So, now what do we do?” Kairi asked.

Sora thought for a moment. “I don’t know. If Riku and King Mickey didn’t fall into the same trap, they’ll probably figure out pretty soon what happened to us. So, unless they decide to keep looking for the guys who put us here, and one of them probably already met the guy, they’ll be here to rescue us.” He rolled his eyes as he realized something. “And they’re probably doing the first thing since if they are aware of our predicament they probably figured we’d get out of here ourselves.”

Kairi sighed in a more amused tone. “On the bright side, Belle didn’t get caught. If she did, she would be in here with us, or since she’s a Princess of Heart they would have brought her back to their base but that would be unlikely since _I’m_ a Princess of Heart and I’m here.”

Sora chuckled. “Yeah. That’s one bright spot.”

Just then, they heard footsteps from behind the door. Sora tensed up, then remembered that there was nothing he could do, so he relaxed and decided to tense up only if it were actually necessary. He heard a lock mechanism turn, then the doors were pulled open. Sora and Kairi grinned when they saw that their visitor was Belle.

“Sorry, visiting hours start at ten in the morning. Come back tomorrow,” Sora joked.

Belle chuckled. “Are you two alright?” she asked, running up and setting a stool between Sora and Kairi. She stepped onto the stool and began using a key to unlock the manacle around Sora’s wrists.

“We’re fine, thanks,” Sora answered. The mechanism clicked and the manacles opened. He became slightly less fine when, with nothing holding him up, he fell forward and landed on his face. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Belle said sheepishly. She stepped down and went to free his ankles, but Sora lifted himself onto his hands and knees.

“I’m good.” He rolled over onto his rear end and summoned his Keyblade. He pointed it at the ankle manacles and sent out a beam of white light, which caused the manacles to pop open. He rubbed his wrists and ankles, then stood up. Kairi wisely grabbed onto the chains above her wrists as Sora used the Keyblade to unlock her shackles. She let go and landed neatly on her feet. Sora cast Cure on himself and Kairi.

“What about you? Did the Heartless try to kidnap you?” Kairi asked.

Belle shook her head. “No. I did what you said when the Nobodies came out and hid. The Heartless didn’t see me, but I don’t think they were interested in me anyway,” she replied. “After I left my room to find and rescue you, I guess I got lucky.”

“Well, thanks for the save,” Sora said sincerely. “Now, let’s get back to looking for the intruder. We can take the secret passageway above the basement and search in there.”

Belle raised an eyebrow in confusion. “What secret passageway?” she asked.

For a moment Sora was surprised by the question, but soon understood. “Oh, when we set Cogsworth and the others free and went to talk to the Beast—erm, Adam, the way up the stairs in the hall was blocked, so they led us through a passage above the door leading out of here,” he explained. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

He led Kairi and Belle out of the dungeon and into the main room of the undercroft. He jumped onto the stack of boxes, and Kairi followed suit. They then helped Belle climb up. After that, they stepped up to the ledge that hung over the doorway below. Belle mouthed “Oh” when she saw the door, which was flanked by two suits of armor. Sora opened the door and led Kairi and Belle into the passage.

They entered a large room that wrapped around itself and ascended on a ramp. Belle gaped in amazement, having had no idea such a corridor existed.

“You think the intruders might be in here?” Kairi asked.

“I can sense dark magic,” Belle told them. “But it’s all over the place in here, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”

Kairi took a calm breath and extended her senses. “You’re right. I think it’s above us,” she added.

“Is that so? Wait here. I’ll go check on something,” Sora said. He ran up to a wall and jumped, then spun in midair and pushed against the air beneath him to launch himself over the wall, landing on the higher area. He ran over to examine the back wall and saw that while the wall was closed up, the bricks were even.

He returned to the others, this time running around and down the ramp. “The exit’s closed off,” he informed them. “There are some enchanted lanterns above us that have to be lit in order to reveal the trick to opening it. When I was first in here, the lanterns were burning with a dark flame. I’m guessing that the intruder was in here earlier and corrupted the flames with dark magic.”

After taking a moment to process and understand what he said, Kairi nodded. “So, how do we fix it?” she asked.

Sora looked to the right and saw a crank mounted on the wall. “Belle, would you mind turning that crank?” he asked.

Belle saw the crank and went over to it. She tested to see which way it would turn and pulled it ninety degrees counterclockwise. The sound of gears and wheels turning reached them and a series of bowl torches descended from above, each one held up by a chain. The torches burned with an intimidating black flame. Belle felt a light pounding in her head from the dark energy radiating from the cursed blaze.

“When I was with Cogsworth and the others, I mixed the Keyblade’s magic with Mrs. Potts’ water and Lumière’s fire to extinguish the black flames and light normal ones,” Sora explained. “They aren’t with us, but I think we can manage with Princess of Heart magic and some Blizzard and Fire spells. Shall we begin?”

Kairi nodded. She and Sora walked over to the first lantern. Kairi summoned her Keyblade and pointed the tip at the edge of the black flame. She called upon her light, and the flowery tip glowed with a white light. The dark fire flickered away from the tip, as if it were afraid of the light. “Blizzard,” she whispered. The ice magic extinguished the flame.

Sora pointed his Keyblade into the torch. “Fire,” he called out, and the lantern was ignited with a healthy orange-white flame. They repeated the process with the other four lanterns. “Okay, Belle. You can let go now,” he shouted. A few seconds later, he heard wheels turning and the lanterns, now properly lit, were pulled back up out of sight. He looked over to the back wall and, to his satisfaction, saw that there was a single brick poking out of the wall. He nodded to Kairi, letting her know that it had worked. They walked back down and around and met back up with Belle.

“Do you think you can reach out and see where the intruder is now?” Sora asked.

Belle nodded. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose. She meditated for a few minutes, with Sora and Kairi waiting patiently. A few Soldier Heartless popped up around them, but the Keyblade wielders quickly defeated them.

Soon enough, Belle’s eyes snapped open. “There’s something going on in the ballroom,” she informed her companions.

“The ballroom? Then I suppose you should get over there and join the party,” a voice echoed around them. The shadow of a man in a top hat appeared on the wall behind Belle and leaned his elbow on the shoulder of her shadow. Belle gasped in surprise and backed away. Naturally, her shadow followed, backing away from the mysterious shadow and causing it to stumble forward. Once it regained its balance, the skinny shadow wagged its finger. It then grabbed its stomach and pulled outward, splitting open a Corridor of Darkness. The shadow’s master stepped out. He grabbed Belle’s hand and kissed it, then suddenly yanked it, pulling her toward him, and threw her into the portal. He lifted his hat with an air of politeness, revealing an afro of the exact shape and size to fill up the hat in its entirety. He backed into the portal, which his shadow closed before vanishing into the cracks between bricks.

For a moment, Sora and Kairi simply stared in confusion at what happened, but soon came to their senses. They nodded to each other, realizing that they did not have another moment to lose, and ran back up and around to the back wall. Sora punched the brick that jutted out and it slid into the wall. A section of the wall sank into the floor, revealing a tunnel that led out of the secret passageway. Kairi willed her Keyblade to glow at the tip so as to light their way through the pitch-black tunnel and led the way through.

When they reached the end of the tunnel, they found that it was closed off. Sora rectified this by pressing in another brick, causing the wall to sink into the floor like the previous one. They stepped out and found themselves on the platform halfway up the West Hall stairs. They glanced around the hall and saw some familiar figures walking down the area below, heading out into the rest of the castle.

“Hey, guys!” Sora called out. Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Beast, Cogsworth, and Lumière stopped and turned around when they heard his voice. Sora and Kairi ran down to greet them.

Riku chuckled. “We knew you’d get out of there no problem,” he said confidently.

Sora scratched behind his head. “Actually, we were kinda tied up in there. Thankfully, Belle came back for us,” he admitted.

“Belle? But why isn’t she with you?” Beast asked.

“This shadow guy in a top hat grabbed her,” Kairi told them, to Beast’s horror. “But right before that happened, Belle detected dark energy coming from the ballroom.”

“That had to have been the witch doctor Beast and I saw,” Riku mused. “Belle must have sensed the clown in the ballroom. We need to get over there, fast.”

“Clown? Witch doctor?” Sora asked.

“We have to get to the ballroom and save Belle!” Beast declared. Before anyone could even agree, he ran down the hall. Mickey cast Magnera, pulling him back to them. The spell dispersed as soon as Beast was brought back so he was not forced to spin around a vortex. He turned and growled at Mickey, forcing Donald, Goofy and Kairi to take a step back reflexively.

“We can’t just charge in without a plan,” Mickey advised. “We need to talk things through before we head into a fight with these two.”

“He’s right,” Riku agreed. “We need to know every possible angle to consider.”

Sora nodded. “Okay. So, where do we start?”


	40. Chapter 39: Ballroom Blitz

Kefka hummed a tune as he busily tied Belle to the neck of the ornate chandelier. Doctor Facilier had gagged her with a handkerchief, so all she could do was stare in bewilderment and fear at her lunatic captor. Doctor Facilier leaned against the railing at the edge of the balcony on the front end of the room. He watched Kefka at work with a bored expression, though his gaze sometimes shifted to the view of the cloudy sky outside through the windows that lined the back end of the room up to the ceiling.

“We searched all around the place. What are we even supposed to be looking for?” Facilier asked. “Supposedly, it’s in the form of a clock, but we have yet to find anything of the sort with a substantial-enough aura.” He looked over to his shadow on the wall, who simply shrugged. He pulled a small painted voodoo doll out of his pocket and contemplated it. “So, once we catch the Keyblade wielders and their friends in our net, what do we do then?”

“Ha!” Kefka retorted. “Well, then we’ll just have to tear this place to pieces until we find it.” Belle’s eyes widened in terror at Kefka’s comment. The jester saw this and briefly made a scary face to taunt her. He looked back at Facilier, who simply raised an eyebrow and slipped the doll back into his pocket. Kefka saw the door begin to open and studied it with intrigue. When he saw who was on the other side, he gasped and pointed at them.

Sora, Mickey, Kairi, and Goofy ran into the ballroom and gave a quick sweep to find their enemies and captive friend. Goofy was the first to see Kefka and Belle on the chandelier and let out a loud gasp, alerting them to the situation above. Angered, the four of them summoned their weapons.

“Let Belle go!” Sora shouted up to the clown.

Kefka appeared to think about it for a moment, but shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not really one to take orders,” he spat back.

“Welcome, one and all,” Doctor Facilier called from above. “It is a shame that our communion could not be under warmer circumstances, but we have our own business to care for. And you have no business in that.” He flicked his wrist, and the group was surrounded by six Hook Bats, two Lance Soldiers, two Neoshadows, and a Zip Slasher.

Sora and Mickey focused on the Zip Slasher. It blocked their first swings and performed a spinning attack to retaliate. Sora pointed his Keyblade at the floor and cast Blizzard, freezing the surface beneath the spinning Heartless’ feet. Due to the decreased friction, the Zip Slasher traveled faster than it intended, and careened into the Neoshadows, cutting them to ribbons. When it finally stopped itself, Sora leapt at it and slashed at it in the back of the head, putting an end to it.

Kairi cut two of the Hook Bats out of the air. One stopped in midair and let out an ultrasonic scream in her face. She ducked to the side and grabbed the Heartless by the hook while it was immobile and swung it around, using the wider area offered by the wings to swat the other Hook Bats out of the air, stunning them. She then cast Thunder, destroying the Heartless.

Goofy blocked the Lance Soldiers’ attacks even when they were on opposite sides to him. A few jabs struck him, but he was otherwise consistent. He noticed when both lances lost patience and took control, signified by the Soldiers struggling to keep them in place. He waited for the right moment, then dove out of the way. The Soldiers’ free arms were caught in the “mouths” of the others’ lances, and they were tangled up together. The lances thrashed about, trying to get free, but to no avail. Goofy pounded the Heartless with his shield until they were no more.

The door up on the balcony opened up. Oblivious to this, Doctor Facilier took a pair of white-and-purple dolls out of midair and dropped them off of the railing. The dolls expanded into humanoid creatures with what appeared to be a purple and silver bodysuit, arms broken up into alternating silver and purple segments, each arm lined with four blades, and a small cap strapped by bandages with a long cloth hanging down in front of its face. The Nobodies dropped through the ground as if it was not even there. A few seconds later, the heads poked up out of the floor and stared at Sora and Kairi, who were now standing back-to-back.

“Assassin Nobodies,” Sora grumbled. “When they raise their arms up, that’s when they’re about to strike. But it’s also an opening to attack and bring them above ground, so take it. And watch out for when they run at you, because that’s when they will try to explode along with you.”

“Got it,” Kairi affirmed. One of the Nobodies started waving its arms slowly. Kairi brought her Keyblade under one of the spikes and pulled it up, dragging the Assassin out of the ground and throwing it to Mickey, who sliced it in midair. Sora did not get to the other Assassin before it started slashing its arms around while “swimming” toward him, so he was forced to guard against its attacks. When it stopped attacking and rose up out of the ground, it stood there for a second before thrusting a quick punch at him. Sora twisted and leaned backward so that the jab went above his stomach, then swung his Keyblade to hit it in the gut, sending it flying.

It shifted into a diving position and tried to land back in the ground, but Mickey had other ideas. “Zero Gravity!” he shouted, pointing his Keyblade in the direction of the Nobody but at a slightly higher angle. A transparent sphere surrounded the Nobody and its projectile motion stopped, though it began to slowly rotate in the sphere.

“Nice,” Sora complimented. He threw his Keyblade and the Strike Raid cut right through the Assassin. The sphere that had encased it collapsed upon itself when the Nobody disintegrated.

Doctor Facilier frowned, but his attention was drawn from the action below when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned and gaped in surprise.

Riku, Donald and Beast stood on the balcony, and they had spaced themselves around the landing. Donald stood in front of the door; Beast stared in horror at the way Belle was restrained from the opposite end of the balcony; Riku, in the meantime, was running straight for the witch doctor, Keyblade in hand.

Facilier fumbled for something to counter the Keyblade wielder’s assault, but he was set off-balance when Donald shot a Blizzara spell that hit him in the arm. He stumbled backward to try to avoid Riku’s strike, but he was still hit with a grazing blow that knocked him off of his feet. He tumbled over the railing and fell to the floor below.

Sora ran over to Kairi and covered her eyes, bracing himself for a crunch, but saw wisps of dark smoke wrap around the witch doctor, adjusting his position and slowing his descent, until he landed softly on both feet. He uncovered Kairi’s gaze and let out a quick apology.

“Kefka!” Facilier called up to the clown. “I believe that it is time for a change of pace!”

Kefka considered his options, then snapped his fingers. “Come on out! Time for a ballroom blitz!” he shouted to what appeared to be nothing.

Just then, the room shook. Circular shockwaves appeared across the floor, materializing in a seemingly random pattern, but Kairi soon noticed a rhythm in each step. _It’s as if someone’s dancing along to a song,_ she thought. She gasped when she realized that was exactly what was happening, and something was about to make an appearance. She followed the shockwaves, noticing a quick series of them breaking a few feet apart in the same two spots, then continue taking larger leaps in between steps. Her eyes widened in horror as she realized where the next one would be.

“Sora, move!” she warned as she pushed him out of the way, running along with him. She did so just in time, too, as they narrowly avoided being hit by the shockwave.

But instead of a phantom burst, a leg popped out of thin air. It stood four feet tall, had pitch black skin, and wore a light grey stocking, a pitch black dance shoe, and the leg of light grey tight shorts. With the next step, the other leg appeared, and a waist materialized to join it. A yellow belt appeared at the top of the pants and a blue skirt with pointed tips spread out around it. It spun around on one foot, spreading out a continuous stream of shockwaves, and the top half of its body appeared. It wore a blue long-sleeved suit adorned with the Heartless emblem on the front, a yellow band around the top part of the waist and another around the right upper arm, three loose ribbons that looped around the left shoulder and joined at the armpit, and a tall conical hat with a tan-colored decoration on top that resembled a closed-up flower head. It had a round black-colored head with yellow eyes, much like nearly all Heartless, and bare black-colored hands. In its right hand it held a yellow handle attached to a long, thin, white ribbon with a red metal square strapped to the end. The Heartless stood ten feet tall and the ribbon was twenty four feet long.

The giant Heartless danced around the ballroom, creating shockwaves with each step and swishing its razor-sharp ribbon around. Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Goofy ran around to avoid getting stepped on. Fortunately, the shockwaves did not have a wide radius and dissipated quickly, and the ribbon almost never went down to their level, though Goofy once had to duck to avoid getting his head and hat sliced.

Up above, Beast roared at Kefka, who simply laughed and shouted banter at the party on the floor. He willed himself to calm down and remain focused. Childish tantrums would get him nowhere. No, he needed to keep a level head if he wanted to save Belle. But first, he had to get the clown out of the way. He gauged the distance between him and the chandelier, then looked behind him. Donald noticed his sly look and tilted his head in confusion, then quacked in surprise when Beast ran straight for him.

Beast grabbed Donald by the arm and ran back to his previous position. As soon as he reached the farthest point he could run, he threw Donald off of the balcony. The screaming duck soared through the air until he landed roughly on the chandelier. The chandelier began to sway from the force of the landing. When Donald regained his bearings, he clambered around and swung his staff at Kefka, who blocked the hit. Donald cast Blizzard spells, one of which the jester simply slapped aside and the others he was forced to back away. Donald smirked, knowing that this at least got Kefka further away from Belle, so she was out of the line of fire. Donald shot a fire spell, but Kefka deflected it while giving him a smug smile. Angered by the clown’s arrogance, Donald leapt at him and attempted to assault him. However, Kefka flipped upside-down, balancing himself by two fingers, and kicked Donald off of the chandelier.

Mickey leapt and grabbed onto the Heartless’ skirt. He used it to pull himself up and then kicked off of its back. He grabbed Donald and then cast Reflect to protect them from the ribbon. However, when it did make contact with the sphere, it wrapped itself around it and carried them with it. Mickey maintained the spell until the Heartless slackened the ribbon and dropped them. The Reflect spell protected them when they hit the ground and also when the Heartless stepped right beside them. The barrier dissipated and sent blasts at the foot, twisting it and disrupting the Heartless’ balance. This moment of confusion gave them time to reunite with Sora, Kairi and Goofy.

“Any ideas to stop this Blitz Dancer?” Sora asked.

“Blitz Dancer?” Donald asked, bemused by the name choice.

Sora shrugged. “If there was anything wrong with naming each unique Heartless, Jiminy wouldn’t have been doing it.”

Donald conceded the point. Goofy observed the movements of the ribbon. “Say, maybe if we wrap up that ribbon somehow, we can make sure it doesn’t cut us to pieces,” he suggested.

Kairi noticed the pillars all around the perimeter of the room. “Sounds like a plan,” she agreed. “But we’d have to jump into the line of fire to trick the Blitz Dancer into getting its ribbon stuck.”

Sora looked at his Keyblade. “Let me see what I can pull up…” He concentrated, imagining what sort of tricks would work to counter the lightning-fast lashings of the razor-sharp ribbon. He realized that only a whip would be fast and flexible enough to match it, and considered which of his recent allies would have been able to use a similar skill. He remembered one person who was able to swing across a chasm, ensnare enemies, and simply lash out at them.

Hoping that losing her magic hair and healing powers did not change things with the Dimension Link, Sora reached his heart out to Rapunzel and drew on her strength. He watched his Keyblade transform into a ten-foot bullwhip made of silver-colored metal fibers. At the moment, the whip was coiled up to make it easy to carry.

He smirked and turned to his friends. “Someone give me a boost,” he requested. Kairi pointed her Keyblade beneath him and cast Aerora. A wind funnel lifted him off of the ground. Mickey and Donald pointed their weapons above Sora and cast Aerora as well. The wind funnel expanded into a tornado that lifted him up to chest level with the Heartless and which he was able to steer mentally.

“On, Blitzen!” Sora called, getting the Blitz Dancer’s attention. Kairi giggled at this taunt. “Let’s dance!” he challenged, taking on a stance similar to Riku’s battle pose and curling the fingers of his left hand up a few times in a daring manner. The Heartless danced around and flicked its ribbon at Sora, but he uncoiled his own whip with a flourish and cracked it through the air, deflecting the razor-sharp tool. He rode the wind, maneuvering his tornado around the ballroom, getting his foe to focus solely on trying to hit him wherever he may be, but however fast the Blitz Dancer lashed out, Sora lashed back just as fast.

Satisfied that his enemy was so blindly focused on him, Sora drove his tornado at a backward-diagonal path behind one of the pillars, which the Heartless followed with its ribbon. He swung his whip from left-to-right and swatted the ribbon around the pillar. When it came back around, he willed the tornado to push him upward. Seeing that this attack failed to do anything, the Blitz Dancer pulled on its handle to try to swing the ribbon back up, but found that it was stuck, having wrapped around the pillar so many times that it wrapped upon itself.

Sora jumped out of the tornado and changed his whip back into the Keyblade. He bounced off of the pillar and, imagining a touch of Blizzard magic to attach slick ice to the bottoms of his shoes, slid on the flat surface of the taut ribbon. When he reached the Heartless’ hand, he swung his Keyblade down and sliced through the ribbon right at the handle, letting it fall limp against the pillar, and leapt into the air. The Blitz Dancer stared up at him in shock and fear. Sora came back down and brought his Keyblade down square in its face.

The Blitz Dancer stumbled back, dazed and clearly hurt by the blow. When it came to its senses, it realized that it had just lost its weapon and would have to improvise. It made leaping steps all over the ballroom, but once in a while it jumped across the room, right at the party, creating a much larger shockwave than before.

Sora met up with Mickey. “I only got one hit in and it’s already going nuts like some of the other big guys,” he observed. “And I don’t think I’ll be able to pull off another D-Link, so I don’t really have anything that can keep up with it.”

“You don’t have to. We just need to keep it in one place,” Mickey told him. “But how do we restrict its mobility?”

“We could make its shoes heavier,” Kairi suggested. “It’ll be like walking in deep mud.”

“That could work,” Mickey said. He, Sora, Kairi, and Donald pointed their weapons at one of the Heartless’ feet. “All together now.”

“Graviga!” Sora, Mickey and Donald shouted. Kairi was only able to shout “Gravira”, but the imbalance might have served to disrupt the Heartless’ balance further. Dark purple orbs shot out of the tips of the Keyblades and staff and hit the dancing monster’s feet at an instant when both feet were on the ground. The Blitz Dancer tried to take another step, but found it to be much harder than it was a few seconds ago. It lifted one leg with all of its might, but this caused serious pain in its foot.

“Now!” Mickey directed. Donald cast Thunder to put a charge on Goofy’s shield, then the knight threw the shield, which now had an immense speed and power boost, at the Heartless’ ankle. Suddenly unable to support itself on one foot, the Blitz Dancer collapsed. The five heroes immediately started attacking the prone giant.

Up above, Beast was focused on finding a way to rescue Belle. He noticed that Kefka was distracted by the action below, and decided that now was the time to act. He backed up a few feet, then ran to the edge and leapt off. He grabbed onto the wall, then jumped off from there and landed on the chandelier. The chandelier shook violently and a few pieces broke off and fell to the floor. Goofy blocked some from hitting him and Donald with his shield while Sora cast Reflega to protect himself and Kairi and Mickey cast Reflega to protect himself. Some pieces impaled the Blitz Dancer. Kefka grabbed onto the chandelier for dear life, but Beast clawed at him.

“Whoa! Not nice! Bad Beast!” Kefka scolded while clambering around the chandelier to avoid his attacker, who only pursued him with fiery anger.

Mickey delivered one last slicing blow to the Blitz Dancer, cutting it from its left shoulder to its right flank. The Heartless faded into nothingness, leaving behind only a crystal-like heart that floated up and faded into the in-between.

Riku watched the chandelier sway erratically as Beast continued his attempts on Kefka’s life. Considering the thin area of the chandelier arms, the wild movements and the probability of them breaking off with substantial force, he realized that trying to jump to it would be a risky maneuver. So, he decided to try something that he had not practiced with the blindfold. He was sure that, with his regained affinity for his dark powers, it would be no trouble. He judged where he should come out, then held his hand forward and concentrated on the darkness.

A corridor of darkness appeared in front of him. A similar dark portal appeared near the ceiling, right next to the trunk of the chandelier. He ran through the portal and, after a brief moment of running in utter darkness and cold, dropped out of the other portal. He grabbed onto the trunk and let himself slide down, then stopped himself when he was level with Belle. He inched around until he was face-to-face with Belle.

Igniting his finger with a dark flame, Riku scratched the ropes binding Belle, burning through them until they simply fell away. Belle started to drop, since there was nothing holding her up, but Riku caught her in his other arm.

“Hmm?” Kefka noticed Riku freeing Belle. He screamed in anger. “No fair!” he pouted. Beast turned his head to see what he was whining about, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Belle was about to be brought to safety.

But Kefka would have none of it. He jumped off of the chandelier and threw a large ball of fire at the point on the ceiling where the chandelier hung. Everyone watched in horror as the fireball sailed toward its target.

“Go!” Beast commanded Riku, gesturing for him to save Belle. Riku swept Belle up and jumped away from the chandelier. Belle screamed, realizing that Beast would not get to safety in time.

The fireball exploded on impact. Sora turned to Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy. “Run!” he shouted. He, Kairi and Goofy ran for the door as fast as they could. But Mickey stayed where he was as the chandelier began to fall. Riku landed on the floor and ran beside Sora and Kairi. Belle simply stared up in horror as the chandelier fell with Beast still on it.

Mickey pointed his Keyblade up at the damaged decoration. “Zero Graviza!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. Particles of silver light shot out of the tip and wrapped themselves around the chandelier until it was encased in an enormous transparent silver sphere and was entirely motionless.

Sora stared at Mickey’s work, impressed. Riku set Belle down on her feet. Goofy pointed up at Beast. “He’s still stuck in the spell!” he shouted.

“Goofy!” Riku called out to the knight. He crouched and cupped his hands together in front of him. Goofy nodded and ran toward him. He stepped into Riku’s hands, and Riku vaulted him up and over the chandelier. He wrapped his arm around Beast’s and pulled him out of the spell as he soared over. They landed together and, as soon as Beast regained his bearings, ran to hide behind the side pillars.

The others decided to follow their example. Mickey backed away slowly while they reached a safe position, holding up the Zero Graviza spell for as long as he could. Finally, he withdrew his Keyblade, turned around, and ran to join the others. Riku conjured a Dark Shield while Sora and Kairi cast Reflega to maximize defense.

The chandelier crashed to the floor and exploded into many pieces that were blasted in every direction. Some embedded themselves into the walls or pillars; a few bounced off of the magic barriers; others punched holes through the windows leading to the outer balcony. The damage was immense. Huge cracks were broken in the floor, spreading out from the very center.

As the dust cleared, Sora, Riku and Kairi let their barrier spells dissipate. They, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Beast collapsed in exhaustion. Belle and Beast were simply amazed that everyone was unharmed.

On the other side of the room, Kefka laughed and danced about. Even though nobody was killed, the destruction he had caused still offered amusement. Doctor Facilier tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

“Perhaps now that you have had your fun, we should take our leave before they recover,” the witch doctor advised. Kefka shrugged, which Facilier took as an agreement. He snapped his fingers and a Corridor of Darkness appeared behind them. They stepped through and exited the ballroom.


	41. Chapter 40: Belle's Longing

Everyone spent the next few hours cleaning up the mess. Belle had gone out to tell the servants what had happened, with Kairi accompanying her to make sure nothing attacked her on the way. Mickey pulled a pair of shrunken brooms out of his pocket. He placed them on the ground and tapped them with his Keyblade. They expanded to normal size and grew arms. The Magic Brooms set to work sweeping the shards and fragments of the chandelier into a pile. Cogsworth and the Wardrobe came in with miscellaneous appliances to help with the clean-up, ordering them to assist the party any way they could before leaving to search the castle for the intruders, not believing that they would have simply fled the grounds after the battle.

Eventually, the debris was gathered up and the dust was swept out. The pillars, wall and floor were still cracked and split, the windows still had holes in them, and the ceiling still had a massive scorch mark in the center, but the remains of the chandelier and the crumbs of the damaged architecture were gathered into a container and the area was otherwise clean. Whatever damage had been sustained and whatever fatigue they felt was washed away with a Curaga spell.

While they worked, they discussed the events that had occurred during that day. The clown—Kefka, he had been called—and the witch doctor were working with Maleficent, they had admitted to that. Belle told them that the witch doctor had mentioned that they were looking for a clock, but what could that mean? The only clock they were aware of in the castle was Cogsworth. Mickey had inquired about the Assassin Nobodies that the witch doctor had released to fight them, and Sora and Kairi had told the others about the Dusks that attacked them in Belle’s room. This led them to question why Maleficent and the Heartless are working with the Nobodies and how they got them to side with them. However, there were no answers to any of these questions.

While everyone was relaxing after the clean-up and trying to process everything that was going on, Belle led Beast out to the balcony, and they sat down to look out at the night sky. Sora and Kairi smiled warmly at this, and Sora wrapped his arm over Kairi’s shoulder.

Just then, Cogsworth and Lumière came in. “Master! Sora! We have news!” Cogsworth shouted. Sora, Kairi, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy turned to them. Sora crouched so that he was not looking so far down at them. Cogsworth looked around and noticed that one of his addressees was nowhere to be seen. “Ahem. Where is the master?”

“He’s out there with Belle,” Sora answered, pointing with his thumb out to the balcony. “I’d say it’s best not to disturb them.” He gave the majordomo a knowing smirk. Cogsworth and Lumière smiled widely at this. “So, what were you going to say?”

“Well, see, we have some bad news, and we also have good news,” Cogsworth began. Sora raised one eyebrow. “The bad news is that, no, the intruders have not fled the grounds following the earlier confrontation. But the good news is that we know where you can find them. They are in the one place that from our understanding they have not yet explored: the library!”

“Thanks. We’ll go make sure they use their inside voices,” Sora replied. He stood up and, accompanied by his friends, ran out the door and up the western stairs.

* * *

Doctor Facilier skimmed through multiple books and, when each one proved to be unhelpful, placed them back on the shelf and took out the next one. Kefka, in contrast, looked at the cover of each book he found and threw the book aside when he was dissatisfied.

“You know, some light reading would be good for you,” Facilier told his compatriot. “It might show you that there’s more to life than senseless destruction.”

“Bah! That’s what everyone says, Doc, but one way or another that’s what it all comes down to,” Kefka countered.

The heroes watched from behind the door. Sora wondered if they could just rush in and fight them. Odds were that they would retaliate with destructive force, with Kefka being more likely to do so, and they might also complicate things by summoning more Heartless and Nobodies. There were also two outcomes that he considered equally probable: either they defeat and capture the fiends, at which point they may begin to interrogate them and use Beast as a bad cop in the scenario, or the villains escape moments before that happens. In the latter case, that would mean that Sora and company are no closer to figuring out what they are after, but it will set Kefka and the witch doctor back and buy the party time to figure out what they were trying to find and protect it accordingly.

Riku considered the consequences of opening a sudden fight in the middle of the library, and so gauged other options. A sneak attack would be unlikely to work due to Kefka’s erratic personality and the fact that the witch doctor had a living shadow that would most likely see them however they tried to approach. Perhaps they could lure them out and trap them from there. But how would they even do that? Would it even be possible to simply lead them away, would they even fall for a trap, and would any sort of trap even hold them? There were too many uncertainties, and there was only one way to actually get into and out of the library. Unless he used a Corridor of Darkness… No, the witch doctor might detect it, and either of them would easily hear the other end of the portal open.

The six heroes huddled up to discuss their options, but they could all tell from each other’s expressions that there was only one that was sure to get anywhere. Sora looked down when he felt something with two sharp points nudged up against his ankle, and the others looked down at it. It was Chip, trying to get their attention. Mrs. Potts stood behind him.

“I see Cogsworth and Lumière told you. They have been here for some time,” Mrs. Potts told them.

“Do you think you can beat them?” Chip asked.

Mickey sighed. “Probably,” he answered. “But we’re afraid the library might get wrecked.”

“Hmm…” Mrs. Potts contemplated their concerns. “I know! Do any of you know about barrier magic?”

“Well, we know Reflect. And I have seen a lot of people create walls that closed off an area. Man, those are annoying, especially when Donald and Goofy are on the other side,” Sora answered. Donald and Goofy shook their heads at the mention of those traps, agreeing with Sora’s assessment.

“I can create planar shields, but only for a few moments at a time,” Riku added.

Mrs. Potts considered that for a moment. “Perhaps I can seal your shields onto the bookshelves if one of you would mix your light magic with my water.”

“Like when we extinguished the black flames in the passageway?” Sora asked, comparing the incidents.

Mrs. Potts nodded. “We do carry the enchantress’ magic in us; it just takes a little light magic to reach it out to other parts of the castle.”

“Okay,” Mickey said. “I’ll go with Riku and Mrs. Potts, and we’ll put shields on all of the bookshelves, then we can all rush in and take the clown and witch doctor out.”

“Right!” Sora affirmed. He and Kairi stood on one side of the door while Donald and Goofy stood on the other side.

Riku, Mickey and Mrs. Potts slipped into the library. Making sure that neither foe was watching, they snuck over to the left row of shelves. Riku placed his hand in front of one shelf and conjured a transparent wall between hand and shelf. Mickey pointed his Keyblade at the wall and let the Keyblade glow white. Mrs. Potts sprinkled some water on the wall. The Dark Shield expanded and wrapped around every surface of the shelf. They repeated this process with every other shelf, silently thankful that their enemies were still at the back wall. A few times, Riku and Mickey took a sip of Ether to replenish their magic so that they could continue.

Mickey gave the others a thumbs-up when they had shielded the last of the bookshelves, signaling them to enter and hide behind the nearest shelves. Next, Riku, Mickey and Mrs. Potts worked their magic on the bookshelves that wrapped around the walls, hoping to seal them off in one fell swoop.

Doctor Facilier finished skimming through his current book and replaced it on the shelf. He reached over to pull the next one out, but his fingers bounced off of an invisible flat surface that was only millimeters in front of the book. A pink circle radiated out from where he touched, to his curiosity. He tapped the barrier several times, confirming that the shelf had been closed off somehow.

A voice boomed in from near the entrance. “Now, that’s not right. Looks like we should take away your library cards!” Facilier and Kefka turned around and were shocked to see Sora standing at the other side of the library, taunting them with his Keyblade. Kefka heard a whooshing sound and turned to see the books that he had haplessly discarded become wrapped up in a dark shell, much like a Corridor of Darkness used on a nonmoving person. The books appeared outside of the library, neatly stacked.

“Move!” Kefka shouted. He leapt away, throwing a fireball at Sora as he went, but Sora deflected it with ease and ran straight for him. He tried to flee down the aisle between the row of bookshelves and the wall, but Kairi appeared from between two of the shelves and swung her Keyblade into the jester’s gut. Kefka flipped over but still landed on his feet and kept running. Kairi shot a few Blizzard spells at him, but only one of them hit.

Doctor Facilier shuffled cards and swung some voodoo dolls around to counter Donald’s spell attacks, but he was knocked off of his feet when Riku materialized behind him and kicked him in the back. He slammed his hand onto the ground and conjured pillars of fire to shoot up around him, forcing Riku and Donald to fall back. Standing back up, Facilier threw a voodoo doll painted red with fire designs at Donald, but it was knocked out of the air by Goofy’s shield. The witch doctor spun around on his heel and fell through a portal opened by his shadow, coming back out in another corner of the room.

Kefka ran for the door, throwing Thunder spells behind him, but before he could reach the exit, he felt something pulling him backward. He was lifted off of his feet and fell toward a Magnet spell cast by Sora. Rather than becoming stuck in a vortex, Kefka threw a Zero Gravity spell at the vortex. Both spells canceled each other out, and Kefka soared over Sora’s head. Sora turned to run after him, joined by Kairi, but they stopped when they heard someone shout “Watch it!” from below.

They looked down and saw Chip next to his foot. “Chip? What are you doing? You could get hurt!”

“I didn’t want to be left by myself,” the teacup said apologetically.

Sora sighed and shook his head. “You need to be more careful. It’s dangerous in here for someone as small and fragile as you,” Kairi warned him.

“Yeah. I know. I’ll be careful from now on.”

Kefka landed near Doctor Facilier, who regarded him with worry. “I’d say it’s time we leave,” Facilier suggested. “We can always come back another time.”

The clown shrugged. “Fine, but that doesn’t mean I’ll go quietly!” He stepped away and started lobbing different spells around, stirring their enemies into a panic. Donald barely avoided a Blizzaga rock. Riku had to conjure a Dark Shield to block a massive Firaga sphere. Mickey deflected a series of rainbow-colored orbs of light. Goofy was hit with a silver-colored cloud that instantly caused him to fall asleep.

Sora and Kairi dodged a few lightning bolts, but within seconds, Kairi was hit in the armpit with a purple bolt of magic. Sora caught her, but his arm made contact with the same area where the spell had not fully dissipated. Both felt an extreme disorientation and a sort of cold sensation. They saw the entire room growing at an alarming rate. They felt themselves being lifted off of the ground. When the cold sensation faded, they started to fall.

“Uh oh!” Chip cried. He alternated between looking up at them and setting himself upright and hopping around to try to be in the right place. He felt something hit in his inner bowl and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Got you!”

The shrunken Sora and Kairi groaned in pain and disorientation and fainted in their daze.

Kefka belted out his distinguishing laugh before he and Doctor Facilier backed into a Corridor of Darkness.

“Rats!” Riku shouted in frustration. Mickey raised an eyebrow at this remark. Riku sighed. “Oh, well. At least they won’t be causing trouble around here for a while.” He looked around the room, counting heads. “Where are Sora and Kairi?”

Mickey, Donald and Goofy looked around frantically, concerned that their friends were nowhere to be found. Chip hopped over to Riku and tilted his head down so that Riku could see into the teacup.

“Is that…?” He picked Chip up and peered closer at the contents. “How did they get so small?”

Mickey approached Riku and held out his hand. Riku placed Chip in Mickey’s hand and the mouse peeked inside to investigate. “Gosh, looks like a Mini spell,” Mickey identified. “The ones I was shown only last for a minute, but this one seems to be more potent. Which I guess makes sense, if it hit both of them.”

“So, what do we do?” Goofy asked.

“I guess we should just leave them with Chip until we figure out how to return them to normal size,” Mickey replied. He set Chip down.

Donald walked over and stared at Chip with a serious expression. “You keep them safe, alright?” he ordered.

Chip nodded. “Yes, sir! You can count on me!” Chip said enthusiastically.

* * *

When Beast and Belle had gone out to the balcony, they sat down on the bench and looked out at the night sky. Snow was falling from the dense clouds, making a beautiful scene. Soon, they wound up holding hands.

Beast worked up some courage. “Belle, are you happy here with me?” he asked.

Belle smiled. “Yes,” she answered. However, her mind wandered and her smile faded.

Beast smiled at the response, but quickly noticed her turn to look out longingly. “What is it?” he asked, empathetic.

“If only I could see my father again, just for a moment. I miss him so much.”

It was true. Belle had not seen her father since the day she had first come to the castle, which was the day that she had traded her freedom for his. The more he thought about it, the more Beast wondered how he was feeling about the circumstances that Belle had been left in when he had been returned to the village. He had not even offered them a moment to say good-bye.

His eyes widened as he remembered something. “There is a way,” he told her. “Come with me.” With that, he led her back inside and up the west-facing staircase. They had noticed that Sora and the others were no longer in the ballroom, but they paid it little mind.

Beast led Belle up into his room, and he searched around for something. He finally found the object he was searching for, and drew out a silver handheld mirror. “This mirror will show you anything,” he explained, holding it up so that Belle could see her own reflection, “anything you wish to see.” She took the mirror in her hands.

“I’d like to see my father, please,” she told the mirror, not entirely sure how it operated. The mirror lit up with a green glow that shone in her face. She briefly averted her gaze from the blinding light, and turned back to the reflective surface when the glow faded.

Instead of her reflection, the mirror showed a snow-covered wood. A chubby older man with white hair, a moustache, and a bald scalp struggled as he braved the snowstorm. He wore a pale green shirt, a brown vest, green pants, brown boots, and a heavy green cloak, though it was not quite enough in the face of strong winds. He was sick, and, suffering from his cold and the cold, he collapsed to the ground, coughing.

“Papa! Oh, no!” Belle looked at the image in horror. Beast looked on in concern. “He’s sick. He may be dying, and he’s all alone!”

Beast turned to look at the enchanted rose. The wilting flower only had a few petals left. If he did what he was thinking of doing, he might never see her again, and the curse might never break. But…

“Then… y-you must go to him,” he said, his expression turning sad.

“What did you say?” Belle asked, shocked.

“I release you. You are free to go. Go to your father.”

Belle stood in silence, processing what she had been told. Then she sighed. “Oh, thank you. Hold on, Papa. I’m on my way.” She turned to leave, but then remembered that she was still holding the mirror. She turned back to return it.

“Take it with you,” Beast told her, “so you’ll always have a way to look back and remember me.”

Belle smiled. “Thank you, Adam. Thank you for understanding how much he needs me.” She put her hand comfortingly to Beast’s face and gave him a reassuring smile before leaving.

Cogsworth watched her leave the room, a smile on his face. “Well, your Highness, I must say everything is going just swimmingly. The danger has passed, from what I can tell, and you and Belle seem to be coming along quite nicely. I knew you had it in you,” he commended.

“I let her go,” Beast said, resignedly.

Cogsworth chuckled. “Yes, yes. Splen…” He trailed off when he realized what Beast had said. A look of horror crossed his face. “You… what?! How could you do that?”

“I had to.”

“Yes, but-but… why?”

“Because I love her.”

* * *

Riku and Mickey began searching through the library for anything that could undo the Mini spell on Sora and Kairi, as well as anything that would refer to the item that the intruders sought. However, the library was huge, and there were far too many books to read in one sitting.

Lumière called for everyone’s attention when Cogsworth walked in, a despondent expression on the clock’s face. Everyone went over to meet him.

“My friend, what is wrong?” Lumière asked.

“Th-the Master… He let Belle go,” Cogsworth explained.

“He did what?!” Lumière, Mrs. Potts, Chip, and Wardrobe gasped in shock.

“Yes. I’m afraid it’s true,” the clock answered sadly.

“She’s going away?” Chip asked, saddened at the idea that his friend was leaving.

“But we were so close,” Lumière lamented.

“After all this time, he’s finally learned to love,” Mrs. Potts said.

“That’s it then!” Lumière exclaimed in a hopeful tone. “That should break the spell!”

“But that’s not enough. She has to love him in return,” Mrs. Potts reminded him.

“Hold on,” Riku interrupted. “Can someone explain how this whole ‘spell’ works?”

“Did you see the rose?” Lumière asked him. Riku nodded. “If the master learns to love and is loved in return before the last petal falls, the spell will be broken.”

“You know, I’m confused,” Goofy said. “The way you’re saying it, the spell should break when both of them love each other. But isn’t that what they’ve been doing the whole time we’ve known them?”

“Who knows? It may be too late now,” Cogsworth said resignedly.

Unbeknownst to them, Chip had left the room and hopped out to follow Belle. It took a little more effort since he now had some extra weight to carry, but he soon found Belle at the stable, untying her horse, Philippe. Belle wore a green cloak and had a brown leather satchel slung over her shoulder. Worried about her, Chip hopped up onto a stool and jumped again so that he landed inside the pouch of Belle’s satchel.

Moments later, Belle, not noticing the extra weight, mounted Philippe and rode off, soon crossing the bridge and leaving the castle grounds. She could hear Beast roar in anguish from the castle.


	42. Chapter 41: No One Causes Trouble Like Gaston!

Belle rode through the woods, looking around every corner and squinting as she peered through the snowstorm. She took another look at the mirror, silently asking for it to guide her. The image in the mirror zoomed out from her father’s prone body and backed away until it depicted the area directly in front of her. She flicked the reins and spurred Philippe onward, continuing in as straight a line as possible.

Soon, they found her father unconscious in the snow. “Papa!” she gasped. She climbed off of Philippe and ran over to him. She checked his pulse and breathing. Both were weak, but there. She sighed in relief and started dragging him over to the horse. With difficulty, and using a rope pulley she hastily fashioned over a tree branch, she managed to hoist him onto Philippe’s back, then rode off to the village she once called home.

The streets were empty. Given how late it was into the night, most people were in their homes. There were lights coming from the windows of the pub. As she passed the church, the pastor, Père Robert, who kept a library from which she would borrow books, saw her as he was locking up and waved as she went by, not noticing her plight.

Belle rode to the other end of town and stopped Philippe in front of her house. She dismounted from the horse and secured his reins, then pulled her father off of the horse’s back and led him inside. She laid him on his bed and lit a candle next to him. Then, she set to work tending to him.

Someone had walked by as they made their return. He was a slightly chubby man with brown eyes and black hair tied into a ponytail. He wore a brown buttoned-up shirt, a white undershirt, a blue blazer, black pants, brown boots, and a red bow tie. LeFou gasped in surprise as he watched Belle carry her sick father inside, both of them wearing cloaks and covered in snow. While he had initially subscribed to the belief that the old man was delirious when he claimed that Belle had been imprisoned by a beast, as the months went on and Belle remained unaccounted for he began to wonder if there was any weight to his ramblings.

“They’re back,” he said to himself. He immediately turned around and ran down to the pub.

Shortly after, Maurice woke up. Even when he was unconscious, the same thought remained in his mind, one that had spurred him on through his dangerous quest up until the point where he could not move any further.

_I must find Belle…_

After he was returned to the village by that horrible Beast at the cost of his daughter’s freedom, Maurice had immediately run to the pub to explain what had happened and ask the townsfolk, particularly the hunter Gaston and his compatriots, for help in rescuing Belle. They had promptly laughed him off and kicked him out. But he had persisted for days. Eventually, Gaston had agreed to take some friends, LeFou, Tom, Dick, and Stanley, and go with him into the woods to search for Belle and find the Beast’s castle, but after several hours it became apparent that he did not actually believe his claims and was only assisting him in an attempt to get into his good graces in his plans to woo Belle. They were forced to return to the village as exposure to the elements had begun to have an effect on Maurice’s health, despite his insistence in finding Belle. Père Robert tended to him for weeks and insisted that he remain in bed until he was back to full strength. During his rest, he suffered a bizarre fever dream where the village was invaded by mysterious dark creatures, among them small, black, animalistic humanoids, blue bats, and what appeared to be a giant snowman. In that dream, Gaston led the defense, but Maurice, screaming about “No more beasts”, ran out into the snow with a kitchen knife in hand and struck some down. Perplexed by the nature of the dream, Maurice decided that he would be of no help to Belle in his condition and finally agreed to get some rest. But recently, he remembered the look of fear on Belle’s face when she saw him imprisoned and when she stared into the Beast’s menacing visage, and he resolved to go out and save her by himself. Even when a storm fell over the woods, he persevered.

“Belle…” he muttered, half awake.

“Papa!”

His eyes shot open. He saw Belle standing over him, looking down at him comfortingly. “Belle?”

“It’s all right, Papa,” she said soothingly. “I’m home.”

Maurice smiled and sat up, pulling her into a hug. “I thought I’d never see you again,” he said happily.

“I missed you so much.”

Maurice pulled back to look Belle in the eyes. “But the Beast! How did you escape?” he asked.

“I didn’t escape, Papa. He let me go,” she replied.

Maurice gaped in confusion. “That horrible beast—”

“But he’s different now, Papa. He’s changed somehow,” she explained.

Before she could elaborate, she heard a rustling sound from her satchel. She turned to it and saw the flap fall open. The mirror was the first to slip out, followed by a very dizzy Chip.

“Hi!” the teacup greeted.

“Oh, a stowaway,” Belle teased.

Chip hopped across the bed and landed in Maurice’s lap. “Why, hello there, little fella,” Maurice said, amused at the china child. “Didn’t think I’d see you again.”

Chip turned to Belle. “Belle, why’d you go away?” he asked. “Don’t you like us anymore?”

“Oh, Chip, of course I do… Wait a second,” she said, peeking over Chip’s rim. She noticed something inside, which appeared to resemble two bodies crumpled together. “Sora? Kairi?”

Awakened at the sound of their names, Sora and Kairi brought themselves to their feet, but stumbled and slipped when they attempted to stand up on a smooth, concave surface. They fell against one another, then backward on the wall of the cup. Noticing that they were no longer in the library but rather within an enclosed space, they looked around, wondering what was going on. They looked up and saw that the wall surrounding them only went up a foot above their heads, and the rim was lined with a gold strip. Turning around to get a full idea, they stopped when they noticed a triangular chip cut out of their container. Looking higher, they saw an enormous face which, after recovering from the initial shock, they recognized as Belle’s.

“Belle? What happened? Where are the others? What happened with the clown and the witch doctor?” Sora asked. Then, thinking of a slightly more pressing matter, “How did you get so huge?”

“Oh, good! You’re awake!” They heard a voice coming from directly in front of them, and the container they were trapped in shook about as the high-pitched childlike voice spoke. “The clown guy hit you with some sort of spell and shrunk you. I caught you and decided to keep you safe until Mickey and the others could find a way to fix you.”

Once he regained his balance, Sora recognized the voice. “Chip?”

“Oh! Hold on,” Belle said. She picked Chip up and tipped him upside down. Sora and Kairi tumbled out of the teacup and landed on the blanket of Maurice’s bed. They stood back up and took in their surroundings. They stumbled backward when Belle set Chip back down and they saw that they were now smaller than he was. They guessed that they were now only three inches tall, but they feel no different, in spite of their mass being compressed into a much smaller size.

They turned to their right and saw Maurice. The size difference between him and them was even more jarring, but they were coming to understand their situation more and were not taken aback quite as much.

“You must be Belle’s father,” Kairi guessed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Kairi, and this is Sora.” Sora waved in greeting.

“Why, it’s nice to meet you, too. You can call me Maurice. Now, Belle, you must tell me what has happened to you while you were held prisoner.”

Before Belle could explain herself, she heard a knock at the door. She shushed her visitors and went over and opened it, revealing a tall, incredibly muscular man with a pronounced double chin, blue eyes and long black hair tied into a ponytail. He wore a red tunic, black tights, and brown boots. He gave her a smile that seemed meant to appear sweet and entreating but carried too much confidence to truly come across as such. Maurice’s pleasant expression turned into a glare when the man came into view.

“Gaston…?” Belle said, wondering what he was doing there.

“Oh, Belle! When I heard that you had returned, I ran over as fast as I could!” Gaston, the renowned hunter, said. “I was so worried that something might have happened to you.”

“Well, thank you,” Belle said uncertainly.

“I mean, at first I couldn’t be sure. When Maurice said that you were taken prisoner by a monstrous beast, it did seem rather far-fetched.”

“Thank you for checking up on me, but as you can see, I am perfectly fine, now.

“When he went out to look for you yesterday, I tried to warn him that it was dangerous to go alone, fearing for his health, but he refused to listen,” Gaston claimed. “I tried to help him, but he shoved me away and ran out into the woods.”

“You lying, conceited swine!” Maurice shouted angrily, climbing out of bed and running to the door. Positively incensed, he moved as if to lash out at the hunter, but Belle held him back.

“Whoa! Slow down, Maurice. You need your rest. All this running around and ranting about made-up monsters can’t be good for your health,” Gaston said in a calming tone. “And now you’re going and assaulting people? I’m starting to fear that your jumbo-sized toys blew up in your face one too many times!”

Maurice’s anger faded and morphed into confusion when he glanced past Gaston and saw a crowd had formed in front of the cottage. Sora and Kairi glanced out the window and saw dozens of people standing out front. They could see that the crowd was standing around some sort of horse-drawn carriage, and were worried that Gaston had something wicked up his sleeve.

“I’m starting to think you need some help, Maurice,” Gaston said, a smirk forming. He stepped off to the side, revealing an elderly man standing behind him. Belle and Maurice shivered as soon as they saw him, as did Sora and Kairi.

The man was tall and thin and he wore a gray suit with a white undershirt and a thin black bow tie. He was a balding man with long grey hair and thick eyebrows. He was a frail man with grey skin, and his gaunt features made him appear almost like a walking corpse.

“May I help you?” Belle asked in a fearful tone.

“I’ve come to collect your father,” the old man, Monsieur D’Arque, answered in a gravelly voice. “Don’t worry, miss. We’ll take good care of him.” He stepped to the side to reveal the carriage, which was an iron prison box marked with the words “ _Les Maison des Lunes”_.

Belle gasped, then her expression turned from horror to anger. “My father’s not crazy!” she insisted, taking a step toward Monsieur D’Arque and forcing him to take a step back.

“Sora, look!” Kairi pointed at the man. Sora squinted and noticed that there was a bulge in his left pocket. “That Gaston creep must’ve paid him off.”

“Good eye, Kairi,” Sora commended.

“He was raving like a lunatic,” one of the villagers, Gaston’s friend Tom, shouted. “We all heard him, didn’t we?” A number of villagers shouted in agreement. “Isn’t that right?” he continued, leaning his elbow on LeFou’s shoulder, insisting that Gaston’s closest friend take his side.

“Uh, well…” LeFou stammered, not liking where this was going. He watched as two orderlies jumped out of the carriage and marched toward the cottage.

“No! I won’t let you!” Belle protested. Maurice peeked outside, trying to wrap his head around what was going on.

“Maurice!” another of Gaston’s friends, Dick, called out. “Tell us again, old man. Just how big was the beast?” He chuckled, and some of the others broke into chortles.

“He was… I mean he was… he was enormous,” Maurice stammered, trying to keep his wits about as it became apparent that this was not going to turn out well. “Fur, and fangs and horns… and…” The crowd broke into even greater laughter, and the orderlies grabbed Maurice by the arms and began hauling him to the asylum carriage. “Let go of me!” he resisted, to no avail. A smirk plastered on his haunting visage, Monsieur D’Arque strolled back to the carriage.

“No!” Belle protested, grabbing D’Arque by the shoulder. “You can’t do this!” D’Arque regarded her coldly, shook himself free, and continued walking.

Père Robert followed D’Arque, pleading for him to reconsider Maurice’s fate. “This man is harmless. He needs medicine and therapy, not confinement,” he insisted, but the asylum keeper ignored him.

“Poor Belle. It’s a shame about your father,” Gaston said sympathetically, throwing his arm around Belle’s shoulder.

Belle ducked out and stepped away. “You know he’s not crazy, Gaston,” she told him sternly.

“I might be able to clear up this little misunderstanding, if…” he suggested, a scheming smirk coming onto his face.

“If what?” Belle asked, not liking where this was going.

“If you marry me,” Gaston finished.

“What?” she gasped.

“Uh, Gaston, I’m not entirely sure that this is the right way to go about this,” LeFou whispered, attempting to reason with his friend.

Gaston ignored him. “One little word, Belle. That’s all it takes.”

“Never!” She ran back into the cottage.

Père Robert glared at him. “If you intend to go through with this, then you will have to find another priest,” he said calmly.

Sora and Kairi traded worried glances. “We need to do something!” he said. He ran for the door, but he forgot that he was still three inches tall, and five seconds later he tumbled off of the bed.

They saw Belle run inside, pack up her satchel, and hoist it over her shoulder. “Belle? What are you doing?” Kairi asked. Belle did not answer, and instead ran back outside. Sora struggled to maintain his balance due to the floorboards creaking with her steps.

As the orderlies were about to close the carriage door on Maurice, Belle ran back outside and stood in front of the crowd. “Let him go! My father’s not crazy!” she demanded. “I have just come from the castle in the woods and there is a Beast!”

Gaston had reentered the crowd and was adopting the voice of reason once again. “We all admire your devotion to your father, but you’d say anything to free him. Your word is hardly proof.”

Belle’s stare turned to anger. “You want proof? Fine.” She took the magic mirror out of her satchel. “Show me the Beast!” She held the mirror up for all to see.

The reflection showed Beast, who stood somberly at the balcony. The crowd gasped. Gaston’s face took on an expression of shock. He had never seen anything like it, and he would not have imagined that they truly were telling the truth about the Beast.

“Is it dangerous?” a woman asked.

“No,” Belle insisted. “He’d never hurt anyone. Please, I know he looks vicious, but he’s really kind and gentle. He’s my friend.”

“The monster has put her under a spell!” Gaston accused. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she even _cared_ for him!”

Belle stomped up to Gaston. “He’s not a monster, Gaston. You are!” she shot back.

Gaston’s face twisted in rage. He grabbed the mirror out of her hand. “She’s as crazy as the old man! The beast will make off with your children! He’ll come after them in the night.”

“No!” Belle argued.

“We’re not safe 'til his head is mounted on my wall! I say we kill the beast!” he declared. This was met with raucous cheers from the mob.

“We’re not safe until he’s dead,” one man moaned.

“He’ll come stalking us at night,” another man said.

“Set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite,” a woman said as she held her son close protectively.

“He’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wander free!” a third man insisted, starting to agree with Gaston’s plan.

“So, it’s time to take some action, boys!” Gaston shouted. “It’s time to follow me!”

“No! I won’t let you do this!” Belle protested.

“If you’re not with us, you’re against us! Lock her up too! We can’t have them running off to warn the creature!” Gaston grabbed Belle by the arm and threw her into the asylum carriage with her father and closed the door. Tom locked the door.

Kairi jumped off of the bed, and she and Sora began running toward the door.

“Let us out!” Belle pleaded.

“Gaston, with all due respect—” LeFou began.

“Do you want to be next?” Gaston interrupted, shooting him a fierce glare. LeFou shut up instantly. “Fetch me my horse.” LeFou turned and ran off. He turned back to the mob. “We’ll rid the village of this beast! Who’s with me?”

More cheers were let out. Gaston’s friends, Tom, Dick and Stanley, joined him at the front. Dozens of other men stepped up. They all armed themselves with pitchforks, swords, knives, shovels, and rolling pins. Gaston pocketed a dagger and a gun, and slung a quiver over his shoulder. Père Robert attempted to calm the frenzy, but the force of the mob pushed him back. Some of them lit torches and carried them to light the way. Those who did not join in the charge helped by readying the horses. LeFou let Gaston’s horse out and mounted his own.

Sora and Kairi got to the bottom of the stairs outside of the cottage just as the mob mounted their horses and rode off. Amongst the anxious and fearful villagers who remained, they noticed three attractive blonde women who were identical save for the color of their dresses. They fawned and cheered for Gaston as he rode off, clearly infatuated.

Kairi rolled her eyes. “Fangirls,” she grumbled.

But due to their small size, they were helpless to stop the angry mob as the incensed villagers rode off to lay siege to the Beast’s castle and mount an attempt on their friend’s life, and they had no way to warn everyone there.


	43. Chapter 42: Kill the Beast!

Back at the castle, the servants lamented the past events to have transpired. Judging by the condition of the rose, only a few hours remained before the last petal fell and the curse’s time limit ended. As far as they could tell, unless Belle had a change of heart and returned out of love for the Beast, then the curse would never be broken, they would remain trinkets and furniture forever, and the Beast would never become Prince Adam again. Cogsworth, Lumière, Mrs. Potts, and the Wardrobe had gathered in Belle’s room, along with Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, reminiscing their time with the young woman who had brought so much light into their world.

“Is there anything we can do?” Mickey asked, concerned at the sight of the despondent servants.

Mrs. Potts shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said sadly. “If only Chip were still here, so we could spend our last moments together.”

Cogsworth kicked the bedpost in frustration and crossed his arms. “I knew it! I knew it was foolish to get our hopes up,” he said.

“Maybe it would have been better if she had never come at all,” Lumière said in mock agreement, disgusted at Cogsworth’s attitude.

“And then what?” Riku countered. “You’ve spent so many years in despair at your condition. But then Belle comes along, and you start having fun again. You begin to have hope that you will get to live as humans again. Even if those hopes are dashed at the last minute, would you really like it better that you never had that time spent with her? That she never met Adam and taught him to love? Would you really give all that up?”

Cogsworth was left silent at this, before he finally shook his head weakly.

Goofy noticed something out the window and pointed. The others turned to see what had caught his eye. They rushed over to the window when they caught sight of something moving through the woods.

“Could it be?” Lumière wondered.

“Is it she?” Mrs. Potts added.

They gasped in horror when the object of their interest was revealed more fully and, in the light of torches, they saw a mob of men on horseback carrying weapons. The man in front held the enchanted mirror and studied it every so often to make sure he was going the right way.

“Invaders!” Lumière identified.

“Encroachers!” Cogsworth said in the same vein.

“And they have the mirror!” Mrs. Potts noted.

“Warn the master!” Cogsworth ordered. Mrs. Potts and Goofy turned and exited the room. “If it’s a fight they want, we’ll be ready for them! Who’s with me?”

Riku, Mickey and Donald summoned their weapons.

* * *

The mob crossed the bridge, raucous cheers belting fifty strong. The horses rode through the open gates and into the courtyard. Eight of them carried a battering ram made from a felled tree between them.

Gaston turned back to address his army. “Take whatever booty you can find! But remember, the Beast is mine!”

On the other side of the doors, the servants had gathered and were barricading the entrance with everything they had. Riku, Mickey, and the Wardrobe even leaned her body against it. Donald cast Blizzard on the hinges and lock in an attempt to freeze the joints in place. When the mob reached the door, they began ramming their felled tree into the door in an effort to break it down.

* * *

Goofy and Mrs. Potts rushed into the Beast’s room. The cursed prince did not appear to register their presence.

“Uh, excuse me,” Goofy said nervously.

“Leave me alone,” Beast said sadly.

“But sir, the castle’s under attack,” Mrs. Potts pleaded.

The chanting had grown loud and close enough for them to hear from there. “Kill the beast! Kill the beast!” the mob repeated.

“What shall we do, master?” Mrs. Potts asked.

Beast sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just let them come.”

Mrs. Potts was crestfallen. Belle leaving had left the master of the house as a sad shell of a man.

Goofy nudged her with his foot, causing her to turn and look up at him. The knight simply stared at her resolutely. Understanding, she nodded. They turned and left, deciding to head downstairs. They were not going to give up that easily.

* * *

The battering ram continued to pound on the door. Unbeknownst to the mob, Gaston’s shadow darkened, and black figures began to materialize around them.

The servants could not hold the door up for much longer, despite Goofy adding his strength. The ice had already broken off of the door entirely, and Donald knew it would be a waste of magic to try to bolster it further. “This isn’t working,” Lumière groaned.

“Well, we have to do something!” Mickey said.

The maitre’d’s face lit up almost as bright as the candle on his head. “Wait, I know!” he exclaimed.

* * *

While this was going on, Sora and Kairi reached the asylum carriage. Sora let Kairi catch her breath, while Chip caught up to them. They looked up at the lock on the door. Sora guessed that it should be simple to unlock, assuming that he could summon his Keyblade while in his small size. If it appeared and was still full size, there was going to be a problem.

He bade Kairi and Chip to step back, just in case. He raised his hand and concentrated on the Keyblade materializing in his hand. There was a flash of light and he was holding his Keyblade, which fit perfectly in his hand. He breathed a sigh of relief, glad that his weapon resonated with him enough that it would change size if he were too small to use it normally. Then he remembered that it worked the same way in Wonderland, when he drank the potion that shrank him to a foot in height.

He pointed the Keyblade at the padlock and fired a beam of white light out of the tip. The beam went right into the keyhole and the padlock popped open. Realizing that they still had to manually remove the lock, Sora sighed in annoyance.

“Can’t make it easy on us, can it?” he joked to Kairi.

“Not to worry, because I think a simple Aero spell can launch you up there no problem,” Kairi said, smiling. Sora nodded and stood underneath the padlock, his Keyblade held at the ready. Kairi summoned her own weapon and pointed it at a spot between Sora’s feet. “Aerora!” A gust of wind shot up from the ground and pushed Sora into the air.

“Wow!” Chip said in amazement. Kairi guided him to step back again and raised her Keyblade in preparation for defensive measures.

Sora shot up until he was at the window. He landed on the ledge, surprising Belle and Maurice. “Hey. Just give me a second, then you’ll be free,” he told them. Belle nodded in understanding. Maurice stared in wonder at Sora’s weapon. Sora turned so that he could see the padlock. Raising the Keyblade in his left hand, Sora threw it straight at the padlock, shattering the iron into pieces. Kairi cast Reflera to deflect a piece of the lock as it fell toward them. Chip giggled when he saw the spell in action.

Belle pushed the carriage door open, and Sora held onto one of the bars for dear life as the door swung around. Kairi and Chip stepped back so that neither former prisoner would step on them. Belle noticed them and reached down to pick them up. Kairi grabbed onto Chip’s handle and climbed into his bowl, allowing Belle to simply pick him up. She held Chip next to Sora, and he slid inside.

“What is all that racket?” Monsieur D’Arque asked, marching over to the back of the wagon. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Belle and Maurice standing outside of their confinement.

Belle held the teacup close to D’Arque’s face, allowing the asylum keeper to get a good look at Chip’s blinking face. Sora and Kairi poked their heads over the rim and waved.

“Hi,” Sora greeted sarcastically, his voice sounding like a high-pitched squeak from the old man’s perspective. “Sorry, who’s the crazy old man?” He summoned his Keyblade and lit the tip on fire.

Monsieur D’Arque turned and ran away. Sora and Kairi high-fived.

They turned back to Belle. “We need to stop Gaston,” Sora said. Belle nodded. Père Robert ran over to the cottage and untied Philippe, then led the horse over to Belle. Belle put Chip, with Sora and Kairi inside, in her satchel for safekeeping.

“Be safe, Belle,” Maurice said.

“I will,” she promised. She hugged her father. “I love you, Papa.”

“I am so proud of you,” Maurice said. They broke the embrace. Belle climbed onto Philippe and flicked the reins. The horse galloped off as fast as he could, understanding the urgency of the situation.

Philippe had actually grown fond of the castle during his time there, curse or no curse. And he could certainly tell that Belle had grown fond of the Beast, so he was willing to head back and help out for Belle’s sake.

* * *

The mob continued slamming the battering ram into the door, until finally it went through. But it was not because the door had finally been broken down, but rather because the door had opened just before the ram hit, causing the villagers carrying the felled tree to stumble as it went farther than they expected.

They were certainly surprised when they saw that the entrance hall was empty. There was not a soul to be seen, nor was there any sign of a barricade being in place. Torches were mounted on the walls, but all had been extinguished, leaving the foyer in darkness. There were only sets of furniture strewn about. The villagers walked around nervously, unnerved by the quiet.

“Are-Are you not the least bit concerned that this castle might be haunted?” LeFou asked Gaston.

“Don’t lose your nerve, LeFou,” Gaston said. He walked ahead of the mob and, holding the mirror to guide him, walked toward the stairs.

As the torches had been abandoned once they exited the darkness of the woods, LeFou decided to grab the nearest source of light he could find, a single three-headed candelabra.

A face melted out of the center head. Lumière smirked wickedly. “Now!” he shouted.

The furniture and ornaments sprung to life. The wall-mounted torches burst to life. Cogsworth shouted and the chairs kicked out at some villagers. Mrs. Potts spun around and summoned dishes, cookware, and silverware which flew at the invaders.

Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy barged out of the dining room. Donald cast Blizzard spells around, blasting the encroachers back. One of the villagers swung his shovel at Cogsworth, but Goofy blocked the attack and shoved him back with his shield.

More shadows materialized, and a Shadow Heartless pounced on one of the villagers. Those around him screamed in terror, but Mickey jumped in and slashed it into nothingness.

A coat hanger stepped in front of Gaston and LeFou and brought its “arms” at Gaston, but the hunter pulled LeFou in front of him. As a result, LeFou was slugged in the face multiple times. Wardrobe ran at both of them, screaming. Gaston stepped away, leaving LeFou in the Wardrobe’s shadow. She hit him and pinned him against the wall. Gaston looked over at his friend.

“Gaston… help…” LeFou pleaded weakly.

Gaston looked at LeFou for a second longer, then looked at the mirror, then the stairs. He shrugged. “Sorry, old friend. It’s hero time,” he said before running up the stairs and taking the left branch.

Wardrobe’s jaw dropped. “Wow. I am so sorry,” she said sincerely. She stepped away from LeFou, who tumbled to the ground. She scanned the room for assistance. “Mickey! We need some healing over here!” she called. Mickey ran over and cast Cura on LeFou. He saw more Heartless appearing up the stairs and defeated them.

Riku deflected a pitchfork strike. “Guys, can’t we talk about this?” he asked. Someone hit him over the head with a rolling pin, which cracked from the blow. He cricked his neck in response and rubbed the back of his head in pain, then whirled around and thumped his wrist against his attacker’s head, knocking him out instantly.

Cogsworth commanded an array of books to soar into the fray, and they hit several of the villagers. “Yes, those are called books, you third-rate musketeers!” he taunted.

Tom, Dick and Stanley turned and saw him. Cogsworth shuddered, realizing that he had drawn their ire. They ran straight at him, but Wardrobe jumped in the way. Her doors blasted open, and fabric flew out and weaved their way around the brutes. She laughed as she did so.

Tom, Dick and Stanley found themselves wrapped up in colorful, decorative dresses and make-up. Tom and Dick looked at each other and shrieked in horror. They turned around and ran. Stanley, however, looked himself over and smiled up at Wardrobe before walking away elegantly. Wardrobe giggled and cooed at her handiwork.

Belle ran inside, but was soon beset by Hook Bats. Sora climbed out of the satchel and leapt at one of the Heartless. He grabbed onto its hook and, using his weight, swung it around and threw it at another, causing the second Bat to shriek and disrupt the others. He jumped off and landed on Belle’s shoulder.

“Mama!” Chip shouted, jumping out of the satchel and hopping across the entrance hall, bouncing through the chaos until he reunited with his mother. However, the reunion was interrupted by the appearance of a Heartless that resembled a giant red hammer with black arms and legs, which had the emblem on the front plate. It leaned back, ready to smash the teapot and cup to pieces, only to be knocked to the side when a knife was shoved into its left eye.

LeFou stood over the Hammer Frame and kicked it in its slender body until it dissipated. He turned to Mrs. Potts and Chip. “Are you two alright?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Potts replied. She gasped when she saw two Soldier Heartless coming up behind her rescuer. LeFou picked the teapot up, then whirled around and kicked one of them, knocking it away, and dodged a strike from the other. Mrs. Potts snorted hot water out of her spout, spraying the second Soldier, scalding it and causing it to stumble back in pain. LeFou picked his knife back up and stabbed it through the head, destroying the Heartless.

“Nicely handled,” the teapot commended.

“Well, I used to be on Gaston’s side,” LeFou admitted, “but we are so in a bad place right now.”

“You’re too good for him anyway,” Mrs. Potts reassured him. LeFou nodded.

He gestured to the monsters swarming the area behind him. “So, those things…”

“They’re called Heartless. They’re drawn to the darkness in men’s hearts,” Mrs. Potts explained.

“That Gaston must be a pretty bad man,” Chip added. “Those things were popping up wherever he went.”

“So, then I guess we should fight back?” LeFou guessed. Mrs. Potts nodded. He tilted his head to the side as if to say _Sounds fair_. He spun around, holding Mrs. Potts out while she sprayed hot water over the Heartless and the few villagers who were still attacking.

At this point, most of the villagers had dropped their weapons and were running out of the castle. Cogsworth and Lumière waved them out and shouted jeers. A Shadow came up behind them, but Lumière turned around and stuck his burning candle arms into its eyes. Cogsworth promptly headbutted it. Wardrobe jumped on top of it, crushing it. Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy fought off the Heartless and allowed the villagers room to leave.

* * *

While the battle raged downstairs, Gaston made his way through the West Wing. He marched into the Beast’s room and pulled out his bow. He nocked an arrow, drew it back, and aimed at Beast.

“Hello, Beast,” the hunter said. “Belle sent me.”


	44. Chapter 43: As the Last Petal Falls

On seeing Belle, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy ran up to meet her. Sora waved from atop Belle’s shoulder and Belle picked Kairi up out of the satchel.

“Sora, Kairi! We found something about the Mini spell,” Mickey said. “There’s a spell that undoes a variety of status ailments, both magical and chemical. It’s called Esuna, and it would easily undo a more temporary Mini spell. From what I can surmise, we can use that spell to restore you to your normal size, if we boost it with a lot of light magic.”

Sora grinned. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I have the Keyblade of Light and there are two Princesses of Heart right here,” he responded confidently.

“Alright, then. Let’s find a place to work,” Cogsworth said.

Belle set Sora and Kairi down on a table and placed her hand in front of them. She thought hard about light, not having as good an idea of how to draw on her innate magic as Kairi, and hoped it would do.

Sora raised his Keyblade and imagined returning to his normal state. “Esuna!” he shouted. A white light washed over the Keyblade, and a warmth fell over him and Kairi, and they felt themselves growing. Belle stepped back as they both grew over a foot in height. Sora and Kairi jumped off of the table when they realized that their weight was putting stress on it. In seconds, they had grown back to their normal size, along with Sora’s Keyblade, and everything looked normal to them.

“Aw, yeah! We’re tall again!” Sora cheered. Belle snickered, inwardly noting that Sora was still shorter than her.

LeFou ran over, offering an awkward wave to Belle. “You should know, Gaston’s gone upstairs. He’s heading for the Beast,” he warned.

Belle gasped. “I have to stop him!” she said.

“We’re with you,” Riku affirmed.

Mickey noticed a Heartless waddling out the front door. “The Heartless could still hurt the villagers,” he muttered loud enough for the others to hear. Then, more loudly, “We need to cover their escape.”

Sora saw a sword that had been discarded. He picked it up by the handle, holding it upside-down, and held it out for LeFou. “In case there are some in the woods, someone’s going to need to protect them. That’ll be you,” he said.

“Me?” LeFou asked, surprised.

“You can do it,” Mrs. Potts encouraged.

“Can we trust you?” Sora asked. Nervously, then resolutely, LeFou nodded. “Alright. Let’s move.”

They moved to conduct their tasks, but LeFou stopped and turned back to Belle. “Oh, and Belle,” he called. She stopped and turned to hear what he had to say. “Can you tell Gaston that he’s on his own?” he requested, his eyes showing his newfound disdain for his former friend. Belle raised an eyebrow, to which LeFou gave her a puckish smile. “No one sees the monster in the man like LeFou!” He waved, then turned and ran out to join the fleeing mob.

Belle smiled at him. She had always been fond of him, even in spite of his slavish devotion to the boorish Gaston. She was glad that he had finally grown a backbone. Deciding that taking a weapon was not a bad idea, she picked up a shovel that had been discarded by one of the invaders. She turned and ran up the stairs, accompanied by Riku and Goofy.

* * *

“Hello, Beast.” Beast turned to see who it was, and realized that the newcomer was here to kill him. He sighed and turned away, looking out to the horizon. “Belle sent me,” Gaston’s claimed.

Beast shook his head. “No…” he whispered. She would never do such a thing. But he did not bother arguing the fact.

It would not be long before the time was up. What would happen to him? The Enchantress had said that if he did not love and be loved before the last petal fell, he would remain a beast for eternity. He had never understood the specifics of that last part entirely. Would he remain in the same state, sapient but monstrous, for the rest of his life? Or would he lose the last remaining pieces of his humanity and become a feral monster? He had decided long ago that the latter possibility was the fate that would befall him. No one had any idea what would happen to the servants, whether they would remain the same or become inanimate, lifeless trinkets, but he figured that it did not make a difference if he turned into a rampaging monster that would not recognize them. He believed that he was living his last moments as his own self. So, he wanted the hunter to make it quick.

Gaston released the bowstring. The arrow hit Beast in the shoulder. Beast roared in pain. Gaston rushed him and knocked him out the window, laughing. Beast tumbled down the roof before stopping on a landing below and to the left of the window.

* * *

Hearing the Beast’s scream, Belle, Riku and Goofy quickened their pace. Gargoyle statues broke from their places to attack them, but Belle knocked one down and caused it to break apart with a swing from her shovel, while Riku sliced the other one in twain with his Keyblade.

* * *

Gaston cornered Beast, daring him to attack. He grew frustrated when the Beast continued to lie there in pain and despair.

“Get up! Get up! What’s the matter, beast? Too kind and gentle to fight back?” he taunted. When he received no response, he reached down and broke a spire off of the side of the roof with ease. He raised it above his head to smash Beast’s with it.

“No!” a familiar voice ordered from behind him as the plate of a shovel hit him in the back of the head. He turned around and saw Belle glaring defiantly at him. She had set the shovel down and pulled all of the arrows out of his quiver. Gaston watched as she broke them all over her knee. “Stop this, Gaston!”

“Belle…?” Beast muttered, hearing her voice.

Gaston grabbed her by the arm. “No. I am done playing games. When we get back to the village, you will marry me and the beast’s head will hang on our wall!” he yelled.

“Never!” she shouted defiantly, struggling to escape his grip. “Don’t you get it, Gaston? You disgust me! And not just me. Everyone has abandoned you. By now, LeFou’s already telling them all about you!”

“LeFou?” he asked.

“He said you’re on your own,” she spat. She continued to struggle, until Gaston threw her aside. She fell to the ground but soon started to pick herself back up.

“That’s enough!” Riku shouted. He ran at the hunter and swung his Keyblade at him, but Gaston blocked the strike with the spire and pushed him back. Goofy charged in, his arm drawn back to bash him with his shield, but Gaston swatted him in the chest with his makeshift weapon, hitting him so hard that he flew back into another wall, leaving a sizeable dent. Dark smoke visibly bled off of Gaston, and his pupils and irises turned a solid black.

Riku’s eyes widened when he saw just how strong Gaston was. “Wow. What do they feed this guy?” he wondered aloud.

“Five dozen eggs a day, so they say,” Belle grunted.

Riku and Goofy regained their bearings and rushed Gaston. However, at the last second, his body was covered in a black silhouette, which exploded outward, launching them off of the roof.

* * *

Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald had finally cleared the last of the Heartless from the bridge and had reentered the courtyard only to see Riku and Goofy tumbling through the air straight at them. Kairi and Donald cast Aeroga magic to slow their descent, but they still landed with a thud. Mickey looked up at the scene on the roof and his jaw dropped.

A giant Heartless had grown out of Gaston’s body. It resembled the hunter greatly, except that it lacked legs, leaving its waist to taper out into ragged shreds almost like a ghost, it had dark blue-gray skin, and it wore a giant elk skull on its head, obscuring its eyes. It even held an enlarged version of the spire that Gaston held. The hunter still stood on the roof, a bit woozy but still very much human.

“I thought when a person turned into a Heartless, his body disappeared,” Mickey said, perplexed.

“If that person has his heart stolen or lost to darkness right then and there, yes,” Jiminy said, poking his head out of the mouse’s pocket. “But I guess if they go the long way, and the Heartless grows out and detaches itself, the body sticks around. Like with Scar, whose body stuck around to fight and die before his Heartless revealed itself. The same could be said for Clayton, in the Deep Jungle.”

“So, we’re fighting the really big Heartless of a really strong dude, and the really strong dude is still up there attacking our friend,” Riku summed the situation up, grunting from the pain. Kairi cast Cura on him and Goofy, and they stood up as if they had not just fallen a hundred feet.

Gaston’s Heartless swung its club, but its targets ran closer to it so that they were perfectly safe from the attack. Donald cast Thundaga while Sora cast Firaga and Mickey shot Pearl spells at its arms. Goofy threw his shield, hitting the monster’s jaw. Riku jumped at it and slashed its chest, while shooting Dark Firaga balls at its head with his free hand.

The Heartless punched down with its free hand, but the party dodged easily and began wailing on the fist. Sora grabbed onto the thumb as the Heartless drew its arm back up, then he climbed up to the shoulder and ran up to the head. He struck the back of the neck as hard as he could. This caused the Heartless to falter, and it let the club bend to the ground. Riku and Mickey jumped onto the club and ran along it, then they jumped off of its hand and struck it in the face. Kairi threw her Keyblade and cut through the free hand.

Gaston’s Heartless collapsed from the injuries it was sustaining, though everyone made sure that they were not under the body when it landed. A few more blows and the Heartless disintegrated. Not taking a single moment to catch their breath, the party ran back into the castle to try to reunite with Belle and Beast before it was too late.

* * *

Recovering from the wave of darkness that washed over his senses, Gaston turned his attention back to the Beast. He raised his weapon up above his head and brought it down, but a large, hairy hand grabbed it.

The Beast, reinvigorated by Belle’s return, stood up and grappled the weapon with Gaston. Gaston adopted an expression of pure terror when he saw the Beast snarl at him in pure rage. Realizing that he was outmatched, Gaston broke free and scrambled away, climbing up a cone roof and clambering around it, but the Beast followed.

Gaston swung his club at his opponent, but Beast dodged and then grappled with it again. Gaston lost his footing and slid down the roof, dropping the spire. He just managed to grab onto the roof before he tumbled off, but Beast lunged at him and carried him off, tumbling down another section of roof until they landed on another flat area, on the western side of the castle. Gaston kicked Beast off of him and picked the club back up. He ran for the grotesque figure silhouetted in the dark of the night, and smashed its head with his weapon.

Stones crumbled from the face of the griffin-shaped statue. Gaston was surprised to see that he hit the wrong target.

“Come on out and fight!” Gaston taunted. He glared around the roof but only saw more griffin statues. He heard a crackling sound in the distance and rolled out of the way of a fireball which destroyed the remnants of the grotesque. He turned to the source and saw Donald on a separate landing; the hunter and beast had gone too far across the roof for the others to easily join them, which was why Donald could only perform magic spells from a distance while the others tried to reach them.

Gaston ignored the duck and continued hunting the beast, his club raised. “Were you in love with her, Beast?” he taunted. “Did you honestly think she’d want you, when she had someone like me?”

Beast growled and crept from his hiding place behind one of the statues, approaching his foe from behind. Gaston heard his footsteps and turned around, swinging his club at Beast unsuccessfully. Beast circled around him, and Gaston followed his movements. Beast threw himself at his enemy and grabbed the club in his mouth as he forced his enemy back. Gaston pulled the weapon loose and swung a few more times, though Beast backed away until he was standing at the edge of the roof, with only a steep roof and an abyss on either side of him.

“It’s over, Beast! Belle is mine!” Gaston yelled, raising his club. Beast swatted him into the steep roof, causing him to drop the club, then lifted him by the collar. He held Gaston over the ledge by the neck, grabbing onto a statue with his free hand to keep his balance. He glared at the man who tried to kill him with all of the rage in his heart.

The hunter’s bravado dissolved instantly, and he quickly began to fear for his life. “Let me go! Let me go!” he begged. “Please! Don’t hurt me, beast! I’ll do anything! Anything!”

Beast’s vicious expression faded, and he realized that if he did this, if he murdered this man, no matter what he did or tried to do, then he would be nothing more than the monster everyone saw him to be. “I am not a beast,” he muttered. He stepped back onto the roof and lowered Gaston onto his knees, his palm still grasped onto the man’s thick neck.

“Get out,” he commanded, staring right into Gaston’s eyes. He let go, dropping Gaston to the ground. The hunter breathed heavily to catch his breath.

“Adam!” a voice called from above. Beast turned and saw Belle standing on the balcony of his room above. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Goofy were with her. The servants were just on the other side of the window, distracted by the sight of the rose only having one petal remaining, which hung onto the wilting stem weakly.

“Belle,” Beast said, smiling. Belle held her hand out to him. Beast clambered up the roof to meet her. He wrapped his hand around hers and touched her cheek. “Belle, you came back.” Belle smiled and wrapped her arms around Beast’s. They continued to stare passionately at one another.

“Huh? Where’d he go?” Goofy whispered to his friends. Riku gasped when he saw something coming up behind Beast.

_SHINK!_

Beast roared in pain as Gaston pulled a blood-specked dagger from Beast’s back. With a wicked sneer on his face, Gaston flipped his dagger back around in his hand to slash at Beast. The Beast lashed out blindly, swinging his arm back. Gaston shuffled to avoid being hit, but he lost his grip on the balcony banister. He dropped the dagger as he flailed wildly in an attempt to maintain his balance, but he fell. He screamed as he tumbled into the gorge below.

Belle grabbed Beast by the cape to prevent him from falling as well, and Sora, Riku and Goofy hauled him over the banister and laid him down. Cogsworth, Lumière, Mrs. Potts, Chip, and Wardrobe gasped in horror at the state of their master. Donald rushed in and quacked in shock at the sight of the injured Beast. He cast Curaga, but nothing changed.

In spite of the pain, Beast smiled at Belle. “You came back,” he said.

Tears rolled down Belle’s face. “Of course, I came back. I couldn’t let them… I’ll never leave you again,” she said soothingly.

Beast nodded weakly, but cramped as he felt the pain flare up. “But I’m afraid it’s my turn to leave,” he muttered resignedly.

Sora shook his head. “No. You’ve come too far to go out like this. Belle came here to fight for you,” he told him. “Now we’re here with you. You’re not here alone. Now fight. Stay with us. We’re not leaving you.”

Beast regarded these words warmly, reminded of the speech that he had given the boy when they had first met.

“Sora’s right. You’ll be alright. We’re together now. Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see,” she assured, though she sounded more like she was trying to convince herself.

“At least I got to see you one… last… time…” Belle held Beast’s hand up to her cheek, and he held it there for a second. Then he dropped it, the strength leaving his arm. His head dropped back and his eyes closed.

Belle dropped his paw and put her hands to her mouth. Sora stumbled back, a look of tragic horror on his face. Kairi pulled him into a comforting hug, tears streaming down her face. Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy could only stare, unresponsive. The servants looked mournfully at their dying master. Cogsworth glanced up and saw the final petal wiggling on the stem, its glow beginning to fade.

“No, no! Please! Please! Please don’t leave me!” Belle begged, crying. She laid her head down on Beast’s chest, which no longer rose and fell from breathing. “I love you…”

Goofy glanced over and saw the final petal break off and fall to the bottom of the case. Its glow faded and it turned dull. The thorny stem curled up and fell, dead. The servants bowed their heads sadly. Cogsworth sighed in resignation. It was all over now. Belle continued to cry, while Sora and the others tried to process their friend’s death.

A ray of pink-colored light fell, catching Donald’s attention. More beams fell, like shooting stars. Mickey and Goofy took notice of this. When more beams fell in different colors, Kairi noticed and patted Sora on the shoulder to get his attention. He pulled out of their embrace and turned around. The rays were falling even faster and in greater numbers than before. Soon, everyone had noticed, even Belle, who stared perplexedly at the sparks left on the ground.

Belle felt something pushing up at her, and she realized that Beast’s body was rising into the air. She shuffled backward to let it happen and they all watched as he was magically raised into the air, the beams of magic light still falling around him and a mist forming around him. His body began to glow, and everyone gasped when they saw what appeared to be him taking a breath. He shook about, as if waking up from a nap, and raised his arm up.

All eyes were on the Beast, staring in wonder, as his form shifted. His arm shrunk, the fur faded away, and the claws turned into fingernails. Rays of yellow light shot out of the tips of his fingers. His canine legs shifted into human feet, and rays of light shot out of the toes. His hulking frame shrank down, and his tail shrank out of existence. Lastly, his head transformed from its monstrous shape into a human one. The transformation complete, the former beast sank back down to the floor, lying on his detached cape. The tears in his now-oversized shirt remained, but the blood was gone.

Belle reached out to him, but the man brought himself to his feet. He paused in the midst of doing so for a brief second when he saw his hand, then stood up. The man with long auburn hair studied his hands, then looked the rest of himself over, kicking his feet out in wonder. He turned around and faced Belle. Belle and the others took in his new, handsome visage.

“Belle, it’s me,” he said, taking her hand in both of his own. Belle studied him closely, still amazed at what had happened. His entire form was strange and new. She felt through his hair, trying to develop a sense of familiarity. She looked into his blue eyes and knew for certain.

“It is you!” she exclaimed. They stroked each other’s hair while staring into each other’s eyes. He leaned in and they kissed.

Swirls of blue magic light flew around them and shot up, exploding over the castle like a firework. The magic rained down on the castle, and all structural damage was undone. The clouds above parted and the sun rose over the horizon, though there was a moment of rain over the party as the magic eruption caused a cloudburst. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy looked around in wonder as the demolished furniture rose up and restored itself all on its own, even though the damage had been dealt years ago. Belle and Adam broke off their kiss to watch everything change around them.

Lumière laughed mirthfully as the blue magic swirled around him. His candelabra form glowed blue, then vanished. In its place stood a lanky man with light brown hair in a ponytail and a long, pointed nose. A fat man with a long, pencil-thin moustache popped up next to him, standing where Cogsworth did.

“Lumière! Cogsworth!” Adam said to each in turn. A middle-aged woman with graying brown hair popped up in front of them. “Mrs. Potts! Look at us!” He pulled all three of them into a group hug.

The teacup changed into a seven-year-old blond boy with a missing tooth, who ran in and hugged his mother. The Wardrobe, who had turned into a tall, stocky woman wearing a large white-and-gold wig, pulled everyone into an enormous hug. Mrs. Potts broke off to pull Chip into a proper hug, one that they had not shared in ten years.

“We’re human again!” Cogsworth exclaimed. Donald snickered as he noticed that Cogsworth looked almost exactly like he did when he was a clock, right down to the clothing and hairstyle.

“It is a miracle!” Lumière cheered. Sora gave Adam a heavy pat on the back, and Mickey and Riku shook the restored prince’s hand. Kairi and Belle shared a quick hug.

* * *

They spent the following hours catching up on recent events. The guests learned that the former Wardrobe’s real name was Madame de Garderobe. Now that the Beast was human again, it became much easier for them to get used to calling him “Adam”. Belle and Cogsworth rode out to the village to tell them that the curse had lifted and explain what had been going on. A group of villagers followed them back to scout the place out, led by LeFou. Maurice rode back with Belle, and he had the chance to formally get to know what kind of man the “Beast” truly was. The villagers were saddened to hear of Gaston’s death, but, after learning of what he had done and what he had tried to do, many of them came to agree that he had gotten what he deserved. Père Robert prayed for his soul.

Lumière, Mrs. Potts, and Chef Bouche, who was the head chef before the spell hit the castle and had spent the last several years in the form of a stove and oven, prepared a large feast to celebrate the breaking of the curse, to welcome the people who had long since forgotten about the castle and its cursed inhabitants, and also because none of the staff had actually eaten anything in a decade. Chef Bouche almost cooked some duck as part of the banquet until he was made aware that one of the guests actually was a duck. Since they had grown used to controlling enchanted utensils to perform their duties, and had also likely lost their edge due to the Beast simply hunting for his food for years rather than letting them cook for him, they gladly accepted Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Belle’s assistance.

When everything had calmed down and the visitors returned to the village, Adam took Sora and his friends aside and asked them about what the two magically-powered intruders from the previous night were doing in the castle. Riku and Mickey took their turn explaining what they knew about the assortment of villains and what they were trying to do.

“The guy in the top hat said that they were looking for something in the form of a clock,” Belle recalled. “So, one of the items that will supposedly give them the power to change everything is a clock, and it’s supposed to be in the castle?”

Cogsworth winced at that, though anyone who noticed decided that he must have just had some PTSD from his years as a clock.

“Yeah. But for some reason, even though they searched the entire castle, they couldn’t find it for some reason,” Riku replied. “And frankly, we haven’t actually seen any of these artifacts, so we wouldn’t really be able to know how to find them.”

“I suppose that means you’re going to have to leave,” Belle guessed, a sad tone in her voice.

“Afraid so,” Kairi said, shrugging. “The clown and the witch doctor giving up here would only mean they’ve gone somewhere else, and taken the Heartless and Nobodies with them.”

“But we’ll be back before you know it,” Sora assured them.

“Well, we’ll do what we can to find what you’re looking for,” Adam promised. He smirked, an animalistic look in his eye. “And I would be happy to get some payback against those two.”

Sora and Adam shook hands. “Take care, Prince,” Sora said.

After saying their good-byes, Sora and his friends transported to the Gummi Ship from the parlor. Meanwhile, Lumière noticed Cogsworth looking rather nervous.

“This does seem to be a noble cause, Cogsworth,” the maitre’d said. “Perhaps it would be wise to speak.”

Cogsworth shook his head. “I mustn’t, my friend. You know I have been sworn to maintain the world order,” he reminded the other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we're coming to the end of the "Beauty and the Beast" story in this world visit. Be sure to leave a review and let me know what you all think of this (preferably more than can just be said by clicking Kudos).
> 
> Since the curse is a rather convoluted subject, I left my own take on how it affected everyone and everything, going off of an idea that I came across online that only the servants we see for most of the movie (and a few others) are the ones turned into furniture while most of the hundreds of other items are simply being magically controlled by the main servants. I also left the conditions for breaking the curse and what happens when the rose dies up to your interpretation.


	45. Chapter 44: Jiminy's Journal #1

**Beast’s Castle**

Story

Mrs. Potts and Chip directed us to meet Beast and Belle in the library. Aside from the Beast mistakenly believing Riku was still an enemy, the reunion was a warm one indeed. However, a sudden Heartless ambush revealed the presence of two of Maleficent’s new allies in the castle, so we split up into three groups to track them down. The intruders, a clown with powerful magic and a sort of witch doctor, abducted Belle and held her captive in the ballroom to lure us into a trap, but our heroes managed to defeat the Heartless and Nobodies they summoned, rescue Belle, and survive the final trap of a falling chandelier.

The party tracked the intruders to the library, where they were trying to find information on the artifact they had come to claim but thus far had no luck in locating in spite of searching every corner of the castle. At first, we had the upper hand due to the element of surprise, but the intruders managed to escape. Before they fled, the clown sent out an array of spells, including one that shrunk Sora and Kairi to three inches tall.

While the party took the opportunity to search for information, as well as a way to restore Sora and Kairi to their normal size, Beast and Belle shared a tender moment. When Belle expressed a desire to see her father again, Beast showed her a magic mirror that would show her whatever she wished. She saw that her father was caught in a snowstorm trying to reach the castle and save her. Seeing that she needed to help him, the Beast let her go, even knowing the possibility that he would never see her again.

Belle found her father, Maurice, and brought him back to the village to nurse him back to health, but soon after, a hunter named Gaston convinced the villagers that Maurice was insane and threatened to have him put in an asylum to blackmail Belle into agreeing to marry him. To exonerate her father, Belle used the magic mirror to reveal the existence of the Beast, but Gaston managed to rile the villagers into a mob to storm the castle and kill the Beast, and locked Belle and Maurice up to prevent them from stopping him.

Unbeknownst to Belle, she had a stowaway: Chip the teacup, who also happened to be holding the shrunken Sora and Kairi. They managed to free Belle and Maurice and rode back with her to prevent the mob from invading the castle. Meanwhile, the rest of the party helped the castle servants fight off the invaders, and ended up helping them escape unharmed when Gaston’s fury and jealousy drew Heartless into the field. Belle arrived to help, and Mickey taught Sora and Kairi to use a Princess of Heart-light-infused Esuna spell to restore them to their original size. Gaston made his way to the Beast’s room and attacked him, and Beast was in too much despair to fight back, but Belle’s arrival and attempt to help him motivated him to stand up against the hunter while the party fought against Gaston’s manifesting Heartless. Beast got the best of Gaston and held him over the edge of the roof, but on seeing Gaston beg for his life he decided that he would not be the beast and simply told the hunter to get out. He shared a tender reunion with Belle, but Gaston stabbed him in the back, though this got him thrown to his death anyway. As Beast passed away, Belle said pleadingly “I love you.” At this moment, the last petal fell from the enchanted rose, and a shower of magic fell over the Beast. He transformed into a human, his wounds healed, and the castle servants followed suit. The curse was broken at last!

Characters

Beast / Prince Adam

A prince cursed for his selfishness and transformed into a hideous beast by a powerful enchantress. He spent ten years in self-loathing fearing that he would never be able to learn to love and be loved, until Belle came into his life. She became the brightest spot in his life and inspired him to become better, and he came to love her so much that he was willing to claw his way through an endless sea of darkness if it meant rescuing her, which is actually how we all first met him. His hope and determination to love and be worthy of love paid off, as the curse is finally broken and he is human once again.

Belle

A bookworm from a closed-minded village who traded her freedom to free her father from the Beast. Although she was terrified of him at first, she helped him develop into a better person and calm his temper, and in turn came to see that there was more to the man than his monstrous exterior. As one of seven Princesses of Heart, Belle has a heart of pure light.

Maurice

Belle’s father, an eccentric inventor who is ostracized and mocked by most of the villagers, and is devoted to his daughter. When he got lost riding his horse through the woods to the fair, he found himself at the Beast’s castle and became his prisoner, until Belle traded her own freedom for his. Since then, he has dedicated himself to rescuing her, even crossing Gaston.

Gaston

A self-absorbed hunter who has gained the appreciation of his entire village. He is infatuated with Belle, and makes several attempts to woo her and make her “his little wife”, despite her obvious lack of interest. He arranged for her father to be sent to an asylum to blackmail her into marrying her, and when he realized that she was in love with the Beast he riled up an angry mob to try to kill him. His jealousy filled his heart with darkness until it manifested into a mighty Heartless, but neither man nor monster was a match for the Beast and the Keyblade wielders, and in spite of Beast deciding to spare him, his hatred still led to his demise, falling off of the castle roof into a gorge.

LeFou

Gaston’s sidekick, LeFou has served as a supporter and accomplice to boost his friend’s ego, even when he served as a punching bag. However, when he saw the twisted lengths he would go to get what he wanted, and after being left to suffer at the devices of the castle servants defending against the mob, LeFou came to understand the horrible person that Gaston truly was, and he promptly joined forces with Belle and the servants.

Kefka

A clown with command of powerful magic and a sadistic sense of humor. Little is known about him or why he is allied with Maleficent and Zeromast, but given his thirst for destruction, those reasons cannot be any good.

????? [Witch Doctor]

A voodoo practitioner with a keen showmanship, formidable magic and a living shadow. Little is known about him or why he is allied with Maleficent and Zeromast.

Heartless

Blitz Dancer

A large Heartless conjured by Kefka to fight the party in the ballroom of Beast’s Castle. Each dancing step created a shockwave, and it constantly waved a razor-sharp ribbon around to try to slice through its enemies. However, once Sora, while wrapped in a magic tornado created by King Mickey and Kairi, tricked it into snaring its own weapon, it proved easy to end its one-man dance party.

Enraged Elk

Gaston’s Heartless, spawned from his growing hatred and jealousy of the Beast. It was in essence a larger version of the hunter himself, complete with an enlarged replica of the broken architecture the original was using as a club, and was strong and vicious, but ultimately no match for stronger and more skilled opponents.

Magic

Esuna

Heals status ailments, magical or chemical. Usually only works on magic effects that only last for a limited time. To undo more powerful ailments, the spell would have to be boosted with a significant amount of light magic (for example, two Princesses of Heart).

Beast’s Curse

A curse placed upon Prince Adam and his castle by a powerful enchantress, turning the prince into a monstrous Beast and transforming his servants into furniture, utensils and decorations. A rose was enchanted as a lynchpin to the curse, with the fate of the castle’s inhabitants tied to its lifespan. If the Beast learned to love and was loved in return before the last petal fell, the curse would be broken and everyone would become human again, but if that did not happen before the deadline, then the curse would never be broken. It is not known if failing to break the curse would mean that the prince and servants would remain in their current states forever or if it meant the Beast would lose what was left of his humanity and become a feral animal and the servants would become inanimate trinkets and their lives extinguished. Fortunately, we will never have to find out, as, in what appeared to be the nick of time, just as the rose died, the curse broke and all afflicted were returned to human form.

* * *

Jiminy pocketed his pen and shut his journal. He sat in the cupholder on the dashboard and thought back on the recent episode. He was trying to piece together any clues he could to understand what was going on and what to do about it.

There were thirteen members of this new cabal. They were already familiar with Maleficent, Pete and Hades, and there was also their enigmatic benefactor who led them on their scavenger hunt. Since then, the party has encountered Loki, the so-called God of Mischief, when the villains made their first attempt to access the files on Ansem’s computer, presumably to understand more about the artifacts they sought. And only yesterday, they met two new villains, a powerful mage dressed like a clown, who had been called Kefka, and a talented witch doctor. That was seven who could be identified, and six whom they have already confronted, and those six were all evidently competent threats. Clearly, they had been gathered due to their powers and abilities, which made Jiminy wonder what sorts of talents the other villains possessed.

The other matter of contemplation, the artifacts, left him quite befuddled. The party had no way of determining who would be protecting them nor did they have a clue as to where to look or how to even identify them. In the meantime, the villains already had a guide to locate them and, in some cases, even knew what they looked like. The clown and the witch doctor had mentioned that the artifact in Beast’s Castle was a clock, but as far as he could recall, there had never been a clock lying around anywhere in the castle, and both sides had been to just about every room in the castle.

Jiminy groaned and rubbed his forehead. This was getting nowhere.

“You all right, Jiminy?” Mickey asked, his focus on steering the ship but dividing enough attention to notice Jiminy’s distress.

“I’m fine, your Majesty,” the cricket answered. “It’s just that I can’t seem to make any sense of this search.”

“I know how you feel,” Sora said from the copilot’s chair. “We spent most of our other quests blindly running around to try to figure out what’s going on, when the bad guys had all the clues. Remember how we went around trying to figure out what Organization XIII was up to all while we were unknowingly giving them exactly what they wanted with each Heartless we fought? Remember how, the year before that, we didn’t even know about the Princesses of Heart until we had already lost Alice, Maleficent’s gang had already captured four beforehand, and they were in the process of kidnapping Jasmine?”

Jiminy nodded and rolled his eyes. Donald groaned.

“Actually, that last part was on me,” Riku admitted. This drew shocked looks from Sora and Kairi. “Maleficent told me to do it in exchange for helping me locate Kairi’s body. I snuck in while you were fighting Jafar after he turned himself into a genie and pulled her into a portal.”

Kairi continued to stare at Riku, not sure what to think. Sora had already turned back to the path ahead to make sure he did not let the Teeny Ships crash into any asteroids. “So, while you were so concerned with finding me, you were perfectly fine with another girl suffer a potentially worse fate,” she softly scolded him.

Riku shrugged sheepishly. “I was pretty myopic back then. I can admit that now,” he replied in a half-joking tone.

Sora smacked the console in excitement, accidentally causing the Teeny Ships to shoot inward and bump against the Gummi Ship. Everyone glared at him, and he chuckled in embarrassment.

“So, I just had an idea,” he began, clearing his throat to get back into the right tone. “What Riku said reminded me of something we could do to get a lead on this search.”

“What do you have in mind?” Goofy asked, glancing over at him but making sure that he could still keep an eye on the targeting system.

“We ask someone old enough to have heard about these things and powerful enough to probably help us find them,” Sora answered. His grin faded when he was only met with silence and confused looks. He sighed. “Okay, guys. I’m thinking of someone who already has reality-warping powers and who has been around for tens of thousands of years. Someone who knew about the Keyhole, and would probably know about a lot more. Someone whom most of us met in the incident that Riku was just talking about.” Still more confusion. Sora hung his head, unable to believe that nobody could pick up what he was putting down. “The Genie of the Lamp! You know, big blue guy, PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER, itty-bitty-living-space? Teleports and jokes around and makes a bunch of references that nobody around him would understand in their context? Remember?”

Now Donald, Goofy and Jiminy understood. Kairi waved her hand in an “eh” way, since she had caught bits and pieces from when she was in Sora’s heart. Mickey simply said “huh”, since he only knew about the Genie from what Donald and Goofy had told him, as well as Jiminy’s second journal. Riku simply shrugged, as he had never actually met the friendly genie.

“We can just head for Agrabah, say hi to Aladdin and Jasmine, and ask Genie about the things that Maleficent’s crew is looking for,” Sora continued, already plotting a course for the desert world. The map calculated the paths that the asteroids and debris would take in floating through space and projected an ideal course to follow.

“Well, fellas, are we in agreement? We going to Agrabah?” Mickey asked the ship’s crew. Everyone nodded. “All right, then. Let’s go!”

“Just letting you guys know, this is going to be a sixteen-hour flight,” Sora said.

“Hey, Sora, Riku, do you think we should check in on our classes?” Kairi suggested.

“Good idea. Donald, can you take over for me?” Sora asked. The duck nodded and swapped with Sora in the copilot’s chair. Sora, Riku and Kairi went deeper into the Gummi Ship to check on the videos of their classes and check the mailbox for assigned homework.

Jiminy simply sat back in the cupholder and reopened his journal. He bookmarked a page in the STORY section for Agrabah, and even took the time to doodle a sketch of the world as it appeared on the computer display.


	46. Chapter 45: Riff Raff Street Rats

Sora opened the door and immediately felt the wind blow sand into his face. He led his friends out of the storage closet that they had beamed down into and stepped out into the bustling streets. The yellow-orange buildings of the city were constructed upon the desert sand. There were several market stalls lining various buildings, where merchants offered their wares. Once they had stepped out into the city they immediately felt the sweltering heat come down upon them.

“Phew! It’s a good thing we put on sunscreen before we came down!” Kairi exclaimed, fanning herself with her hand.

“Welcome to the grand city of Agrabah,” Sora said, spreading his arms out to gesture to the desert city. “Be wary of which pot you stand next to, keep an eye on your pockets, and always be ready to jump across rooftops. Come on. I’ll show you—”

He was cut off when he felt something shove him aside, knocking him to the ground. He picked himself up, Riku and Goofy helping him to his feet, and brushed the sand off of his clothes, and he even spat some of the silicon dust out of his mouth. He looked around to try and find whoever it was who rudely knocked him down, his hands balled up into fists in irritation. On his second look to the left, his expression of annoyance turned to one of slight fear and he backed out of the way as a burly man with a scimitar ran barreling at him.

“Stop! Thieves!” the man called. Like everyone else in the city, he had medium-brown skin, and he had a black beard and moustache and appeared to be missing a tooth. He wore a black sleeveless tunic with flared-up shoulders, white pants, a red sash around his waist, brown shoes with curled-up toes, a strap that went over his right shoulder and under his left arm, and a white turban. He was followed by two similarly-dressed men, though neither were built like him; one was thin and lanky while the other was quite fat.

Sora tilted his head slightly. “So, I guess these are the guards,” he guessed.

“You didn’t meet them when you were here before?” Riku asked, surprised.

“No. I think Jafar locked them up when he took over before we first arrived, along with most of the people, so it was a sort of a minimalist cast when we first got here,” Sora explained. “The last couple times, I guess we just didn’t run into them, and Jafar might have incapacitated them after he tricked the Peddler into letting him out.”

The crowd shuffled out of the way as the thieves and guards doubled back around and the chase continued through the streets.

“We should probably find someplace to duck until this blows over,” Mickey suggested. The others nodded and found a market stall to hide behind. Sora took a few apples and dropped some Munny in the shopkeeper’s hand as payment. He handed one each to Riku and Kairi and then began munching on the third.

“Hey, guys. Fancy meeting you here,” a voice came from behind Sora, startling him and almost causing him to choke on his snack. He turned around and saw a young man with brown eyes and messy black hair, who wore a purple vest, baggy white pants with a tan patch sewn on one leg, and a small red fez cap.

Sora grinned, then realized that he was no longer holding his apple. He glanced to his left and saw a small monkey with light-brown fur that wore a red-violet vest and a fez cap that was purple at the bottom and red at the top. The sticky-fingered monkey, Abu, was munching on Sora’s apple. Sora rolled his eyes, then turned his attention back to the former street rat.

“Good to see you, Aladdin,” Sora greeted, swinging his hand in and clasping Aladdin’s confidently. “How have things been? Staying out of trouble?”

“Ha! You know me. I can’t help but get into trouble. Discovering hidden treasure, saving Agrabah from neat-freak inventors, mud monsters and evil sorcerers, you know,” Aladdin boasted.

“Same here. Aladdin, I’d like you to meet Riku, Kairi, and Mickey,” Sora introduced his friends.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you all,” Aladdin said to the three newcomers.

“Likewise,” Riku returned.

“So, what brings you guys here?” Aladdin asked.

“A bunch of bad guys stirring up trouble with the Heartless again. This time they’re after a bunch of items that are some sort of key to a great power,” Sora explained. “We’re trying to stop them, but we don’t know how to catch up. We were thinking we’d ask Genie if he knows anything.”

“Huh. Not a bad idea,” Aladdin replied. Abu nodded and let out some squeaking noises that indicated that he agreed.

He glanced back out at the chaos in the streets. The party finally managed to get a good look at the thieves. One was a short, fat man with a thick moustache and chin-beard. He wore a baggy gray shirt, gray pants, a blue vest with flared shoulders, a red sash around his waist that wrapped over the vest, red shoes, and a turban with a white veil wrapping around the back of his head. The other one was tall and thin and had much darker skin and a bisected moustache. He wore a yellow robe, a green striped vest, a white hat, and a bronze earring.

Aladdin sighed. “Abis Mal and Haroud,” he identified. “Biggest thugs in Agrabah.”

Riku shook his head. “Doesn’t look like they’re very good at it,” he observed.

Sora held his hands up. “Hold on. That guy’s name is _Abis Mal_?” he checked.

“Yeah?” Aladdin answered, wondering what he was getting at.

Sora blinked, realizing that Aladdin did not understand what he was thinking. “I guess it’s funny in my language,” he muttered, giving up on the topic, though he took some satisfaction in hearing Kairi giggle.

“You think we should do something about it?” Mickey asked.

“I’ve got it,” Donald said, summoning his staff and twirling it around a bit. A wind funnel appeared around Abis Mal and Haroud, lifting them off of their feet and spinning them around. The guards stopped and stared in confusion. The wind carries sand into the air, wrapping it around the thieves. Moments later, the wind died down, and the thieves were dropped to the ground, spitting and coughing and covered in sand. The lead guard and the skinny guard hoisted them up and carted them away, while the fat guard returned the stolen goods.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” Aladdin said, amused. He turned back to the party. “Hey, how about I take you to the palace to meet the others?”

Everyone nodded immediately. “Lead the way, Aladdin,” Sora responded.

With that, Aladdin led the group through the streets as they made their way toward the palace.

* * *

“Well, I see nothing stays boring with you guys,” Aladdin commented, after Sora explained what had happened since they last met, in a way that did not reveal too much about the other worlds, of course. As for Aladdin, his adventures did not end after Jafar’s demise, and he had gone on many adventures and fought all sorts of villains over the last few months.

“And I see you’re staying one jump ahead as always,” Sora replied, chuckling.

“So, have the Heartless been an issue?” Riku asked.

Aladdin shook his head. “Not really. I mean, they’ve sometimes come out, but since Genie’s been a part of the team more often and Iago’s been keeping an eye on them from above, they’ve kept a low profile.”

Mickey nodded, smiling. “That’s good to hear,” he said. His smile faded when Aladdin put his arm out to the side, stopping them in their tracks. Aladdin scanned the ground ahead. Following his gaze, Riku and Mickey noticed the sand shifting irregularly in isolated areas, each one about two-and-a-half feet in diameter.

Everyone stepped back when six Heartless jumped out of the sand, each one brandishing a scimitar. They had blue skin, and they wore purple vests and baggy pants as well as numerous golden bangles, bracelets and rings. Their heads were wrapped up in bandages, exposing only a slit of black skin and gold eyes. The Bandit Heartless swung their swords around, possibly attempting to look intimidating.

Aladdin drew his own scimitar from his belt sash while the others summoned their weapons. Sora and Aladdin clashed blades with two of the Bandits, quickly throwing them off balance and cutting through them.

Seconds afterward, two enormous Heartless, not unlike the Large Bodies, materialized. They wore orange vests, green pants, yellow sashes around the waists, white soles, yellow arm bands, necklaces made of large off-white rocks, and similar-looking turbans. While they did not wear the same body armor as the Large Bodies, the Fat Bandits were just as resilient against frontal attacks.

Abu screeched in terror and leapt off of Aladdin’s back. He ran around the bandits and clambered up the side of a red pot. He lifted the lid and dropped himself into the pot, hoping that it would be a good hiding place.

Donald and Goofy ran around the Bandits and went straight for the Fat Bandits. Goofy ran around the back and hit one in the back with his shield. His enemy balled its fist, charged it up with fire, and swung his arm over and down, punching the ground and creating a shockwave that knocked Goofy back. Donald cast Blizzard at the other one, knocking it back.

Mickey jumped around two of the Bandits, parrying their strikes and keeping them off balance. Riku alternated between blocking whatever attacks one of those Bandits dealt and striking it. Kairi dodged around the other Bandit and stabbed at it several times with her Keyblade. Sora drew the attention of the other two Bandits and parried both scimitars while Aladdin ran past them and delivered quick slashes to their legs and arms. When one of them swung its sword down at Aladdin’s neck, Sora cast Fira, destroying it just in time, then spun around and vanquished the other Bandit. Riku, Kairi and Mickey backed their Bandits up against the wall and Kairi stabbed her Keyblade through the arm of one of them, pinning it to the wall. Mickey slashed through it, finishing it off. Riku locked blades with the other one but vanquished his opponent by launching Dark Fire underhanded at it while it was too busy pushing back against his Keyblade.

Meanwhile, Donald had managed to get a few Blizzard spells in, but he was hit by his foe’s swinging arm and had to heal, so he was now out of mana. He ran away when the Fat Bandit started to breathe fire. Mickey came to the rescue and shot a Pearl spell at it, blasting the Heartless into smoke. At the same time, Goofy defeated his opponent.

With the streets cleared, the party regrouped. Sora noticed that Goofy had suffered some burns and cast Cure to undo that. Aladdin gathered all of the Munny he had taken from the Heartless while he was strafing them and divided them evenly amongst everyone.

“Well, now that that’s over with,” Aladdin said, “let’s head on over to the palace. Come on, Abu!” The party started walking.

Abu clambered out of the pot and stopped, shivering. He looked back at the pot with a terrified expression. He had felt some sort of dark power in there. He had no idea what it was, but he was not eager to find out. He ran to rejoin Aladdin.


	47. Chapter 46: The Sultan of Agrabah

Aladdin led the party into the walled courtyard in front of the palace. As they approached the large door leading into the palace, their way was blocked by the muscular guard that they had seen earlier.

“Hold it!” the guard shouted, glaring down at Aladdin. He gave the others a suspicious look, but he mostly kept his eyes on Aladdin, giving the party the impression that they had a long-standing rivalry.

“What are you doing, street rat, bringing outsiders into the palace?” the guard questioned. Riku gave a contemplative nod, silently admitting that he had a valid point.

“Hey, Razoul. Don’t worry. These are Sora, Donald and Goofy, and their friends,” Aladdin explained. Mickey raised an eyebrow, doubting that his argument would be a viable enough excuse to let them in.

Razoul gave Sora a distrustful glance. “This runt is the so-called warrior who helped liberate Agrabah from the monsters?” he asked skeptically.

Sora rolled his eyes. “He and Jasmine aren’t much older than me,” he complained. To prove Aladdin’s claims before an argument escalated, he summoned his Keyblade, held it up above his head for a few seconds, then dismissed it. “Listen, could you tell Jasmine that we’re here? I’m sure she would be glad to see us.”

Razoul’s expression remained unchanged for a moment longer, then he started to turn around. “Very well. But stay right here!” he ordered. Sora, Donald and Goofy gave a salute. Razoul turned around and walked over to the doors. He pulled one open, stepped through, and promptly closed it behind him. As soon as the door was closed, Sora, Donald and Goofy brought their hands back down and stood at ease, and Riku and Kairi laughed at their gesture. Sora turned to them and shrugged playfully.

“So, you and that Razoul guy know each other?” Goofy asked Aladdin.

“For most of my life, I had to steal to survive. The last few years, the guards started catching up, and it usually ended up being Razoul taking charge, since he is captain of the guard and all,” Aladdin explained. “But he never really caught up. I guess he doesn’t really like it when a street rat half his size makes a fool out of him.”

“Understandable,” Riku said. “And I guess you becoming the hometown hero only exacerbated your rivalry with the guy who looked down on you for so long.”

“And you’re engaged to the princess, which means he can’t touch you, period!” Sora added, chuckling at the twist of fate.

They waited for several minutes longer before they saw the door open once again. Razoul marched out, working to keep an expression of either contempt or embarrassment, or possibly both, from crossing his face.

“My apologies. Right this way,” he said. He turned around and led the party into the palace.

The guests marveled at the ornate architecture and designs of the palace’s interior. Aladdin smiled when he noticed their amazement. “Pretty cool, right?” he asked. The others could only nod. Razoul scowled ahead of them.

A few minutes later, they approached a set of large double doors. A guard stood on either side. Razoul nodded to them and they each pulled a door open. As the doors were opened, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy got to see inside the throne room. The carpet on the floor extended into the room all the way up to a gold-colored throne.

Seated upon the throne was a fat old man with a large white beard. He wore a cream-colored robe, a cream-colored turban with a red gem and large blue feather inset, an ochre-colored sash slung over his neck, an ochre-and-blue striped belt, and brown shoes. Sora guessed that he must have been the Sultan. Next to him stood an attractive young woman wearing a light blue bedlah outfit with long poofy bustle pants and a midriff-baring top that had straps wrapping around her upper arms, leaving her shoulders bare, as well as a blue headband with a sapphire set into a gold frame, golden earrings, a gold necklace, and gold slippers. Her long black hair that extended down to her legs was tied into a low ponytail with a blue ribbon.

Razoul led the group into the throne room. As they drew nearer to the throne, the guests noticed a Bengal tiger sitting next to the woman.

The party stopped in front of the throne. Razoul dropped to one knee and bowed. Mickey, Donald and Goofy followed, as did Riku and Kairi.

“Hey, there,” Sora waved casually. The others looked at him in disbelief, with Razoul’s face even being stricken with horror. The tiger growled quietly at him. However, the Sultan, the woman and Aladdin simply chuckled.

“Calm down, Rajah. They’re friends,” the woman assured the tiger. “Sora, Donald, Goofy, it’s so good to see you!” She noticed Riku and gasped. “You—”

“He’s cool now!” Sora said rapidly, waving his hands in front of him, recalling how the Beast had reacted. “Don’t worry, Jasmine. He’s not with Maleficent and the Heartless anymore,” he assured her, this time speaking at a normal rate.

Princess Jasmine traded a glance with her father, and they chuckled. The Sultan gestured for them to stand up.

Sora gestured to his friends while still facing Jasmine and her father. “These are Riku and Kairi,” he introduced. Kairi gave a smile and a wave. “And this is Mickey Mouse, king of Disney Castle.”

Razoul gasped in embarrassment. “Forgive me. I did not realize you were visiting royalty,” he stammered. He bowed nervously, but Mickey waved his hand up, gesturing for him to remain standing.

“Well, I must say it is an honor to have you all in our company,” the Sultan greeted. “And I am sure that Razoul can understand that the heroes who liberated Agrabah from Jafar and defended us from the Heartless are all welcome here. Isn’t that right, Razoul?” He glanced at the guard mischievously. Razoul grinned nervously and nodded. “Now, what matter brings you here?”

Mickey stepped forward. “Your Highness, over the last few days, we have been traversing the lands to oppose an assortment of evildoers led by Maleficent,” he began.

At this point, Jasmine, who had been pondering Sora’s earlier choice of words, had a question. “But I thought Maleficent was dead,” she interjected.

“Right. She’s alive again, somehow,” Sora answered. “Months ago, in fact. Remember Pete? That big fat cat guy? He’s been helping her out through it all.” Jasmine mouthed “Oh”, understanding.

“You see, this band of villains is using the Heartless to cause trouble, and they are looking for a lot of ancient artifacts across all the words so they can access a dangerous power,” Mickey continued.

Jasmine and Razoul gasped. Aladdin raised his eyebrow in amazement. Even Rajah adopted a surprised expression. The Sultan looked from side to side nervously. They remained silent as they processed the information.

Abu shivered and looked around fearfully. Sensing something as he looked to the right, he scampered off and slipped through a door into the hallway.

* * *

If anyone were near the window, they would have heard a sound like metal scratching on stone. The sound persisted for several minutes, gradually growing closer. Finally, a spider-like leg threw itself over the window ledge and grabbed on. Several seconds later, another leg managed to throw itself over. It soon managed to pull itself up and inside. A red pot with four spider-like legs landed on the floor in the palace hallway. The lid turned around from side to side while on the lip of the pot, and it settled on ninety degrees to the left. It scurried down the hall. It heard footsteps coming from down the hall and ran over to a row of pots. It retracted its legs and landed at the end of the line, appearing like any other pot. A guard passed by, not noticing anything strange happening. A minute passed until the pot was certain that the way was clear. It popped its claws back out and resumed its trek down the hall. It resumed the process of hiding and waiting whenever a guard drew near.

The third time, the guard thought something was amiss. He opened the pot on the end of the row and peered inside. He saw nothing, though he did notice that it was unexpectedly dark within. Suddenly, he felt something grab him by the neck and pulled him down. His entire body fell into the pot, which trembled with energy. The Pot Spider continued its journey.

It passed by an open door, then doubled back and looked inside. The room was filled entirely with pots. It tapped the tips of its spider legs in excitement. Its lid flipped up and dark smoke bubbled from the opening. Blobs of darkness shot out and entered each of the pots. When a pot was filled with darkness, it rattled with the power. A moment after the last of the pots was empowered, a set of four spider legs sprouted from one of the pots. The original Pot Spider gestured with its legs, as if communicating with its newly-made brethren, then turned around and exited the room.

* * *

“Whoa, slow down, monkey! Run that by me again,” Iago said to Abu. Abu had found the macaw and screeched about what he had sensed, then dragged him by the wing down the hall. But now that he had gained his bearings, Iago had planted his feet and would not go any further until the monkey explained himself.

After hearing Abu screech more, Iago considered what he was hearing. “So, you felt something creepy and you need my help to check it out?” he parroted. Abu nodded. Iago shrugged. “Listen, pal. I’d be glad to help, but you can’t be so rough like that. Just stop and ask nicely, all right?” Abu nodded. “Great! Now, let’s see what’s making you so antsy.”

They crept down the hall for a few minutes, but stopped and hid behind a column when they heard a guard walking by. They peered around the column, waiting for the guard to leave. Instead, the guard stopped and turned his gaze to a row of pots. He walked over to the pot on the end and lifted the lid to investigate. Abu and Iago saw the guard getting pulled into the pot, sucked in completely even though he was too large to fit inside. The lid fell back into place. The animals gasped in horror.

When the pot stopped rattling, the lid lifted up a few inches. Black fingers poked out from inside, then arms and a head with large antennae rose out, the lid sitting unevenly on the head. The Neoshadow climbed out of the pot and landed on the floor. It gingerly put the lid back on the pot, then marched down the hall in Abu and Iago’s direction.

Rather than recognize the benefit of stealth and discretion in the face of a human-sized Heartless, Abu and Iago screamed in terror and fled in the way they had come.

* * *

“So, you were hoping to find clues about the artifacts by traveling to other lands?” The Sultan asked after Mickey had explained their quest and how they had no idea how to find the items.

“Actually, we came here thinking that Genie could tell us something,” Sora answered. “Considering how long he’s been around and how many times he’s seen the world develop, we were sure he would at least have heard something.”

“Well, how about we ask him?” Aladdin suggested. “He’s napping right now, but I can wake him up for you.”

“I didn’t know that Genies needed sleep,” Goofy commented.

“Well, remember, he did spend hundreds of years at a time waiting for someone to rub his lamp, so yeah, I guess he would use some of that time to sleep,” Aladdin replied. “I’ll get him now.”

Before he could do anything, however, everyone heard monkey screeches and parrot screams and turned to see Abu running and Iago flying in, both in a panic. Abu ran up to Aladdin, who caught him up in his arms. The monkey chattered as he tried to explain what was going on. Iago was somehow less clear, stammering “Hear… Hear…. Pot… eating guy…” Sora, Riku and Kairi traded befuddled glances.

All became mostly clear a few seconds later, when dozens of Pot Spiders poured out of the hallway and surrounded everyone. A few Neoshadows joined the Pot Spiders, and everybody found themselves surrounded by Heartless.

A Corridor of Darkness opened in front of the center group of Heartless, and Loki stepped out, this time wearing a gold helmet with large curled horns on top.

“Greetings, royals of Agrabah. I am Loki, of Asgard, and I must say it has been a long time since I overthrew a kingdom,” the trickster god boasted.


	48. Chapter 47: The Genie Trap

“I’m sorry, but we still don’t know what Asgard is,” Sora said bluntly. “Could you elaborate a little, maybe?”

Loki gritted his teeth, then took a deep breath to calm himself down. “Very well. My father is the All-Father of Asgard, one of the Nine Realms which include this realm Midgard.”

The audience traded glances with one another. “So, by ‘Midgard’, do you mean just Agrabah or all of the worlds?” Goofy asked.

Loki sighed. “I was but a child when your World became divided, and my people have included it in that count then. So yes, I mean all of the worlds.”

“All-Father? So, you’re like the prince? Shouldn’t you be leading your own world’s army?” Sora asked.

Loki shifted his gaze. “Actually, no… I’m in exile because my father and brother did not approve of my recent actions and my attempt to wipe out the enemy.”

Sora smirked. “Oh, so you never even had claim to the throne and you don’t even have any of your royal resources,” he taunted.

Donald chuckled mockingly. “Yeah, not even a real army!” he added.

“SILENCE!” he shouted. “You dare to make a mockery of me? I am a god! And I do have an army, one the likes of which you have never seen.”

Unfazed, Sora crossed his arms and gave him a cocky smirk. “Really? Then why didn’t you bring them?” he asked.

Kairi giggled. “Yeah. They might be a bit more intimidating than some ceramic jars.”

“It’s… not their time yet,” was all Loki could say.

Aladdin raised his eyebrow. “It doesn’t look like you came here with enough to start an invasion, so you’re not here to pick a fight,” he observed. “What are you after?”

“Astute deduction, commoner,” Loki commended. “No, I’m here for something that would waste less effort for all of us. I hope you would be willing to cooperate and offer me what I seek.”

Jasmine clenched her fists. “How dare you come in here uninvited, attack our guards with your Heartless and make demands of us?! If you know what is good for you, you will leave and never return!” she challenged.

Loki let out a small chuckle. “Oh, I like her,” he said.

Mickey stared him down. “Tell us what you’re after!” he demanded.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s how we play this game. If you try to do things by force, then you may force my hand.”

“Then what game would you like to play?” Kairi asked with a thin layer of derision in her voice.

“He’s stalling,” Riku interjected. Everyone turned to face him. Loki’s expression went blank as he realized that the young man had seen right through him. “He’s buying time while one of his buddies looks for something. What is it?” He entered his battle stance but did not summon his Keyblade, choosing instead to threaten action before outright interrogation.

The answer came in the form of a flying brown moray eel. Riku and Kairi eyed it curiously, unsure what to make of it. Sora, Donald and Goofy glared at it, remembering Ursula’s pets Flotsam and Jetsam, and guessing that this one filled a similar purpose. Aladdin and Jasmine gasped. Abu and Iago screamed. The others in the party quickly realized that the people of Agrabah were quite familiar with this creature.

Loki smiled when he saw the eel. “Why, hello, Xerxes. Have you found it?” he asked.

His smile faded when the eel shook his head. “No luck, no luck,” he said apologetically. “The lamp is nowhere to be found.”

Aladdin let out a laugh. “You want Genie? Good luck!” he mocked. “Even if you did find him, he’s not going to do what you want. He’s free. He has no master!”

Loki smirked. “Oh, but I don’t want his _wishes_ , boy. I want his _power_!” He studied Aladdin for a moment. “And I believe I know where I can get it. He has the lamp! Attack!”

The Heartless rushed forward. Everyone who had a weapon took it out. Sora raised his Keyblade above his head and shouted “Magnega!” A vortex appeared a few feet above his head. All of the Pot Spiders were lifted up and pulled into it. A third of them shattered against each other and vanished. Mickey shot Pearl at a few while Donald cast Thundaga, and soon they were all vanquished.

The Neoshadows remained, but Riku, Goofy, Kairi, and Razoul engaged them. In spite of the Heartless using gymnastic maneuvers to attack and dodge their opponents’ strikes, it was clear that they stood no chance.

Aladdin swung his scimitar at Loki, but the trickster god blocked it with his scepter. Loki ducked out of the way and sidestepped around him. Aladdin spun around and slashed back at him, though Loki dodged that as well.

“Shame,” Loki said, confusing Aladdin. “I would have thought that a thief would think to keep his pockets secured.” He pulled his hand out from behind him, a golden oil lamp dangling by the handle from his little finger.

Aladdin did a double take and felt his pockets. He sighed and shook his head. “Man, I really need to keep a better grip on that thing,” he grumbled. He threw himself at Loki and swung his hand out to grab the lamp, but Loki stepped away, letting him stumble forward.

Loki dismissed his staff and swung the lamp up and caught the base of it in his now-free hand. He cleared his throat. “Spirit of the lamp, come forth!” he shouted, fiercely rubbing the smooth metal.

The gold began emanating a bright aura. The lamp shook violently in his hands. Blue smoke poured out of the spout, lightning flashing around the clouds. The clouds took shape and solidified into a humanoid form. The being had a pear-shaped head that was entirely bald save for a black ponytail of hair and a beard. It wore a golden band on either wrist and a red belt sash around its waist. Below the sash, legs did not form, it had a wispy tail that was a slightly darker shade of blue than the rest of the body.

The Genie of the Lamp stretched his arms and yawned. “Woo, Al, you just woke me from quite the nap,” he said. He looked around at the group that was gathered. “Hey, Sora! My man! Keyblade master extraordinaire! How go things?”

“Well, I must say he is more talkative than I was told,” Loki commented.

Genie leaned down to study the stranger. “Well, if it isn’t one of the Norse gods or whatever people call you,” he said. Sora crossed his arms and shared a knowing grin with Mickey. He might actually have been onto something with his hunch.

“How nice of you to grace us with your presence, spirit of the lamp,” Loki greeted with a flourish. “I shall be taking your power now.”

“Oh, yeah?! Well, here’s a taste of some power!” Genie shouted. He spun around and transformed so that he was now dressed like a 1920’s-era gangster and carried a Tommy gun. Gripping the handle and trigger with one hand and holding the barrel up with the other, Genie pointed it at the trickster god. “What do you have to say to this, see?”

Unfazed, Loki pulled out an emerald crystal and held it up for all to see.

Genie gasped in horror and changed back to his normal appearance. “The Crystal of Ix!” he exclaimed.

Donald ran in and shot a Firaga spell at Loki, but the trickster god held the crystal in the spell’s path. As soon as the fireball hit the crystal, it was absorbed into the reflecting surfaces. Donald, Sora and Mickey gasped when they saw this.

“Ah, yes. The Crystal of Ix. A loan from an acquaintance. Ensnares any being, magical or otherwise, though it certainly works better with magical entities.” The fire burned within the crystal for a few seconds before fizzling out. “Not even a genie can escape it. Shall I show you?” He pointed the crystal at Genie, who was trying to back away. The crystal glowed with a bright green light and a laser shot out of the tip.

Genie covered his face as he realized that there was no escaping the crystal’s magic. Almost everyone else watched helplessly, aware that there was nothing they could do to stop the crystal from imprisoning Genie.

Almost everyone. That same amount of people watched in shock as the one other person present jumped in the way of the laser just before it reached Genie. King Mickey was hit square in the chest with the magic beam. The spell enveloped him in green light and slowly pulled him toward Loki. The laser wrapped around him into a sphere, which then shrank and zipped right into the crystal. When the Crystal of Ix stopped glowing, it showed Mickey trapped inside.

“Mickey!” Riku called out.

“Your Majesty!” Sora shouted at the same time.

Loki examined his catch. “Not quite what I was hoping for, but that should do,” he said.

He was thrown back when a large red spring-loaded boxing glove hit him in the face. When he got up and regained his bearings, he saw said boxing glove change back into Genie’s hand, which launched a series of fireworks all over the place.

“Oh, no you don’t! I have had enough of that Crystal for an immortal lifetime! Now, let him go or taste the rainbow!” Genie shouted, launching fireworks blasts of multiple colors all around him, as well as a few Fire and Gravity spells directed specifically at Loki.

The trickster god danced around to avoid the attacks, only to see Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Aladdin running straight at him, all of them baring their weapons to attack. Understanding that he had to retreat, he threw the crystal into the air. Xerxes air-swam in and caught it between his teeth.

“Go bring that to your master, worm,” Loki ordered. Xerxes nodded and sailed away. “I’m afraid this is where we part ways. May we meet again.” With that, he conjured a Corridor of Darkness and backed into it.

Abu screeched and leapt at Xerxes, but he could not go high enough. Iago could and soared right for the eel, but Xerxes ducked out of the way. Rajah lunged and swiped at him, but the eel narrowly avoided that. Making off with only a scratch across his tail, Xerxes flew out the window.

“Tch!” Riku cursed. “We have to follow the eel!” Sora and Kairi nodded in agreement.

Donald had already started running for the door. “Hurry, before it gets away!” he shouted. Goofy began to follow him.

“No need,” Aladdin said, causing the wizard and knight to stop and all eyes to turn on him. “I know exactly where he’s going.”


	49. Chapter 48: Into the Land of the Black Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now here comes some fanservice for those of you who were fans of the Aladdin TV show. This is probably one of the only Disney Afternoon TV shows that I can fully appreciate in my writing, since I hadn't really watched most of the others. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Be sure to let me know what you think. But constructive criticisms only; no flames, you hear? The desert's hot enough as it is.

The party studied the diorama of a city of black stone, which Genie had conjured up on top of a table. The building models sat on a layer of black sand. Sora, Kairi and Donald were engrossed in the makeup and color of the stone and sand. Riku and Goofy studied the road maps, building levels, and vantage points. Aladdin and Jasmine did not need to study the diorama, as they were quite familiar with the location.

“So, this Mozenrath guy, you’ve fought him before?” Sora asked.

Aladdin nodded, a scowl on his face. “We faced off a couple times over the last few months. He possesses powerful dark magic and controls an army of undead Mamluks, but he wants more power,” he explained.

“Such as the phenomenal cosmic power of a genie,” Sora finished.

“Particularly one who’s been freed and whose magic is no longer bound by the restrictions of his enslavement,” Riku added.

“And if he’s working with Maleficent and the Heartless, then he’s certainly capable of causing a lot of trouble on the way,” Kairi noted.

Donald frowned at the city model. “So, how do we save the King?” he asked.

“We have to assume that Mozenrath is expecting us, and is in fact leading us into a trap,” Jasmine said. She pointed to a bunch of brown sticks with green tips interspersed around the diorama. “He has devices that detect magic at these points. They are designed to tune out dark magic, because otherwise they would light up whenever a Mamluk patrol drew near.”

“We should do everything we can to stay out of sight and hope we can avoid the trap altogether,” Aladdin added.

Riku crossed his arms pensively. “You, Aladdin and Goofy don’t have any magic to sense, but the rest of us do,” he said. “If we don’t get into trouble, we should be able to suppress our magic so it was like we were out of mana. But that still leaves Genie. Also, you and Kairi are Princesses of Heart, with some pretty strong light magic that I don’t think we’ll be able to just shut down; you’ll be like walking neon signs.” He went silent for a moment longer. “But I think I can cover up your scents with my dark powers.”

“So, I guess I’m staying here?” Genie asked. “I mean, I’m not exactly one for stealth.” To demonstrate, he changed shape so that he was wearing a rainbow-colored costume and holding a set of musical instruments. “I’d only give us away,” he lamented.

Aladdin shook his head. “No. Mozenrath and Loki could just come back and nab you while we’re gone,” he said. “We’re going to have to take you with us.”

Goofy punched his fist into his palm, an idea sparking. “Donald and I can hold onto the lamp!” he suggested. “Then we’ll draw their focus, head right to where they’re keeping the King and spring the trap before you guys get there.”

Donald nodded, agreeing with the plan. “Yeah! And we’ll make it look like we’re trying to not be seen, even though that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he added.

“Then the rest of us will follow from different sides of the city, making sure we don’t get caught,” Sora said.

“Be careful, everyone,” Aladdin warned. “Mozenrath is not someone we can underestimate. He’s a cunning and powerful foe who makes Jafar look like an amateur.”

Sora nodded. “Understood,” he replied. He looked out the window at the late afternoon sun. “We should probably get going and get to the Desert of Black Sand before they start to suspect that we’re coming up with an elaborate rescue plan.”

Everyone else agreed to this. “Don’t worry friends, I can get us out there, and you can walk the rest of the way under the cover of night!” Genie said. He vanished and reappeared on the balcony, taking the form of an eight-seater convertible sports car with rocket thrusters on the back. “Strap in, everyone.”

“Good luck,” the Sultan said as the party of seven, plus Abu and Iago, climbed into the magic rocket car. Jasmine hugged her father before climbing in and buckling up next to Aladdin.

“Uh, does he do this a lot?” Donald asked, noticing Aladdin and Jasmine’s second-nature familiarity with Genie’s transformation.

“Definitely a lot,” Aladdin answered.

Then the rocket car levitated until it was above the palace, then shot off into the distance, vanishing on the horizon within moments.

* * *

Loki walked into the darkened citadel’s throne room to find Mozenrath slouching in the seat, examining the Crystal of Ix with a bored expression. Xerxes floated next to Mozenrath, a nervous and fearful expression on his face. Loki bowed politely but Mozenrath held his hand up, gesturing for him to save it.

“I’m disappointed, Loki,” Mozenrath said. “I expected a sorcerer such as yourself to be able to pull off such a simple task as trapping the Genie in the Crystal. You point, and you shoot. Point and shoot. That was all. But you got the wrong target, and you didn’t even bother getting the right target after that.”

“With all due respect, it was half a second from getting the Genie, but the mouse king decided to be a hero and jump in the way of the beam. Then they retaliated and forced me into retreat,” Loki explained, a biting tone in his voice. He did not like to be disrespected. “Besides, I recall rumors that you found yourself trapped in the Crystal,” he retorted.

Mozenrath turned his head to glare at Loki. He did not like to be reminded of that. Xerxes snickered, but stopped when Mozenrath reached over and wrung his hand around his neck.

“Well, then, since this was your job, how would you suggest fixing it?” Mozenrath challenged.

Loki smirked, glad that he asked. He had actually been thinking the whole way from Agrabah. “It’s quite simple, really. We use the mouse as bait and set a trap for them,” he said. “And as an added bonus, while we have them tied up in here…”

Mozenrath grinned wickedly. “We head back to Agrabah and storm the city unopposed,” he finished.

Loki smirked. “They know about your security system, I trust?” Mozenrath and Xerxes nodded. “Then there is the chance that they will leave the Genie behind to avoid him triggering the crystals, in which case we can trap him when we go back. But if they take him or send him elsewhere to avoid such an eventuality, we can still isolate and trap him and then absorb him into the Crystal.”

Mozenrath conjured an orb of darkness in his hand. “Excellent. Now, it will take some time before they arrive. Here. Deliver this to the ‘guest chamber’, if you will.” The orb of darkness formed into a Possessor. “It should be ready with one more of these in its system.”

Loki took the Possessor and regarded it with amusement. “Very well. I do look forward to our plan’s success,” he said before turning around and leaving the chamber.

* * *

Like Genie said, night had fallen as the party trekked across the black sand. The air was cool, a stark contrast from the midday swelter in Agrabah, but it had also been warm at the entrance to the Cave of Wonders, which Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Aladdin had also visited at night, so the refreshing cool was certainly a surprise. The only sources of illumination were the moonlight and the faint glow of the crystals that Mozenrath had installed to detect foreign magic.

Riku put either hand on Kairi and Jasmine’s shoulders. He closed his eyes and took some deep breaths. In moments, a dark aura had wrapped around the two women, though it was clear that neither of them felt it affect them, meaning that it only sat over them.

“Now, that’s great! We can sneak in, grab the mouse guy and get out without Mozenrath even knowing we’re here!” Iago exclaimed. Aladdin and Jasmine facepalmed, realizing that they probably should have left the loudmouthed bird back in Agrabah.

Riku shook his head lightly. “Not with you yapping like you have a megaphone,” he muttered. He made a pinching gesture with his hand, almost like an “OK” sign but with his finger and thumb an inch apart, and tilted his hand counterclockwise. Iago tried to ask him what he was doing, but no sound came out. There was not even the sound of his wings flapping.

“Wow. What was that?” Aladdin asked, impressed.

“Just a ‘Silence’ charm,” Riku answered. “It’s a weak enough spell that it should easily hide under my dark aura.” Iago glared at him as he realized what had happened.

“If only we could do that on a regular basis,” Aladdin mused, smirking. Jasmine nodded in agreement while Abu laughed from on top of Aladdin’s shoulder.

The group of Riku, Kairi, Jasmine, and Iago looked at both of the other groups. Sora stood with Aladdin and Abu, while Donald stood next to Goofy and zipped Genie’s lamp up into his hat. Donald and Goofy saluted, and the other two groups waved each other off.

“Good luck, guys,” Sora said. Riku nodded back. Sora and Aladdin walked off to the left while Riku, Kairi, Jasmine, and Iago went around to the right. Donald and Goofy turned around to look at the dark city filled with undead warriors and, most likely, Heartless. They waited a few minutes before they made their way to the first buildings.

Slowly and silently, they crept past one building, staying close to the wall. When they reached the edge, Goofy took a quick peek around the corner, but drew back when he saw the first of the guards.

The Mamluk resembled a lanky human, dressed in garb that was somewhat similar to the guards in Agrabah. It even carried a scimitar. However, it became quite clear from a single glance that this creature was not human. Its skin was blue and partially-decayed. Its features were gaunt, its flesh conforming to the shape of the bones underneath. Its lips were folded up around the jaws like an elderly man without teeth. Its eyeballs were jaundiced and its pupils and irises were shrunken to pinpoints. Goofy gulped, horrified by the sight. Aladdin had been spot-on with his description of the zombified creature.

Goofy peeked around the corner again, and saw that the Mamluk continued its lumbering route. Figuring that if its arthritic steps made it tedious and slow to walk, it would take several seconds to turn, he beckoned for Donald to follow him as he crossed the street over to the next building. This process continued for a good while. They made sure that the Mamluks were far enough away that they would not notice the crystals glowing at the top of the security posts until they were already gone. However, there were times when they came upon a corner just as the zombie was passing by and the magic-sensing crystal was right at the corner they were approaching. When the Mamluk turned to investigate and saw them, Goofy grabbed it, ripped it to pieces with surprising and unnerving ease, and buried it in the ground. As far as he and Donald could tell, no one was the wiser. With that obstacle cleared, they made their way to the citadel at the center of the city.

* * *

Sora and Aladdin looked over the edge of the roof of one of the tallest buildings, watching the Mamluks make their rounds. They watched Donald and Goofy’s path, and saw that they had almost reached the citadel with little difficulty. Riku, Kairi and Jasmine were halfway there on their side.

“So, when Donald and Goofy go in the front and spring the trap, Riku, Kairi and Jasmine will head in from the side, then we’ll drop in from above,” Aladdin reminded Sora.

Sora nodded in understanding. “We’ll wait a few minutes after they’re all inside, then slip in,” he said back. Aladdin nodded in agreement.

There was silent for a few more minutes as they watched and waited for the others to make it inside. Aladdin flicked dates into the air, which Abu caught and ate. Sora simply stared blankly. He was not used to stealth missions.

“So, you guys have a date set?” Sora asked out of the blue.

Aladdin was taken by surprise. “What?” he asked.

“For the wedding,” Sora replied. “It’s been over a year now. Is anything big happening anytime soon?”

Aladdin took a while to answer. “I guess we’re waiting until everything’s figured out. We still have plenty of things to sort through, and we have a lot of enemies ready to cause trouble. Like Mozenrath, and those two crooks Abis Mal and Haroud, for starters. And we’ve been going on some diplomatic missions to the other desert kingdoms. I guess we’re just waiting until we know where to go with it. Or making sure we can survive until then.”

Sora nodded. “Makes sense. You need to find a balance between the street rat, the prince and the hero.”

Aladdin raised an eyebrow. “You have something on your mind?” he asked.

This time it was Sora who hesitated in answering. “After we finished our last big adventure and reunited with our friends, that was supposed to be it. We go home, reunite with our families, and settle in the peace. But I’ve missed hanging out with Donald and Goofy, exploring worlds, fighting monsters, and helping people. I should have been glad to be home, and believe me, I was, but I was anxious for another adventure. So, when the King sent us the letter calling us out for this, I jumped at the chance.”

“I see. I think I have an idea sort of like that. While I love palace life and my life with Jasmine, I still head back out to the city to jump across rooftops and make the guards and some of the crooks look like fools. I don’t think I’m the right person to ask about your issue, but maybe you should try to find a balance.”

“A balance?” Sora asked.

“A balance between your time at home and your time out adventuring,” Aladdin clarified. “You’ve only been back home once after two years of this.”

“One year, technically,” Sora corrected. “I slept for a full year. Long story.”

“You’ve only been back home once after a year of adventuring. You weren’t used to the change. And from what I understand, when your journey started, you didn’t exactly have a place to go back to. You need to figure it out for yourself, where you fit at home and out here.”

Sora smiled and nodded. “Thanks, Aladdin.”

They noticed that Donald and Goofy had already entered the citadel while Riku, Kairi, Jasmine, and Iago were approaching their entrance. “We should probably start heading over there,” Aladdin said.

“Yup,” Sora replied. They looked down to see if there were any Mamluks who might see them (which they doubted they would), then walked back across the roof. Once they were on the other side, they turned back around and sprinted. When they reached the edge, they leapt across the gap to the next roof. They continued running across and jumping between roofs until the final jump. The citadel stood taller than most of the other buildings, but fortunately they could find sufficient ledges on the wall. Sora guided Abu to climb into his hood so that he would not fall off. Sora and Aladdin shared confident glances, then sprinted across the roof and jumped. They hit the wall and grabbed onto one of the ledges. After taking a few seconds to catch their breath, they began climbing up the wall. When they reached the top, they pulled themselves over the ledge and rolled themselves onto the roof.

Sora and Aladdin brought themselves to their feet and Abu climbed out of Sora’s hood and stood on his shoulder. They all started laughing. When the laughter had died down, they remembered they were trying to be sneaky and shushed each other.

* * *

Jasmine led Riku, Kairi and Iago through the corridors until they came into the grand hall of the citadel. They saw Donald and Goofy standing in the middle of the room, but there was no trap that had been sprung. They stepped into the room, confused. As they did so, they heard a sound like stone scraping against stone for a few seconds, but otherwise nothing happened.

“What’s going on?” Kairi asked, her voice kept to a whisper.

Donald and Goofy shrugged. “Gawrsh, we came in here and heard that scraping stone sound, but nothing happened,” Goofy said.

“They must’ve wanted to make sure we were all here first,” Riku guessed, realizing the extent of the trap. “Which means we can go find Mickey before Sora and Aladdin get here and avoid the trap altogether.” He smiled, thinking that he had the god of mischief and the cunning sorcerer beat.

“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be so easy.” Everyone turned to see Loki and Mozenrath. The ruler of the Desert of Black Sand held the Crystal of Ix, the shrunken mouse still inside, in his left hand. Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy noticed that Mozenrath’s right hand was gloved while his left hand was bare, which made them wonder why he did not simply hold the crystal in his gloved hand. Donald hypothesized that either his right hand or his glove was magic and he was planning on using it for offensive purposes.

“Thank you for bringing the Genie here. That was thoughtful of you,” Mozenrath said, a wicked grin on his face. “I’m sure your king would be happy to have some company. Loki, would you mind letting the Genie out of his lamp?”

“Done,” Loki replied, all of a sudden holding and unzipping Donald’s hat. Everyone looked at Donald and they were surprised to find that Loki had indeed taken Donald’s hat while no one was looking. In fact, they had assumed that the trickster had not even moved from his original position.

Loki took the lamp out of the unzipped hat and rubbed it. Unable to resist the pull, Genie appeared out of the spout. He looked around and gasped in horror to find he was hovering over Loki and Mozenrath, and Mozenrath still had the crystal.

“What did I tell you? When I want something, I take it,” Mozenrath bragged, raising his hand to point the crystal at Genie.

“Magnega!” Suddenly, the crystal was ripped out of Mozenrath’s hand. The confused sorcerer looked up to see what had happened. Sora and Aladdin stood up at the skylight, and Sora was holding his Keyblade, ready for a fight.

Sora caught the crystal in his free hand. He regarded it for a split second. “I gotcha, your Majesty. Don’t worry,” he assured Mickey, not sure if he could hear. He dropped the crystal and then stepped off of the ledge after it. He swung his Keyblade down at it with all his might and hit it with the blunt end of the weapon. The force sent the crystal straight down to the floor, where it shattered on impact. A sphere of green light rose from the crystal, taking a few seconds to expand. When it dissipated, Mickey Mouse dropped to the ground, landing on all fours. He took a few seconds to catch his breath. Donald, Goofy and Riku ran to his side.

Sora and Aladdin landed on the floor and pointed their weapons at the two villains. “Game’s up, Mozenrath!” Aladdin said.

Mozenrath was somewhat taken aback by the turn of events, but a smirk soon appeared on his face. “I wouldn’t count on that. Listen. Take a look around,” he retorted.

Confused, everyone listened. They heard the same stone-scraping-on-stone noise and, on looking around realized that the section of floor they were standing on was sinking into the ground. The trap was being sprung by all of their weight on the platform at the same time!

A force field pushed the party into the center, where they crashed together and landed in a heap. Looking up, Sora gasped as he saw a semi-spherical cage materialize above them and drop around them.

They stood up, untangling themselves with some difficulty, and ran to the bars. They tried to move the cage, but even with all their might it refused to budge. Riku, Mickey and Kairi tried to summon their Keyblades, but nothing happened. Sora tried calling his Keyblade, which he had dropped when hit with the force field and sat outside of the cage, but nothing happened.

“You like it?” Loki asked rhetorically, amused. “Its special magic cuts off the link between this plane and the dimension where your weapons vanish to. It looks like you’re stuck in there.”

“Don’t worry, Al! I’ll get you out!” Genie shouted. He flew toward the cage but crashed and flattened himself against an invisible wall. He dropped out of flight, his blue tail transforming into a pair of legs with red shoes, and landed a few feet down on a concave surface. “What the…?”

Loki waved his hand and an invisibility glamour faded, revealing Genie to be inside a giant bottle, which floated softly to the ground. A Fat Bandit appeared and put a cork over the opening of the bottle.

“Are you ever not going to fall for that?” Loki quipped dryly. “But how are you going to take his power after this?” he asked Mozenrath.

“That was only a small piece of the full Crystal. There’s more where that came from,” the sorcerer explained. Loki nodded and smirked.

Abu screeched some angry words, and Iago attempted to spew out a range of expletives, but still no sound came out.

“Huh. About time someone shut that bird up. Well, I’d hate to leave you, but we’re looking for something in Agrabah, and we’re going to find it, even if we have to destroy it,” Mozenrath said.

“Oh yeah? How are you going to do that?” Aladdin asked.

Mozenrath whistled and shouted “Sirocco!” A blue wolf-like creature with a pale mane around its neck that grew so far that it resembled a scarf leapt in. It had a Heartless emblem on the tip of its snout. “Meet Sirocco, the wind jackal. A fierce demon, I found him, captured him, and… trained him until he was completely loyal to me. Then I started fusing him with Possessors, slowly transforming him while still disciplining him until he became a Heartless, at which point he is still loyal to me. Now, Sirocco, destroy!” He gestured to a stone pillar. The jackal lunged at the target and spun around it, moving so fast that it was only a whirling blur. Within seconds, the pillar crumbled to dust. The jackal stopped moving and landed on its feet, then snarled at the captive heroes. Mozenrath smirked confidently. “Sirocco can reduce an entire kingdom to dust. It should only be a few hours before the entire city of Agrabah is sand, all save for the object of our interest.”

Jasmine and Kairi gasped in horror. Sora, Riku and Mickey glared at the villains. Aladdin clenched his fists around the metal bars. “You won’t get away with this, Mozenrath!” he shouted.

“Good luck trying to stop me!” Mozenrath retorted confidently. He snapped his fingers and dozens of Heartless, from Shadows to Bandits to Fat Bandits, materialized. “Have fun,” he said to the monsters. He and Loki exited the room, the sorcerer beckoning for the Heartless jackal to follow.

The party stood there, unable to access their weapons, watching their enemies go, while the Heartless closed in on them.


	50. Chapter 49: Sirocco the Wind Demon

It was not long before the first Shadows crept through the space between the bars. They crawled toward the unarmed heroes. One of them prepared to pounce on Sora, but Sora grabbed its left shoulder with his left hand and the right side of its head with his right hand. He brought both hands toward each other, pulling the body and head in opposite directions with them. There was a popping sound and the Shadow dissipated into smoke.

“Remember, everyone. We may not have our weapons, but we do have our strength and fighting skills, and some of us have our magic!” Mickey said. To demonstrate, he shot a Pearl spell at one of the Shadows, vanquishing it.

Donald nodded and shot Blizzard at another Shadow. Riku destroyed another with a Dark Fire spell and Kairi took another out with a Thunder spell. Turning to the imprisoned Genie, she came up with an idea. She held her hand out toward him and concentrated on what she was trying to do.

When the Shadows were gone, the Bandits slipped between the bars, with much difficulty. One of them swung its sword at Sora, but he ducked under it and kicked the Heartless in the chest. Mickey jumped over another attacker and, grabbing it by the head as he came back down, pulled it down with him. Goofy punched another several times in the gut until it fell down, then Donald jumped up and down on top of it over and over.

Aladdin nimbly dodged the attacks of another Bandit and grabbed it by the wrist. He wrestled with the Heartless until he managed to steal its scimitar. “And we have _their_ weapons!” he told the others. Remembering that the swords vanish with the Heartless when they are slain, Aladdin simply kicked the Heartless whose sword he stole and then chopped off the head of a Heartless behind him. He swung the sword at one of the bars, but it only made a small dent and dulled the blade where it met. Giving up on that plan, Aladdin sliced down to the forehead of the Bandit from whom he had stolen the scimitar. As he suspected, the sword vanished as soon as the Heartless had been destroyed.

Soon, all of the Bandits had been eliminated. The Fat Bandits looked around at each other, not sure what to do. One of them inhaled, resolving to burn them to a crisp with flame breath, but Donald destroyed it with Blizzaga. One of the others spat a fireball at Riku, but he simply pulled up a wall and let the fireball bounce back at it, sending it flying. This convinced them to go for a direct approach, in close range. One of them charged right at them, but forgot about the cage and stopped when it hit them, though this caused the metal to rattle. Two more grabbed onto the bars and tried to rip them apart, but this seemed to be counterproductive.

At this point, Sora noticed Kairi and wondered what she was doing. He followed her gaze and saw the giant bottle floating ten feet in the air, suspended in a transparent sphere. Genie seemed to be looking around in confusion.

“Prepare to shield yourselves, guys,” Kairi warned. Everyone saw what she was doing and realized what was about to happen, so they were prepared when she shouted “Gravira!”

The g-forces pressed down on the bottle, breaking the Zero Gravity spell, and pushing it right to the ground. The magic users barely had time to cast Reflega when the bottle shattered into a thousand pieces on the ground. The glass shards scattered outward, slicing through the Heartless and leaving only two left.

Genie grew to giant size, letting out a booming laugh. “Nice move, kid! Now, let me take care of these guys for you,” he said. He leaned over the cage and looked down at the now-terrified Fat Bandits. “You know, I was considering whether to sign you up for Weight Watchers or The Biggest Loser, but I think I’ll just do this.” He extended to enormous index fingers and poked down on the Heartless, squashing them flat. When he lifted his fingers, there was nothing left.

With the enemy out of the way, Genie transformed himself into a crane and latched a hook onto the top of the cage. Then, cranking his arm like a winch, he raised the cage up, freeing the party.

Sora summoned his Keyblade back to him, and Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi conjured their weapons as well. “Thanks, Genie,” Aladdin said. He went to pick up his scimitar.

“No problemo, Al. Just glad to be of help,” Genie replied modestly.

“We need to get back to Agrabah,” Jasmine reminded everyone. 

“She’s right,” Riku said. “Let’s get out of here!” All in agreement, they ran for the door, Sora and Riku in the lead.

Hearing a sort of ragged breathing from up ahead, Riku shot Sora a cautious glance and readied his Keyblade. Sora nodded and did the same. As they passed through the doorway, two scimitar blades swung around towards them at neck level. The Keyblade wielders blocked the attacks with their Keyblades and pushed hard enough to knock the swords out of their wielders’ hands.

Or, that was what would have happened if said wielders’ wrist tendons were stronger than their grip. What actually happened was that the Mamluks’ hands broke off and fell to the ground, the fingers still wrapped around the sword handles. Sora and Riku turned to face their would-be-ambushers and delivered swift retaliation. Sora sliced across the stomach region, then swept his enemy’s legs out from beneath it, causing both halves of the undead warrior to tumble to the ground. Riku slashed vertically, bifurcating the Mamluk cleanly.

When the others got outside, they took a quick look at the enemies that had been placed as a contingency in the instance that they did manage to escape from the cage. Kairi looked queasy, but she recovered. Abu stuck his tongue out in disgust.

“Alright, guys. Not a moment to lose!” Aladdin said. Genie nodded and retook his rocket car form. Everyone climbed in and buckled up.

Iago, secured next to Riku, pointed at his beak. Riku grinned sheepishly. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. He performed his earlier gesture, but instead turned his hand clockwise.

“Hello? Ah, I missed the sound of my voice,” Iago said. Abu rolled his eyes.

“So, anyone know how to stop a Heartless-ified wind demon?” Sora asked right before Genie took off.

* * *

They drew near the city of Agrabah as the sun was coming up. Despite the solar illumination, they could not see the city, as it was wrapped in an enormous sandstorm. The dust clouds were tinged with a dark aura, giving them a decent idea as to what was causing the storm.

“We can’t just fly right into the storm. We won’t be able to see a thing,” Kairi said.

“Even if we do get to them, we’re still not going to be able to survive the storm while fighting them,” Donald added.

Everyone gauged their options, thinking of how they were going to get into the eye and stop Mozenrath and Loki. Mickey pointed a finger into the air and smiled. “Genie, take us above the cloud. Make sure we’re directly above the very middle,” he told the rocket car.

“Got it!” Genie replied. The front end of the rocket car bent upward as he flew over the edge of the cloud and stopped right above the dead center.

“What’s the plan?” Goofy asked.

“We’re gonna drop down as fast as possible with as much force as possible, ah-ha!” Mickey answered.

The others looked at each other in confusion, then Sora, Riku and Donald smiled knowingly.

“What?” Aladdin asked, confused.

Sora demonstrated by grabbing a date and dropping it. The others nodded in understanding.

“Keep your seatbelts secured,” Riku advised. Everyone made sure of that.

Mickey, Sora, Riku, Donald, and Kairi summoned their weapons. The middle three shouted “Graviga!” at the same time, though Mickey shouted “Graviza!” and Kairi shouted “Gravira!” An enormous hemisphere of purple energy materialized over them and pushed down on them. The rocket car dropped out of the sky, hitting what would normally be terminal velocity within seconds. Before anyone realized, they had hit the ground with tremendous force, though a quick cushioning transformation and spell by Genie made sure that nobody inside felt it.

On the outside, however…

The sandstorm had dispersed. The buildings and stalls were all heavily covered with sand, but it was not blowing all over the place, obscuring vision and clogging breath. The rocket car sat in a crater in the middle of the road, which had become so wide that some stalls collapsed into it. There were some giant piles of sand where buildings used to be.

Looking around, the party saw Sirocco splayed on its side, disoriented. Further back, they saw Loki’s boots sticking out of the sand, the rest of him completely buried. In the other direction, Mozenrath had crashed into a watermelon stall, and was covered in sand and fruit guts.

Mozenrath stood up with some difficulty. Xerxes rose up into the air, floating upside-down, clearly disoriented. The sorcerer glared at the party, his face contorted in anger. After a moment, he relaxed and started laughing. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. I guess I can just destroy you all here and now,” he said.

Genie teleported in front of him, now dressed in knight’s armor and wielding an oversized broadsword. “Prepare to defend thyself, knave!” he shouted.

Mozenrath chuckled. “Consider me prepared. Sirocco!” The Heartless jackal jumped to its feet and whirled itself around Genie, causing the armor and sword to dissolve. Genie stumbled, dizzied, and fell down. “You have to do better than that!” the sorcerer boasted. Xerxes laughed.

“How about this?” Jasmine retorted. She ran straight at him and swung a pair of knives his way. Mozenrath backed away and Xerxes wrapped himself around her wrist and pulled her arm back. Kairi swatted the eel in the face with her Keyblade, forcing him to slacken his grip. Jasmine shook herself free and Abu lunged at Xerxes, grabbing him and holding him to the ground. Mozenrath shot a spell that blasted Jasmine back, but Aladdin used this as an opening to tackle the sorcerer to the ground.

Sirocco snarled at the people attacking its master, but it found its view obstructed by a pair of Keyblades crossed together. It looked at Sora and Mickey with vicious eyes and bared teeth.

“Heel, boy!” Sora said in a flat tone. “You’re not going anywhere!”

Riku shot a series of Dark Fire blasts as the Heartless’ rear end. Sirocco turned around and threw itself at him, but Goofy charged in at the right instant and slugged it in the side with his shield. Donald shot a Blizzara spell at it, but it dodged and spun around him. Donald cast Aero, creating a wind shield, then unleashed a massive lightning blast above him. The electricity burst in a condensed field and sparked in all directions. The wind demon was launched out if its spin and thrown to Sora and Mickey, who started hitting it.

“Sirocco! Get up! Destroy them!” Mozenrath commanded. Sirocco shot to its feet and lashed out at its attackers, knocking them back. It homed in on Sora and pinned him down. It tried to bite down on him, but Sora pushed him back by holding his Keyblade in its teeth. Goofy knocked it off of Sora. The Heartless spun around him, but Goofy countered with a tornado attack in the opposite direction. Mickey helped by swinging his Keyblade below the shield, knowing that the jackal was so fast that it would run straight into the weapon at least once. Sirocco flipped out of its run, but landed on its feet right in front of Donald. Donald tried to get a spell off but the jackal snapped at him, biting a few feathers off and scaring him away.

Riku helped Sora to his feet. Sora cast Cura on himself. “Thanks. Any ideas?” Sora asked his friend.

“I’m thinking I might practice a new trick with the powers of darkness,” Riku replied. He ran off before Sora could ask what he meant.

Meanwhile, Mozenrath threw Aladdin off of him and knocked him back with a magic blast. Kairi ran to attack, but he summoned a Fat Bandit for her to run into. She stumbled back on the rebound and fell down in the sand. The Fat Bandit ignited its fist and punched at the ground. She rolled out of the way but the shockwave still hit her. Genie transformed into a sling and caught the Fat Bandit. He spun himself around before throwing the Heartless at Mozenrath. The sorcerer nonchalantly blasted the Fat Bandit into oblivion. Jasmine slashed at him, cutting into his robe, and kicked his leg to throw him off balance.

“Sirocco! Kill the mouse!” the sorcerer ordered while picking himself up off the ground and hitting Jasmine with a magic blast over his shoulder.

Aladdin swung his scimitar, but Mozenrath caught the blade with his gloved hand. However, Aladdin kept pushing against him, causing sparks to shoot out as Mozenrath tried to push back. Iago fluttered in front of the sorcerer’s face. “Attack this, destroy that, kill this! And people say _I_ have a big mouth!” he said. This distracted Mozenrath, allowing Aladdin to force him down.

Sirocco turned and lunged at Mickey, who jumped out of the way. The jackal swiped at him, cutting a gash in his leg. It took another bite, but Mickey parried it with his Keyblade.

“Sirocco! Back down!” Mozenrath’s voice called. Surprised but loyal, Sirocco stopped attacking and backed away. Mickey followed the sound of the voice, wondering what had happened, and he saw something he was not quite expecting.

Riku glared at the jackal and barked another order. “Sirocco, lie down,” he commanded, Mozenrath’s voice coming out of his mouth. Sirocco did as it was told.

“What? That wasn’t my order. Nobody commands my minion but me! Sirocco! Destroy them!” the real Mozenrath shouted, struggling to stand up. However, Genie tied a two-ton weight to the hem of his glove, meaning he could not do much. Sirocco turned to its master in confusion. Why was he giving him conflicting orders?

“Sirocco! Lie down!” Riku ordered.

“Sirocco! Crush them!” Mozenrath countered, trying to shout louder than Riku.

“Sirocco! Roll over!”

“Sirocco! Turn them to dust!”

Sirocco looked back and forth, unsure what to do. It was in this extended moment of indecision that it felt a stabbing pain in its back. It collapsed to the ground, a wing-shaped blade sticking out of its back. Purple-colored flames rose from its body.

Sora, Mickey and Goofy ran in, attacking the jackal from all sides. Donald cast Firaga and Blizzaga spells. Sirocco tried to spin around and defend itself, but it could not move its body due to the fact that Riku held Way to the Dawn firm and had used fire magic to turn the sand beneath both of them into glass. It stretched its neck out and bit down on Sora’s leg, but that was its last move before Mickey delivered the final blow to the Heartless’ head. Sirocco dissipated into black smoke, its crystal heart being carried off in the wind before vanishing in a swirl of sparkles.

Mozenrath’s face twisted in anger. “No!” he shouted, struggling against Aladdin and Jasmine’s efforts to hold him down. His job became more difficult as they were joined by Razoul and two other guards.

Iago flew up to Riku. “That’s a neat trick, pal,” he commended, genuinely impressed. “How’d you do it?”

“I distorted my voice with some dark magic,” Riku explained. “I met someone who cast an illusion to look and sound like someone else. And I did switch between my own voice and another’s when I was trapped in a different form.”

“Not bad,” Iago said. Sora and Mickey nodded in agreement.

Everyone turned their attention back to the other group, which was still working to restrain Mozenrath. Xerxes tried to get in and help his master, but Kairi wrangled him and threw him over to Genie, who tied a leash around his neck and hooked a leash up to it.

“Now, let’s do something about that Mozenrath!” Genie said. He pointed his finger and shot a beam of light at the sorcerer. Mozenrath’s hands, including the entire length of the magic glove, were encased in heavy iron manacles that were bound together. With the extra weight and the inability to use his magic, Mozenrath stopped struggling. Aladdin and Jasmine stepped back and allowed the guards to restrain him.

Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy approached the group. “This might be an even better opportunity than we hoped,” Sora said to his friends.

“Okay, Mozenrath. We have a few questions for you,” Mickey said assertively.

However, before anything further could be said, Mozenrath vanished in a green light. The manacles fell to the ground. A sphere of green light followed a green line until it disappeared into a green crystal shard.

Everyone gasped when they saw Loki holding a fresh shard of the Crystal of Ix, which now had a miniaturized Mozenrath trapped within. Donald looked back at where he thought Loki had been buried for the entire battle, but only saw a sand mound with no feet sticking out.

“Well, he did say that there was more where that came from,” Loki quipped. He pointed the Crystal and a laser shot out and hit Xerxes. The eel was pulled in and sealed with his master.

The party as well as the guards raised their weapons. Genie shapeshifted until he was dressed like a pro wrestler. Even Abu cracked his knuckles.

Loki shrugged. “Sorry. Maybe another time.” He gave a two-fingered salute before a dark shroud wrapped around him, teleporting him away.

Sora rolled his eyes and gave his friends a look that said _Can you believe this?_

Aladdin and Jasmine turned to the others. “Thank you for helping us protect Agrabah once again,” Jasmine said, giving them a bow. The guards bowed in turn, though Razoul was half a second more hesitant.

Aladdin looked around. “Now that we’ve got a moment to breathe, I think we should start cleaning up,” he suggested.

Mickey nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.” The group broke up into groups of three and split up to get to work.


	51. Chapter 50: The Sultan's Treasure Vault

“Just hold it steady, Spike,” Genie told Sora, who was holding up a section of wall that had previously fallen when Sirocco took out chunks of the building. Genie transformed into a cement mixer truck and gathered up large portions of sand. He poured sand in areas around the wall, which fused together to create a stable wall. Genie continued this until the building was good as new.

Mickey, Kairi and Donald used Aero spells to gather sand up into wind funnels. Aladdin had whistled for the Magic Carpet, a sentient Persian carpet with gold lining and tassels at each corner, to fly in. They dropped the sand on the carpet, who flew around and spread the dust evenly around the street and dumped the excess outside of the city walls. Riku, Aladdin and Goofy helped the people put the broken stones back together, then Riku welded them together with magic.

By the early afternoon, most of the damage had been repaired. A couple buildings had been entirely demolished, but Genie simply conjured up new ones in their place, though the residents were quick to notice that the internal layout was not the same. Aladdin, Jasmine, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Genie, Abu, Iago, and Carpet reunited in front of the palace gates. Carpet stood up vertically, but the upper end slouched forward.

Aladdin looked around to make sure that nobody could overhear them. “So, what do you think it was that Mozenrath wanted to destroy Agrabah to get?” he asked.

“Perhaps it is whatever King Mickey said that Maleficent and her allies were searching for,” Jasmine guessed.

Sora nodded. “You’re right on that one,” he affirmed. “We met Loki before, and he was definitely a part of Maleficent’s gang.”

“Mozenrath said that the artifact was in the palace,” Riku said. “He specifically said they would sift through the remains of the palace, not just the city.”

“Then perhaps my father would know about it. We should ask him,” Jasmine said.

“He seemed pretty nervous when we brought it up,” Goofy told her. “Seems like something no one wants to talk about.”

“Well, regardless, we need to stop Maleficent and her club from getting to these things, and we need to know everything we can about them,” Mickey declared.

Sora turned to look up at Genie. “Say, would you happen to know anything about this?” he asked.

Genie shrugged. “Maybe. Can you give me the run-through?”

Sora and Mickey explained the situation as best they could. Aladdin, Jasmine, Abu, and Iago’s jaws dropped when they got to the part about the mysterious power being able to change reality to an even greater extent than what the Genie could do.

Genie rubbed the back of his neck. “Phew, that sounds like a doozy. Now let’s see… I’m sure that none of my masters have told me about it directly, but would I have heard a mention of it?” he wondered to himself. After a moment, he shrugged. “I’m sorry guys. You’re gonna have to check in with me on that.”

“No worries,” Sora reassured him. “But we should still see if we can figure anything out while we’re here, especially in case Mozenrath and Loki decide to try something again.”

“Then we should speak with my father again,” Jasmine said. “Perhaps we can convince him to tell us what he can.”

“And see if he’ll let us look in the treasure vault,” Aladdin added. Jasmine turned to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “Well, you know, if you want to keep something safe, hide it in the most secure room in the palace.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. With their next course of action settled, they approached the palace doors and asked the guards to open the way for them.

* * *

Loki swatted the Crystal of Ix shard into his hand, but nothing happened. He banged it against a table, but that only chipped the table. Rolling his eyes, he pointed the crystal back over his shoulder and concentrated. He heard sparks of magic charge up in the crystal, which shot a beam out behind him. A green sphere of light expanded against a wall. When it faded, Mozenrath and Xerxes were splayed flat against the wall. A few seconds later, they dropped to the ground and slumped down. Mozenrath rubbed his wrists and Xerxes cricked his neck.

“You dare to demean me like that?” Mozenrath shouted in anger.

Loki turned to face him, his expression still neutral. “You’re quite welcome,” he replied flatly. “I had to get you out of there somehow. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to break off a piece from the Crystal of Ix without getting sucked in?”

Mozenrath stood up and brushed his robe down. “Where are we, anyway?” he asked.

“A storage building on the edge of the city,” Loki answered. He wrapped the crystal shard in a handkerchief. “Should give us enough time to come up with a plan to fix your mess.”

Mozenrath was indignant. “My mess? Don’t you dare place the blame of our defeat on me, particularly when you failed to assist.”

“Our failure with Sirocco was no one’s fault. But you made a significant error. You blabbed about how the artifact was in the palace,” Loki explained. “Now they will have increased security. Aladdin and the Keyblade wielders will almost certainly be in the vault, both in search of the artifact and waiting for us to enter so they can ambush us.”

Mozenrath blinked. Xerxes looked at him worriedly. The trickster did indeed have a point. Mozenrath had been confident in his victory over the heroes, so certain that his trap would succeed, that he abandoned all caution. He had said too much. But he had really wanted to rub it into his nemeses’ faces that everything they fought for would be lost. They were far more resourceful than he had considered.

“Fair enough,” Mozenrath said in resignation. “We will simply need to keep them busy while we do our own search. All we need is a suitable distraction.”

Xerxes floated up to a window and took a glance out. His gaze fell upon two figures crouched behind a row of pots. He was familiar with Agrabah’s two most infamous criminals. A sinister smile developed upon his malformed face.

* * *

The Sultan scratched his beard, deep in thought. Sora and Aladdin had asked him for permission to search for the artifact that Mozenrath and Loki sought, and they were patiently awaiting his answer. Sora had trouble hiding how anxious he was for the answer, though.

Eventually, the Sultan sighed. “Very well,” he said, much to the surprise of the nearby Razoul. “There may not be much that I can say to help you, but I can allow you to conduct your own search, and make sure those fiends to not get their hands on it.”

Sora and Aladdin nodded. “Thank you,” Sora said. They turned and exited into the hallway to the left, where their friends waited. “He said yes,” he told them.

The group smiled. Mickey turned to Jasmine. “Well, lead the way, Princess,” he said.

Jasmine led the group through a series of corridors until they reached a set of large double doors with a bar drawn across them. She addressed the guards who stood on either side of the doors. They immediately stood at attention.

“Let us in,” she ordered. The guards blinked in surprise, but they did not question and instead did as she asked. They removed the bar from the slots on the doors and set it to the side, then they pulled the doors open. The party entered the treasure vault. Jasmine turned around and addressed the guards again. “Keep the doors sealed. Do not open them until I give the signal.” The guards nodded and closed the doors.

Riku, Kairi and Donald’s jaws dropped when they saw the inside of the vault. The room was absolutely filled with treasure and artifacts of all shapes and sizes. There were gold statues, silver ornaments, and enormous jewels of many different colors. While Riku and Kairi were amazed at it all, Donald’s expression of shock slowly morphed into a smile. The others were not perturbed; Aladdin, Jasmine, Abu, and Iago had been in the vault many times, while Sora, Mickey and Goofy had seen other mounds of treasure and none of them were as greedy as Donald.

When they heard the bar slide back into place, the party huddled together. “All right, fellas. This is a big place. Whatever it is we’re looking for, it could be anywhere,” Mickey explained. “It’ll take us a while to check everything, and Mozenrath and Loki could use that time to come in and look for it themselves. I propose some of us keep a lookout. Goofy, you’re with me. We need to see the bad guys as soon as they show up. Everyone else, split up and search every corner. I don’t know how we’ll know when we find it, but we have to find it before our enemies do. Got it?” Everyone nodded. “Good. Now, let’s get going.”

Everyone nodded and quickly got to work. Mickey and Goofy patrolled the perimeter to count the number of possible entrances. There were only two windows as well as the door they came in from, though that might have been a bit too lax, so it should have been easy to guard all entrances. Meanwhile, everyone else carefully examined each item in the room. Sora, Aladdin and Jasmine picked up the smaller objects and studied them closely, while Riku and Kairi extended their dark and light senses around the larger objects to detect if they have some sort of power. A few times, they called to Aladdin and Jasmine when they thought they had found something, but they were quick to explain what it actually was and rebuke their guess.

Donald and Iago were less interested in locating a certain item, more concerned with taking advantage of the fact that they were in a room full of treasure. Donald began filling his pockets with whatever jewels and coins he could find. Iago snickered as he watched Donald try to stuff a ruby in his sleeve.

During this fit of giggles, he noticed something moving out of the corner of his eye. The parrot turned around and saw Abis Mal and Haroud Hazi Bin sneaking around the vault and stuffing their pockets with treasures. They must have snuck in through the window before Mickey and Goofy had completed their initial perimeter check.

“Hey! Hands off!” Iago shouted. Abis Mal jumped and fumbled with a golden idol, shocked at the sudden outburst.

“The parrot’s here?” Abis Mal said in surprise. He looked around and gasped. “Aladdin’s here? This is not what I signed up for!”

“Agreed,” Haroud said calmly.

Donald finally noticed the criminals. He let out a battle cry and ran straight for them, though he was slowed down by the added weight of all of the loot he was packing. Abis Mal and Haroud saw the incoming threat and quickly turned around to run away. Donald and Iago pursued them, the chase weaving around the statues and display pedestals, neither party gaining the advantage.

The commotion drew the attention of Goofy, who was baffled to see the intruders. Nevertheless, he joined the pursuit. He threw his shield to knock a statue over in an effort to block the criminals’ path, but they simply ran around it.

Sora and Aladdin looked up from the scepter and statuette they were examining and saw what was going on. Aladdin ran to join the chase, though it took Sora a few seconds before he recognized the thugs from the previous day, at which point he followed suit. Sora cast Blizzard to freeze the ground in front of Abis Mal and Haroud, but they simply slipped and slid across the stretch and continued running when they reached the end. Mickey soon jumped into the fray, as did Jasmine, and eventually so did Riku and Kairi. Within minutes, the chase degenerated into a line of people running after each other like something out of a cartoon.

While this was going on, Xerxes flew through the window. He saw what was happening and chuckled mischievously. He flew over everyone’s heads and sailed halfway through the room. He had been watching the party search each item and knew where they had stopped. That left him to check everything else. Fortunately, Zeromast’s explanation and Mozenrath’s magic gave him enough of an idea of what he was looking for.

Riku tackled Haroud and pinned him to the ground, crossing the man’s arms behind his back. Sora and Aladdin hopped over them and continued their pursuit of Abis Mal. Donald broke off from the line and ran around a different way to try to cut the thief off. However, he tripped and ran into Kairi, knocking her down and landing on top of her. Kairi tried to push him off but found that he was heavier than she thought. After a moment of struggling, she paused and glanced at his sleeve, noticing something red poking out.

“Donald, drop the treasure,” she said sternly. “It’s not yours to take.” Donald sighed and started unzipping his pockets and taking coins and jewels out.

“Wow, Donald! Shame on you! I can’t believe you would do such a thing! I mean, _I_ would never…” Iago said, the tone of his voice decreasing until no sound came out of his mouth as Kairi pointed her hand at him and did the same pinching-and-turning motion that Riku had done earlier.

Xerxes returned to the middle of the room, frowning in disappointment. “No good, no good,” he muttered to himself.

Mozenrath appeared beside him. “What do you mean, ‘no good’?” he asked.

Xerxes pouted apologetically. “It’s not here. None of these are it,” he clarified.

“That’s ridiculous!” Mozenrath then went around the room searching each and every artifact while carefully avoiding the chase. Fortunately for him, nobody noticed he was there. After several minutes, Mozenrath clenched his fists in annoyance. “It isn’t here?! None of these treasures are the one we’re looking for?” After a moment of venting by way of firing magic blasts at random and throttling Xerxes, Mozenrath calmed down. He glanced over at the party, which was still chasing Abis Mal. He rolled his eyes, amazed that they still had not noticed his presence. “Wow. They really are idiots,” he mused.

At that moment, Donald threw a jewel at Abis Mal, hitting him on the head and knocking him out. Everyone stopped to catch their breath, the relentless chase having finally come to an end after several minutes. Aladdin saw something out of the corner of his eye and looked up. He was taken aback to see Mozenrath standing several feet away from him.

“Mozenrath!” he shouted, alerting the others. Sora, Riku, Mickey, and Kairi summoned their Keyblades while Donald summoned his staff and Goofy brandished his shield.

Mozenrath held up his bare hand. “Don’t bother. It’s not here anyway,” the sorcerer said. A Corridor of Darkness appeared behind him. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going back to base, and we’ll try again another time. So long.” He walked through the portal, followed by his eel, and the shadowy doorway closed in on itself.

After a moment of silent confusion, everyone dismissed their weapons. Sora turned to face his friends, only to find that they all shared the same expression as him.

“I guess these two dunderheads were a distraction while Mozenrath searched the vault,” Riku surmised, gesturing to Abis Mal and Haroud, the latter of whom Riku had immobilized with Stopga while Jasmine tied him up. She had just finished right before they had noticed Mozenrath, so both thieves were incapacitated and secured. “Nevertheless, they still escaped custody and attempted to commit theft.”

“Turns out it was a moot point, anyway,” Kairi added. “Whatever we’re all supposed to be looking for, it’s not here.”

“Could he have been lying to throw us off?” Donald asked.

“No. Mozenrath actually called a draw. _Mozenrath._ He never gives up, and he’s too arrogant to even fake it,” Aladdin said.

“Aladdin’s right,” Jasmine agreed. “Mozenrath has no idea where to look next. His original idea was to destroy the city and not worry about searching every corner. Since that failed, and searching the most secure place in the palace proved to be fruitless, he’s out of better options.”

“So, I guess we call it a day?” Sora guessed, crossing his arms.

“Looks like it,” Mickey answered. He extended a hand to Aladdin and Jasmine. “Well, it’s been nice meeting you.”

Jasmine knelt down and shook hands with Mickey, and Aladdin followed suit when she was done. “Likewise. Thank you again for assisting us against Mozenrath,” Jasmine replied.

She turned and walked up to the door leading out of the treasure vault. She rapped her fist against the door, and a few seconds later they heard the bar being slid out of the slots. The doors opened, and the party stepped out, at which point the guards closed the doors again. Jasmine led them down the hall, but they stopped when Genie appeared in front of them.

“Any luck?” the blue spirit asked. Aladdin shook his head and explained what happened. “Well, sit tight, guys. I’m sure I’ll remember something. Oh, I take it you’re looking for a way back up to your ship?” Aladdin and Jasmine looked at Sora quizzically. They knew that they traversed between worlds, but they were not made aware how. Ignoring this, Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy nodded. “Well, then follow me! I know the way to the nearest Safe Point!”

They all followed Genie through the corridors until they reached Jasmine’s bedroom. Mickey approached the balcony and a spiraling green circle materialized around his legs. Jasmine and Aladdin flushed self-consciously when they realized that their guests could appear there at any time, though Sora quickly said that they would not even land inside the palace.

“Well, see you real soon,” Mickey said.

“Good luck, all,” Genie returned with a wave.

“You are always welcome here,” Jasmine assured them. She shot a quick glance down at the Safe Point. “But do please knock first.”

“We’ll keep searching for that thing Mozenrath was trying to find,” Aladdin promised.

“Great seeing you again,” Sora said. He shook hands with Aladdin and Jasmine in turn, as did Riku and Kairi. Donald and Goofy waved good-bye. Kairi lifted Donald’s hat off of his head and grabbed a sapphire which he had hidden, then tossed it to Jasmine, who caught it.

Mickey punched a few commands into his device and a pillar of light materialized around him, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy. A moment later, the pillar of light vanished and they were gone.

Iago tried to start up a conversation with Abu, but no sound came out. He started silently panicking as he remembered that he was still Silenced.

Aladdin, Jasmine, Abu, and Genie laughed. “Music to my ears,” Genie joked.


	52. Chapter 51: The Emperor's Advisor

Yzma stood at a desk, mixing chemicals and concocting potions. She wore a white lab coat, black rubber gloves, black boots, sunglasses, and a blue headband. Her hair extended straight backward a few feet in length, remaining straight and defying gravity. Her assistant, Kronk, watched her work. He was a muscular man with a thick jaw and black hair kept in a mullet. He wore a similar uniform to her, though rather than a headband he wore a short conical hat with a feathery antenna on top.

“Kronk, bring me the extract of cat,” the elderly alchemist ordered.

“Cat extract. Got it,” Kronk affirmed before running over to the cabinet to search for the sample.

A man with long silver hair who did not follow the proper safety dress code for a laboratory environment approached Yzma from behind. “I must say, this is an interesting backstage you have here,” Kuja said, getting her attention.

“What are you doing here?” Yzma asked, a biting tone in her voice, not bothering to turn her attention away from her experiments.

“Oh, I don’t mean to disrupt. I merely wished to see how you were faring,” Kuja replied. “I already completed my assignment for the day. As it turns out, when you spend the morning starting a war in a Germanic nation and then rip your target right off of the throne of the monarch whose army you incensed, the afternoon becomes rather droll.”

“Fascinating. How did you even find my lair?”

“I asked the guards where I could find you. They told me you were in your secret lab and pointed down the hall. Three of them also warned me not to pull the left lever. I tested it with a Shadow simply out of curiosity and I was left to question its necessity.”

Yzma let out a tsk. “Well, if you must know, I used my authority to search the palace for the item. However, the emperor twit had taken notice of the fact that I had been… How did he put it? Ah, yes. Doing his job. Handling the matter of starving peasants and political responsibilities behind his back. Like that impulsive moron could do any better. And so, he fired me! Me! I practically raised him! This kingdom would be dust without me!”

Kuja frowned. “The nerve of those emperors,” he snarked. “I suppose that makes your part of the job a little bit harder.”

Kronk returned, holding a small vial containing a few long white hairs. “Cat extract, coming right up,” he said. He looked up slightly when he noticed Kuja. “Hey. You should probably wear something a little more protective in here, ma’am.”

Kuja narrowed his eyes in mild annoyance. “I thank you for your concern,” he said dryly.

Yzma took a set of tweezers and pulled a single cat hair from the vial, then dropped the hair into the beaker. The concoction bubbled and a pink cloud burst from the opening. She chuckled, then poured the contents of the beaker into an empty vial with the illustration of a cat taped onto it. She stuffed a cork into the opening of the vial and handed it off to Kronk, who ran over to place it in the cabinet, then returned to her side.

“So, what shall you do next?” Kuja asked. “Will you pack your chemistry set up and cart it off to the fortress? Because it appears as though if he’s still around to find out you’re still around, you won’t be around here for much longer.”

Yzma stood up straight and grinned wickedly. “That’s it! I’ll get rid of him!” she exclaimed. “You see, it’s perfect. With him out of the way and no heir to take the throne, I’ll take over and rule the empire. Brilliant!”

But Kronk was confused. “So, how will that work with you being fired and all?” he asked, noticing an obvious hole in the plan.

“The only ones who know about that are the four of us,” Yzma explained, holding up four fingers, “soon to be the _three_ of us.” She lowered one of her fingers.

“And I’m one of those three, right?” Kronk double-checked.

“Of course not. The third one would be the emperor whom she just voiced her intent to kill,” Kuja responded sarcastically.

Yzma grinned mischievously. “Ooh, how shall I do it?” she muttered to herself. “Oh, I know. I’ll turn him into a flea. A harmless little flea. And then, I’ll put that flea in a box. And then I’ll put that box inside of another box. And then I’ll mail that box to myself. And when it arrives, I’LL SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER! It’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!” She laughed maniacally.

“Well, points for the theatricality,” Kuja commended.

Yzma shrugged quickly and ran over to the cabinet. “Or to save on postage, I’ll just poison him with this,” she said, reaching in and pulling out a tall pink vial, holding it up for both Kronk and Kuja to see.

Kuja clapped. “Subtle and quiet, but I like it. Not only will you have free access to wherever the artifact may be hidden, but we will have a world to control in the process.”

Yzma handed the vial to Kronk. “Take it, Kronk. Feel the power.”

“Oh, I can feel it,” Kronk said.

Kuja held his hands out. “May I?” he requested. Kronk handed the vial to him, and he examined the potion and vial. He studied the label and smirked with amusement. He handed the vial back to Yzma. “Well, then, madam, I wish you well in your game. Good luck claiming the throne and the treasure to our victory. Now, I bid you farewell.” A Corridor of Darkness appeared behind Kuja, and he walked backwards into it.

Kronk stared in awe as the portal closed. “Well, you don’t see that every day,” he said.

“Now, Kronk. Our moment of triumph approaches!” Yzma said, letting out another cackle. “It’s dinner time!”


	53. Chapter 52: Secret MacGuffins

Mickey spun the captain’s chair so that he could face Donald and Goofy. Jiminy sat cross-legged on the arm of the captain’s chair. All present pondered deeply on recent matters. Sora, Riku and Kairi were downstairs reviewing their classes and working on their homework, so it was the Disney Castle quartet working in solving their mysteries.

“We need to understand our enemies’ next moves,” Mickey announced. “We need to know where they are going to look and how they are going to look, and we need to get ahead of them.”

“I know. But how will we find the things?” Donald asked.

Jiminy opened his journal. “I have been taking notes on the subject as we have been going along,” he explained. “What we know thus far: one of these artifacts appears to exist on nearly every world, if not every world period. It appears that someone guards the artifacts and the role of protecting them is passed down through the generations, and we can presume that it is someone with a high level of authority, as then they would have the resources to guard them.”

“But the King of Corona didn’t know anything about them,” Goofy reminded him.

Jiminy nodded. “Correct. So that indicates that this person of authority does not necessarily have to be the ruler. But the Sultan of Agrabah is, and he most likely knew about the artifact, going off of the way he avoided discussing the matter.”

“Like Master Yen Sid,” Goofy added. Everyone looked at him. “He knew something but didn’t want to tell us anything. That could be because he is one of the guardians.”

“Yeah. Remember how he didn’t say anything about how Master Xehanort might be connected to the Unversed even though he knew what he had been trying to do years before because he didn’t want to jump to any conclusions about his old colleague?” Donald recalled. “That could be the same thing here.”

Mickey pondered the idea for a minute, then his face fell. “Then, could that mean…” He struggled to even consider what he was saying. “Could _Minnie_ be hiding something from me?”

Donald, Goofy and Jiminy frowned. They had no idea what to say in response.

After a few minutes, Jiminy spoke up. “We should explore more worlds, ask around, and research histories,” he said. “We’ll figure things out as we go along, in time, particularly if we run into more of Maleficent’s allies.”

Mickey, Donald and Goofy nodded in agreement. Mickey spun the captain’s chair around and the three crew members manned their stations. Mickey piloted the ship through the cosmos. They traveled for a few hours, shooting down debris and enemy ships that drew near. After two hours, Sora, Riku and Kairi ascended to the cockpit.

“We finished our homework and slipped it into the mailbox,” Kairi told them.

“We can take over if you guys want to rest or get something to eat,” Riku suggested. After a moment, Mickey, Donald and Goofy nodded. Mickey parked the Gummi Ship on the surface of an asteroid. They got out of their chairs and headed downstairs. Sora, Riku and Kairi took their places in the captain, gunner and copilot chairs, respectively. Sora pulled the ship out of park, drew the landing gears up, and disembarked from the asteroid. Kairi and Riku used the Teeny Ships to destroy an enemy ship that approached in Sora’s blind spot, which Sora would have surely crashed the ship into if they had not noticed and taken action.

“Nice save,” Sora thanked them.

They continued the journey for two more hours, following the map coordinates to an unidentified world. Mickey, Donald and Goofy returned to the cockpit a few minutes before the world came into view. When they could see it, everyone looked on with intrigue at the sight of a hilly landscape with a large golden structure vaguely resembling a head sitting on top of the highest hill. The hills surrounding the structure were covered in huts, apparently making up a village or a series of villages. On the underside of the world, they could see a dense jungle with a waterfall.

Sora fiddled with the interface. “So, where should we land?” he asked.

“I think we should ease our way into civilization,” Mickey said. “So, how about we drop ourselves off at the edge of the jungle?”

“Got it. Hmm… There doesn’t seem to be a Safe Point that far up, but there is a clearing in the jungle,” Sora told him, checking the display.

“Then let’s land there and work our way out.”

“On it, your Majesty.” Sora selected a point on the bottom of the world render and hit DISEMBARK. A circle of light lit up behind them and they used that to transport themselves down.

* * *

Sora pushed bushes and branches out of the way as the party trudged through the swamp, stepping through rain puddles and mud patches. Kairi swatted bugs away from her face and slapped some off of her arms.

Kairi groaned. “We should have brought bug spray,” she complained. Donald pulled an aerosol can out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Wow, thanks,” she said as she began spraying her arms, legs and neck. She passed it to Sora and Riku, who applied the bug spray on themselves.

Jiminy coughed. “I guess I should switch out,” he said, climbing out of Sora’s pocket and jumping onto Mickey’s shoulder. Mickey then guided him into his own pocket.

“Sorry, Jiminy,” Sora said sheepishly.

They marched on, pushing their way through the jungle. After a while, Riku held up a clenched fist, signaling for them to stop moving. They listened closely. They heard trees and bushes rustling. Donald looked up and quacked in alarm, pointing up. Everyone followed his gaze and saw three Powerwild Heartless sitting on tree branches above them. Realizing that they had been spotted, the Heartless jumped down to attack. Sora, Riku and Mickey reacted quickly, cutting them down in a single blow.

Still uncertain about the sound they heard a moment ago, Kairi turned as she scanned around, then yelped in surprise. A black-furred jaguar growled as it lunged at the party. She pointed her Keyblade and shot a ball of Fire at it, knocking it through the air into a tree. Two more jaguars revealed themselves, circling the group, eyeing them hungrily and sniffing the air, trying to understand the manner of prey that had stumbled into their hunting grounds.

Sora, Riku and Mickey shot glares at the feline predators. Donald and Goofy shivered fearfully, but Mickey shot them an encouraging smile, and they steeled themselves to fight.

Sora waved his hand and summoned an orb of fire to hover over his open palm. Donald pointed his staff forward and released a stream of electric bolts downward. Kairi blew out through her mouth, causing the wind to pick up. Intimidated by the supernatural command over the elements which these bipedal creatures displayed and noticing the damage dealt to their brother, the jaguars ran off into the night, soon followed by their wounded companion.

“Good kitties,” Kairi teased. The group walked on, traveling in the opposite direction of the predators.

They walked for an hour, encountering a few critters, but none that would bother confronting them. The Heartless did not show themselves either, leading them to believe that the Heartless had only recently taken interest in this world, or that they had little interest in the creatures of the jungle. The only thing they had to worry about was stepping in mud or cutting themselves on tree branches.

Eventually, they heard a rustling noise ahead of them. The sound was loud and clumsy, suggesting that whatever made the noise was unused to hiking through a danger-filled jungle at night. Everyone kept their guards up, not knowing what to expect.

Finally, two figures pushed their way through a wall of bushes and tree branches. When they saw the six strangers, the figures stopped and screamed in fright. One was a portly man with black hair who wore a white shirt, green poncho, brown shorts, brown leather cap, and black sandals. The other was a skinny llama with black fur around the head, neck and tail and red fur on the body.

The llama whimpered in panic for a few seconds before it stopped to examine the newcomers closely. “Oh, man! People! I’m saved!” it said, sounding like an adolescent man.

Sora, Riku and Mickey’s eyebrows shot up. Kairi’s eyes widened. “Did that llama just speak?” she asked.

“The Keyblade can sometimes translate animal language, but only if the animal is addressing us,” Mickey explained. “And it often takes some time to get used to animal interactions before it starts translating them, so it should still take at least a minute before it learns to understand a llama.”

“But the llama didn’t directly speak to us,” Riku pointed out. “So how did we understand it?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were animals that spoke human language,” Sora suggested. “I mean, look at you guys.”

The llama looked offended. “Llama? Animal?” it parroted in disbelief. “No! You’ve got me all wrong. I’m the emperor!”


	54. Chapter 53: The Llama Emperor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **K/N: Well, we finally got to the real star of the show. Me. The emperor. Don’t know why we’ve been following the other guys for the past several weeks. I don’t even know who they are. And frankly, I don’t care. Now, let’s turn the spotlight on me and continue. ******

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy sat around the campfire with the man and the llama, who had introduced themselves as Pacha and Emperor Kuzco. Pacha, who was the leader of the nearby village, and Kuzco had explained their stories, how Kuzco had up until the day before been a human only a few years older than Sora, Riku and Kairi, but he had somehow transformed into a llama. The party of newcomers listened patiently, much to Kuzco’s surprise.

“Wait, you believe me, just like that? You don’t find any of this weird at all?” Kuzco asked in disbelief.

Sora shrugged. “Let’s face it, a talking llama and transformation potions aren’t the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” he answered.

“That honor would have to go to the talking doorknob,” Donald snarked.

“Exactly,” Sora said.

“The talking… okay?” Kuzco stammered, bewildered at the claim and still trying to wrap his head around the situation at hand.

“So, Pacha,” Kairi addressed the villager, “what brings you out here with him?”

Pacha glanced at Kuzco somberly. “I found him tied in a bag that had somehow ended up on my cart on my way home. He tried to get home on his own, but wandered in here instead, so I came to his aid,” he explained. “I told him that I would help him get home if he changed his plans to build a summer home and didn’t level my village to do it.”

Everyone else save for Kuzco, who was smiling maliciously, gasped. “What?!” they shouted. Leaves rustled as the noise disturbed nearby critters.

Kuzco held his paws up defensively. “Whoa, hey, I said sure. We shook hands on it,” he said, clicking his hooves like fingers. Riku raised an eyebrow suspiciously. The llama emperor shrugged. “Whatever. Listen, I need you to get me back up to the tallest mountain so I can make Yzma take me to her ‘secret lab’—” he made air quotes with his hooves “—and change me back.”

“Who’s Yzma?” Mickey asked.

“Oh, she’s just my advisor. Oh, wait, I guess not anymore, since I fired her this morning. But she’ll definitely do what I say. Now, chop-chop. Let’s hurry on back.”

The party shared glances, recognizing the uncertainty in each other’s expressions. Mickey turned back to Kuzco and Pacha. “One moment, please,” he said. The six of them stepped away and huddled up.

“I’m not sure about this Kuzco guy,” Riku whispered.

Donald nodded in agreement. “I doubt he’ll keep his promise.”

Goofy shrugged. “Sure, but we can’t just leave him here, can we?”

“Well, we’re going that way anyhow,” Sora said. “No reason not to accompany them.”

“And who knows? Maybe we can get him to change his tune,” Kairi suggested.

The others mulled this over for a moment. They considered this possibility, all save for Donald. The grouchy, skeptical waterfowl scowled, shooting a quick glare at the llama.

Mickey nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” The others nodded, though Donald was more reluctant. They broke apart and turned back to Kuzco and Pacha. “Well, we’ve got some good news.”

* * *

The party, now joined by the peasant leader and the selfish talking llama, made their way through the jungle. Pacha took the lead, guiding them in the right direction. Kuzco held himself up with an air of authority, even though he was still unused to walking on four legs, particularly with hooves. Riku, Mickey and Goofy scanned around and listened to all ambient sounds, hoping to make sure that nothing gets the drop on them. Kuzco spent most of the time complaining, while the others either pretended to listen or outright ignored him as they were instead focused on making their way out of the jungle.

Riku held his hand up. “Wait,” he said. Everyone stopped, except for Kuzco. The transmogrified emperor walked a few yards ahead, complaining still, but it soon registered that everyone else had stopped, so he did as well.

“Whoa, whoa, wait? We’ve got places to be! I need to get out of this place and get my old body back! I can’t just—” he protested until Mickey hushed him. He put a hand to his ear, indicating for him to listen. Kuzco paused for a moment and listened, an annoyed scowl on his face. The scowl faded into a look of fear as he took notice of rustling nearby, a noise that seemed to grow louder as the source moved closer.

Powerwilds and Bouncywilds burst out of the underbrush, lunging at the group. Some targeted the more experienced members, either as a distracting maneuver or out of general stupidity, but most of them converged on Kuzco and Pacha. Pacha took up a defensive posture and punched a Powerwild away, but he was then hit in the arm with a slingshot ball. Kuzco screamed like a little girl and ran, stumbling over his hooves, trying to get away from the assailants.

Kairi and Goofy saw some Heartless run after Kuzco and broke away from the fight to rush to his aid. They made short work of the Heartless, only sustaining a few scratches themselves. However, Kuzco was oblivious to his rescue and continued running, until he charged face-first into a tree. Kairi winced at the clear pain.

Riku and Mickey came to Pacha’s aid and defeated the Heartless assaulting him. It was not long before Sora and Donald had finished off the last remaining Heartless. Sora cast Cure to heal all injuries. The healing mist caused Kuzco to wake up from his head injury.

Kuzco looked around in a daze, not sure what had just happened. He did not see the creatures that he was sure had been chasing him a moment ago, so he could only try to understand what had occurred. He narrowed his eyes at his guides. “Not cool, guys,” he said.

“What?” Sora asked, confused.

“Fine. You’re not going to help me? Then I’ll just find my way back myself,” Kuzco said, turning and walking away.

“Hey, hold on, your Majesty,” Pacha pleaded, but Kuzco ignored him.

“No touchy. Buh-bye. I’m off!” Kuzco declared. He heard the others offer their protests and warnings, but he ignored them and continued walking. However, he stopped when he realized that he could no longer feel the earth beneath his feet. He looked down and saw the ground several feet below him. He looked back and realized that he had walked right off of a cliff ledge. He let out a yelp as gravity took hold and he fell.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Pacha ran to the edge and watched him fall. Riku raised his eyebrow as the llama landed. “Anyone have a coin?” he asked abruptly. Donald raised his hand. Riku nodded. “So, heads we help him, tails we leave him?” Donald reached into his pocket, but everyone else shook their heads. “Yeah, didn’t think so. Kidding, anyway. C’mon.”

Kuzco stood up with some difficulty and rubbed the back of his long neck with his right hoof. He opened one eye and stifled a gasp when he saw a jaguar sleeping a few feet away from him. He looked around and saw many more jaguars around them. Fortunately, they were all asleep, but the slightest noise could awaken them.

Kuzco tiptoed, or tip-hoofed, around the sleeping animals, being careful to avoid making any disturbing noises. He nearly jumped when he heard a twig break under his foot. He stared at the nearest jaguar in suspense. Several seconds passed, feeling like an eternity, before he was satisfied that the predator would not awaken. He continued to maneuver around the slumbering pack until he bumped into a tree. He stumbled and collapsed against it, shaking it hard enough to rustle some branches and leaves. He gaped, noticing a jaguar sleeping on one of the tree’s branches. However, it did not seem to notice the disruption. Kuzco began to relax until he saw a fruit fall from the end of a branch. He held his breath, wide-eyed in terror, as the fruit fell. It landed and broke open with a thud. However, this still did not disturb the jaguars.

“Ha-ha!” he chuckled triumphantly, then immediately covered his mouth as he realized what he had just done. In an instant, the jaguars shot to their feet, awake and angry. A jaguar with singed fur stood closest to Kuzco, looking right into the terrified llama’s eyes. Kuzco turned around and ran as fast as he could, somehow staying just ahead of the pack. Kuzco jumped off of a ledge and landed on another, with the jaguars still in hot pursuit. Kuzco shot a glance back and wished he had not upon seeing the jaguars’ bloodthirsty eyes and sharp teeth. He returned his gaze to the path in front of him just in time to see a branch right in front of him. He ran right into it, hitting his neck against it, and spun around about it before landing on the back of one of the jaguars. Kuzco screamed. The jaguar noticed him and stopped running allowing itself to skid to a halt. Kuzco’s momentum caused him to fly off of its back. He tumbled through some foliage and rolled across the ground, coming to a stop at the thin ledge of a cliff.

He shook his head until his vision cleared and shot to his feet when he saw the jaguars inch closer to him. He chuckled fearfully. “You… killer… jaguars… me…” he stammered. He tried to back away, but found that there was nowhere to go but down. He closed his eyes and waited for the beasts to finish him off when he heard a strange holler.

Kuzco and the jaguars turned to identify the source, and they saw Pacha swinging on a vine, headed straight for the jaguars. Kuzco smiled and glared at his attackers. However, the jaguars simply moved out of the way, and Pacha sailed right by them. Kuzco and the jaguars stared in bemusement as Pacha went by, then returned to their previous business. But then, Pacha swung back and grabbed onto Kuzco, taking the llama with him.

“Don’t worry, your Highness. I gotcha! You’re safe now!” Pacha reassured Kuzco, who simply stared in fear and surprise as the ground below flew by at a rapid pace.

However, there was another hurdle for them. They flew past the spot from which Pacha had stepped off with the vine, sailing right past Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Goofy had stuck his arms out to grab them, but they were too far out. Pacha and Kuzco swung up too far and too fast, and the vine ended up wrapping around a two-foot-thick tree that appeared to be in the process of rotting. The top end of the vine snapped off and wrapped around the tree as well, tying both of them down.

Kuzco and Pacha looked around, dumbfounded, while the others could only stare with similar expressions. Kuzco quickly shifted his expression to a dull one of apparent disinterest. “Maybe I’m new to the whole ‘rescuing’ thing, but this, to me, might be considered kind of a step backward. Wouldn’t you say?” he quipped.

“No, no, no! It’s… it’s okay! This is alright! We can figure this out,” Pacha covered, attempting to restore confidence in both Kuzco and himself.

Suddenly, they heard a cracking sound. Their added weight on the dense but weak wood was causing it to break.

“I hate you,” Kuzco said, seconds before the tree broke completely and they were sent falling.

The others looked at each other with panicked expressions. “Down we go!” Sora said. He jumped off of the ledge and fell down to follow them.

“Wait!” Riku tried to stop him and make him exercise caution, but it was too late. He shook his head and jumped after him. Mickey, Goofy, Kairi, and Donald followed him.

Sora nimbly jumped from rock to rock as he made his way down, though he stumbled at a few points, but he made it down safely and stopped momentarily when he saw Kuzco, Pacha and the tree floating down a river. His friends followed suit, but only Riku and Mickey matched his level of balance. After the first landing, Kairi tumbled and nearly fell off, but Riku caught her and soon resorted to carrying her bridal-style. Donald and Goofy stumbled the whole way down and ended up falling into the river. A blue tentacle popped out above the water for a second, offering a quick indicator that they would be fine.

“Uh-oh,” Sora muttered on looking past the floating tree.

Kuzco saw Sora’s expression and also heard Pacha utter the same confidence-boosting oath. “Lemme guess. We’re about to go over a huge waterfall?” he asked.

“Yup,” Pacha confirmed with a resigned expression.

“Sharp rocks at the bottom?” Kuzco guessed again.

“Most likely.”

“Bring it on.”

They went over the side, tumbling along with the water. Sora, Riku and Mickey sprang into action. Mickey jumped into the river and landed on Goofy’s shell. Riku set Kairi down and ran to join Sora, sprinting down the bank straight for the cliff. Donald swam beside them. Kairi slipped and fell into the river. Mickey saw this and pointed his Keyblade back at her. He shot a beam of light from the tip. When the beam reached Kairi, a glowing sphere materialized around her. The sphere, attached to the string of light, lifted Kairi out of the river and drained water out of the bottom. Kairi coughed and sputtered as she tried to get oxygen back into her lungs.

Riku jumped off of the ledge and fell upside-down. _Show-off_ , Sora thought. He hopped off of the ledge and did an aerial front-flip, then ran vertically down the side. He dug his Keyblade into the rock to minimize his downward acceleration; he did not want to hit the ground in a splatter of gunk at terminal velocity while trying to pull off a rescue. Donald gulped and allowed himself to fall off with the water. He watched Sora and Riku’s progress and spied for Kuzco and Pacha. Mickey held tight to both shell and Keyblade and cast Oxyale on himself as he and Goofy went over the cliff.

Riku reached the water first, and cast Aeroga around himself to slow his fall. Because the surface was already rough from the waterfall, he did not have to worry nearly as much about the force from breaking the surface tension, but the Aeroga spell helped, and he dove under the water. He quickly angled himself horizontally and swam straight on, only a few feet above the riverbed at this point. Donald did the same thing, as did Mickey. The latter made sure that Kairi floated above the water’s surface.

Sora took a different approach. As he approached the bottom, he spun his Keyblade around to his right, putting Gravity and Aero magic into its centripetal motion. Before he made the jump, he had thought his plan through. _Normally, momentum and inertia are on a vector. As in, a specific direction. Send an object in one direction, and it will try to keep going in that same direction at the same speed. But if I bend space and distort the axes of motion, I might be able to change my direction of momentum smoothly, without going SPLAT._ Of course, after he made the jump and was rapidly approaching a potential death, his only thoughts were: _Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die…_

As he drew near, he saw broken pieces of wood, but no hint that Kuzco and Pacha had met their end on the sharp rocks. That was a good sign.

At the moment of truth, Sora dispersed his wind and gravity magic into a disk of magenta light. If a keen-eyed onlooker paid close attention to what was happening, they would see that he rotated about the top of his head in the span of a single step. When that transition went through, he shot off, running along the water at the same speed in which he had previously been running down the rock face. As he ran, he cheered in excitement, amazed that it had actually worked. He did not care that he had probably awoken the entire jungle and possibly some of the nearby villages; he was just that excited. He scanned ahead and saw Kuzco and Pacha, as well as the broken remains of the tree, floating down the river, and continued to follow them.

A few minutes later, Sora saw Kuzco and Pacha sitting on the shore, and ran to meet them. Riku walked up out of the river moments later, soaking wet. Donald crawled ashore a few minutes after that. His tentacles changed back into legs and his clothes rematerialized as soon as he was fully out of the water.

“Everyone alright?” Donald asked. Sora, Riku and Pacha nodded.

“Where are Kairi, Mickey and Goofy?” Riku asked, noticing that they were nowhere to be seen.

“They must have ended up somewhere else, maybe floated further down,” Sora guessed. “They looked like they would be fine. The King had Kairi in a magic bubble to keep her out of the water, and he used that Oxyale magic on himself. They can take care of themselves, so we’ll just meet up with them later.”

“Hold up,” Kuzco interrupted. “Did you say ‘King’?”

Riku and Donald nodded. “Yeah. Mickey is the king of… a distant land,” Riku explained. “Unlike some sovereigns, he’s kind, brave and selfless.”

“Uh-huh,” Kuzco responded, somewhat uninterested. _So long as he doesn’t mess with what I do, and so long as he gets that it’s about me,_ he thought.

“Technically, he married into power,” Donald added.

“But the queen’s no different!” Sora said sternly.

“Meh,” Kuzco grunted.

Riku turned and stared down the river. “We should probably stay here until morning,” he suggested. “Rest up. We won’t be getting out of here if we’re all exhausted.” He turned back to the others. Sora, Donald, Pacha, and Kuzco looked at each other for a moment, then nodded in agreement.

They proceeded to check the area and clear it so they could sleep there. Well, all except Kuzco, who had never worked a day in his life, and Riku and Donald were unable to persuade him into helping. By the time they were done, Sora was already lying down to fall asleep and Kuzco had slumped down near a rock. Donald was walking the perimeter of the site, patrolling to make sure they would not be disturbed.

Riku turned a glance toward Kuzco. Part of him wanted to simply leave him be, but another part wanted to understand him. Was he truly as selfish and cold as he let on? Riku walked over and sat a few feet away from him. Kuzco’s llama ear flicked as he registered his presence, but he said nothing that would otherwise acknowledge him.

“Emperor Kuzco? May I ask you something?” Riku asked, hoping to spark a conversation.

“Shoot,” Kuzco said without changing expression.

“Is this summer home really so important?” Riku asked.

“Uh, yeah.” Kuzco said this as though it should have been obvious.

“But you realize that if you put it on Pacha’s village, or any populated hill for that matter, you’d be forcing a lot of people out of their homes and pretty much ruining their lives just for you, right?”

There was a pause. “And that would be… bad?”

“Yeah,” Pacha chimed in, speaking in an amiable tone, since he also wanted to appeal to Kuzco’s better nature. “Nobody’s that heartless.”

Riku raised an eyebrow in his direction. “I’ll get back to you on that,” he muttered.

Kuzco seemed to think about it. “Right. Well, soon as the sun’s up, take me back,” he ordered.

Riku scoffed. Pacha’s jaw dropped. “Wait, wait! How can you be this way? All you care about is building your summer home and filling it with stuff for you.”

“Uh, yeah. Doi. Me,” Kuzco replied, acting once again like it should be obvious. “Everyone else in the kingdom gets it. You guys are the only ones who don’t seem to be with the program.”

Pacha facepalmed and sighed. “You know what? Someday, you’re gonna wind up all alone, and you will have no one to blame but yourself.”

“He’s right, you know,” Riku agreed.

Kuzco rolled his eyes. “Thanks for that. I’ll log that away,” he said sarcastically. “Whatever. I said I’d leave your little village alone, so you’re gonna take me back.” He walked further away from Riku and Pacha and laid himself down closer to the rock, then began to fall asleep.

Riku watched him pitifully, then found a place to lie down and fall asleep.

Half an hour later, Pacha was the only one still awake. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open, and was getting ready to fall asleep, when he heard something to his left. He glanced over and saw the sleeping Kuzco shaking, shivering in the cold. Feeling sorry for him, Pacha removed his poncho and draped it over Kuzco’s body like a blanket, then retook his place. Kuzco woke up and looked down at himself, noticing Pacha’s poncho. He looked over at Pacha, surprised by the gesture.

* * *

Kairi leaned against a tree for support, trying to regain her bearings. Mickey gave her a tissue, which she used to wipe traces of vomit from around her mouth. The mouse also handed her a canteen, which she drank to stay hydrated and also to wash her mouth out.

“Thanks,” she said, handing the canteen back to Mickey. “I have to say, almost drowning twice in a week is not something I was expecting.”

“Well, at least we haven’t crashed the Gummi Ship and fallen several hundred feet,” Goofy consoled her. “And I heard Sora almost got mauled by a leopard.”

“That, I actually remember, for some reason,” Kairi replied. “Any idea what happened to Sora, Riku and the others?”

“They must’ve ended up at a different bank,” Mickey guessed. “But I’m sure we’ll find them again by the time we get out of this jungle.”

“I guess so, barring any unexpected encounters that might delay us. Speaking of which, do you hear that?” Kairi glanced around and started creeping into the trees. Mickey and Goofy traded quizzical glances and followed her.

“Are you certain that he is in here?” an old woman’s voice asked.

“Well, my Squirrel Scouts training gives me exceptional tracking skills, so yes, I am,” a deep masculine voice replied. “Though, it’s getting pretty dark. I think we should make camp and wait until morning.”

Kairi pushed some leaves aside and saw a grey-skinned, wiry old woman wearing a purple dress, a purple, bowl-like cap with a pink jewel in the front, and purple shoes, and a muscular man with a prominent chin. The muscular man wore a backpack that carried a chair inside of a picture booth-sized purple tent, in which the old woman sat. They were being followed by a pair of Powerwild Heartless. Mickey and Goofy joined her and they studied the two with interest.

“Since when do you do the thinking, Kronk?” the old woman shot back. “I can hardly stand it out here, with all the dirt and bugs. And we can’t let the emperor find his way back to the palace. If he talks, we’re through! The sooner we find him, the sooner I kill him—or I let these things eat him, I’m not sure yet—and the sooner we can head back and I can live it up as Empress Yzma.” She yawned. “But I am getting sleepy, and I suppose we ought to set down for the night.”

“Great idea, Yzma,” Kronk replied.

Kairi, Mickey and Goofy backed away from their vantage point and huddled up. “Yzma? Isn’t that Kuzco’s advisor?” Goofy asked for clarification.

“Ex-advisor,” Kairi corrected. “And it looks like she won’t be quite as willing to change him back as he thinks.”

“I guess we now know how he got turned into a llama,” Mickey surmised. “But we might still be able to get into her hideout and find a way to turn him back to normal.”

“We should probably warn them. Especially Kuzco, since it’s his closest confidante who wants him dead,” Kairi suggested.

“As soon as we find them, let’s. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on these two. Make sure they don’t find the others.”

“Starting tomorrow,” Kairi added, aware that Yzma and Kronk were busy making camp.

* * *

Beams of sunlight shone through the trees above, illuminating the dense jungle. A bolt of lightning came down from one of the openings between overhanging leaves and struck an Emerald Blues Heartless. Sora threw his Keyblade and vanquished a Bouncywild, and Riku cut down a trio of Powerwilds.

Donald turned to check on Pacha and Kuzco once the Heartless were all destroyed. He leaned to the right to locate Kuzco, who was cowering behind Pacha.

“It’s all right,” Sora reassured them. “The Heartless are gone.” After a moment, Kuzco seemed to relax, and he started walking again, keeping pace with the others.

“Strange. There weren’t nearly as many Heartless around last night,” Riku observed.

“Yeah. I noticed that too,” Sora agreed. “I guess they realized we were here. Not hard to believe, since we’ve been casting spells all night.”

“Or maybe…” Riku began. Sora raised an eyebrow, but his friend did not finish, leaving the implication open.

“Someone brought them here?” Sora came to realize. He scanned the ground and the trees. He saw broken twigs, fresh footprints, and blood from recent scrapes. Bugs and birds took flight, and there were a few squirrels and lizards running by them. Usually, the Heartless pop out of the shadows to attack the quarry they found, and the party had already determined that they have not been going after the wildlife. However, something foreign was disturbing the creatures. The Heartless were moving around as though they were in a pack.

“Have you ever seen Heartless move around as a unified force?” Riku asked.

“I saw them stand in wait and take orders from Clayton in Deep Jungle,” Sora answered. “They probably ran around searching for gorillas before I met them at the cliff, too. And Shan-Yu led an entire army of Rapid Thrusters. There was also that swarm of Shadows that chased us up the Organization’s castle, but it was in a world close to the darkness, so I guess they were more comfortable there.”

Riku nodded. “So, aside from that last one, they only acted like this when they had someone ordering them around.”

Donald groaned. “They must be looking for something,” he surmised. “Or someone…” He, Sora and Riku turned to look at Kuzco. The transformed emperor did not seem to notice they were looking at him in worry, and was utterly oblivious to his life being in danger.

“Something tells me that turning him into a llama and dumping him in the jungle wasn’t the original plan,” Riku said gravely.

“Unless someone likes making things complicated,” Sora countered jokingly. “They’d fit right in here, though.”

“Let’s be on our guard,” Riku said. Sora and Donald nodded in agreement.

Pacha pushed some leaves aside. “Okay, we should be out of the jungle now,” he said. Everybody trudged through and caught a glimpse of the open sky. They were beyond the line of trees, and there was no obstruction in front of them.

Okay, there was a ravine whose two sides were connected by a thin, old-looking rope bridge, but assuming that there was no danger in that, there was no obstruction in front of them.

Pacha smiled back at the group. “Okay. Once we cross this bridge, it’s only an hour to the palace,” he informed them. He took the first step and started crossing the bridge. Kuzco followed him. Sora started to do the same, but Donald pulled him back by his shirt.

“Wait,” the duck warned him. “Who knows how much weight this bridge could take?” Sora nodded in understanding and watched Pacha and Kuzco make their way across.

“Good. Because, believe it or not, I think I need a bath,” Kuzco replied to Pacha’s declaration, a look of shame on his face.

“I believe it,” Pacha muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing!”

When Pacha took his next step, however, the wooden board under his foot snapped. As he fell, another board fell out of place. Pacha tumbled through the newly-made hole, but he fortunately fell into some ropes that had come undone due to no longer being able to hold the boards up and dangled below the bridge. Sora, Riku, Donald, and Kuzco jumped in surprise. The former three watched in shock, trying to find a way to save him from falling into the ravine.

“Kuzco!” Pacha called up. “Kuzco!”

Kuzco tapped his chin with his hoof, then smiled. He poked his head down through the hole. “Yeah?”

“Help me up!” Pacha pleaded.

Instead, Kuzco hopped over the hole. He turned his head to look back down at Pacha. “No, I don’t think I will.”

Riku clenched his fists. _That backstabbing…_

“What? You’re gonna leave me here?” Pacha asked, incredulous at the betrayal.

“Well, I was gonna have you imprisoned for life, but I kinda like this better.”

“I thought you were a changed man,” Pacha growled.

“Oh, come on! I had to say something to get you to take me back to the city,” Kuzco gloated guiltlessly.

“So all of it was a lie?!”

“Well, yeah. No, wait.” Kuzco pondered for a moment. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, it all was a lie. Toodles!” He turned away and trotted across the bridge, stepping off onto sturdy ground. He turned his head back, remembering Sora, Riku and Donald, who were seething with rage. “Oh, and you guys, so long. Have fun doing whatever it was you were going to do.” He turned and started to leave.

“WE SHOOK HANDS ON IT!” Pacha shouted in rage.

Kuzco stopped when he heard this. He walked back across the bridge until he reached the hole. Sora was in the process of taking his first step on the bridge in hopes of rescuing Pacha, but he was forced to draw back when he saw Kuzco.

“You know, the funny thing about shaking hands is…” Kuzco stuck his front legs out toward Pacha, showing him his hooved feet. “You need hands!” He stood back up and turned around. “Okay, buh-bye.” He took a step, but the board broke beneath him, dropping him and putting him in the same predicament as Pacha, except that his ankles were tied up around the top of his neck.

“Are you okay? You alright?” Pacha asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m alright,” Kuzco replied, a rope wrapped around his mouth.

“Good!” Pacha punched Kuzco in the face. Kuzco spun out of the ropes until he laid on the ropes, one loop holding up each limb. “That’s for going back on your promise!”

Kuzco kicked him, sending him swinging away, then rocked himself back and forth as though he were on a swing set. “Yeah. That’s for kidnapping me and taking me to your village,” he retorted. “Which I’m still gonna destroy, by the way.” His smug smile faded when he saw Pacha’s next move. “No touchy…” Pacha swung back and head-butted him in the stomach, knocking him into the cliff face.

Sora, Riku and Donald looked at each other in confusion. “I’m pretty sure Pacha wouldn’t and didn’t do that,” Sora commented.

Pacha flew back to the opposite face. “Why did I risk my life for a selfish brat like you?” he asked, both to Kuzco and himself. “I always thought that there was some good in everyone, but you proved me wrong.”

“Oh, boo hoo. Now I feel bad. Bad llama,” Kuzco said in a mock whiny voice.

“I could’ve let you die out there in the jungle, and then all of my problems would be over!”

“Well, then that makes you ugly and stupid.”

“Let’s end this!”

“Ladies first.”

Pacha and Kuzco threw themselves at each other, arms and legs flailing. When they made contact, they slugged it out. Punches and kicks and the occasional bite went flying. Sora and Riku watched in horror, though Donald seemed rather amused. The tussle continued, soon devolving into eye pokes and ear pulls. Sora looked down past them and gulped. Riku looked at him in confusion and Sora pointed down. Far below them, at the very bottom of the ravine, a river flowed. Half a dozen crocodiles swam in the river, and they would be more than eager to have a quick meal fall from the sky.

All movement stopped when they heard a cracking sound. Pacha and Kuzco looked up, while Sora, Riku and Donald followed their gaze to the bridge. The ropes were pulled taut and at some points were starting to rip. Another cracking noise sounded out as more boards split. In seconds, the entire bridge came undone and fell away. Pacha and Kuzco remained in midair long enough to realize what was going to happen before they too fell.

They tumbled against the cliff walls and their heads soon started to smack together. Their feet caught on the rock, causing them to skid to a stop, at a point where either side of the ravine was only a few feet apart. They were lucky to have stopped then, as a few feet below them, the cliffs split back apart, at which point they would have been crocodile chow. But they stayed where they were, leaning against each other’s backs with their feet planted against the rock, they held themselves and each other up without seeming to realize it. The crocodiles noticed this and converged below them, waiting for them to slip and fall in.

While Riku and Donald were mesmerized by the horror, Sora scanned around and saw a long rope still hanging from one of the bridge’s end posts. He untied it and held one end in his hand. “Donald, Riku, we need to do a reverse Trinity Ladder!” he barked.

Donald looked at him and nodded, but Riku was confused. “What’s a Trinity Ladder?” he asked.

“Donald, Goofy and I would reach high ledges or ceiling trapdoors by getting up on each other’s shoulders,” Sora explained. “This time, we need to go down. Hold this rope as far down as we can get it. Riku, you stay here and hold onto my ankles. Donald, I’ll hold onto yours, and you hold this rope down for Pacha and Kuzco.”

Riku and Donald nodded. Following Sora’s lead, they got into formation, and within a minute, Riku was holding Sora and Donald down over the side of the cliff. Donald held the rope tightly in both hands and lowered it down as far as he could. However, it was still several feet above Pacha and Kuzco.

“It’s not long enough!” Donald shouted up to Sora and Riku.

“What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? We’re gonna die!” Kuzco cried. “We’re gonna die! That’s it for me.”

Pacha looked up and saw the rope. “No, we’re not,” he said. “Calm down. I have an idea.” He mounted his feet firmly against the cliff. “Give me your arm.” Kuzco weakly lifted his right foreleg, and Pacha wrapped his left arm around it. “Okay. Now the other one.” He wrapped his other arm around Kuzco’s left foreleg, then hoisted himself up. “When I say go, push against my back and we’ll walk up the hill. Ready?” Kuzco shook his head. “Go!” He pushed back, accidentally slamming an unprepared Kuzco into the wall.

“Ow! You did that on purpose!” Kuzco accused. He shoved back, slamming Pacha against the opposite wall.

“No I didn’t! Now, we’re gonna have to work together to get out of this. See those guys up there? They’re trying to get us to safety, but they need us to get in reach. Now, follow my lead. Ready?” He pushed back until they were back in center, with Kuzco putting in his work. “Right foot.”

“Whose right?” Kuzco asked nervously. “Your right, or mine?”

“I don’t care… Mine.”

“Well, why yours?”

“Okay, your right! Ready?”

“Okay, got it!” Kuzco said, satisfied.

“Okay. Right. Left,” Pacha said, making sure that they both took each step in time with each other. “Right. Left.”

Kuzco chuckled in relief. “Look, we’re moving!” He looked down and screamed when he saw the crocodiles.

“Don’t look down! Now, stay with me. Stay with me,” Pacha said, getting Kuzco to calm down. “Right. Left. Right. Left.” They continued moving until they were at a point where they had extended themselves as far as they could while their shoulders were still touching. They stopped moving when they realized that they could not go any farther.

“Now what, genius?” Kuzco snarked, struggling to stay straight lest they fall to their deaths.

“Working on it,” Pacha replied. There was a brief pause as he considered what to do. “Okay, here’s the deal. Stretch out your neck, and I’ll grab the rope—”

Kuzco’s eyes widened. “How do I know you won’t let me fall after you grab the rope?” he asked in a sharp, distrustful tone.

“You’re just gonna have to trust me!”

Kuzco pushed Pacha with his front hooves, then situated his head under his back. He stretched his neck, pushing Pacha further up.

“They’re doing it!” Donald cheered.

Pacha swung his arm to try to grab the rope while Kuzco struggled to push him closer. “You know, it’s a good thing you’re not a big fat guy, or this would be really difficult,” Kuzco said sarcastically.

Pacha ignored him. “Almost… got it!” he grabbed the rope and tugged on it.

Donald smiled widely. “He’s got it!” he shouted up to Sora and Riku. Realizing that he had forgotten to consider the extra weight, he pulled with all his might.

“Okay, Pacha. Now grab Kuzco, and we’ll pull you both up!” Sora shouted down.

Pacha nodded. He reached down with his other arm to grab Kuzco. Kuzco stumbled and began to fall, screaming. However, Pacha wrapped his arm around the llama’s neck and pulled him close.

Riku, Sora and Donald pulled up with all their might. It took a lot of effort, mostly due to the inconvenient positions they were in making it difficult to properly support themselves, but they soon managed to pull Pacha and Kuzco to safety. Once everyone had been brought up to the top of the cliff, they all tumbled over each other in exhaustion.

“Nice teamwork, guys,” Riku complimented as soon as he had caught his breath.

“Yeah. That was pretty cool,” Sora agreed.

“Well, you know, I couldn’t have done it without you, your Majesty,” Pacha told Kuzco. Kuzco looked at him, dumbfounded by the sincere compliment. Pacha smiled and stood up. “Now, we really should get moving. Let’s… Whoa!” Some of the dirt under his foot gave way and he stumbled.

He nearly fell off of the cliff, but Kuzco bit onto the back of his poncho and pulled him up. Sora and Riku quickly came to their aid. Kuzco was clearly struggling to hold Pacha up. Sora and Riku each wrapped their arms around one of Pacha’s and hoisted him up. To be safe, the three of them dragged Pacha a few feet away from the edge.

Kuzco walked over to the edge and watched the rocks fall into the river below. He cheered. “Woo-oo-yeah! Look at me and my bad self! I snatched you,” he shouted, pointing at Pacha at that point, “right out of the air!” He turned back to the cliff and adopted a mocking expression. “‘Ooh, I’m a crumbly canyon wall and I’m taking you with me.’ Well, not today, pal! A-huh! A-huh, a-huh, a-huh!” He strutted in confidence.

Pacha looked at Kuzco with a look of surprise. “You just saved my life,” he said.

Kuzco put on a blank expression, trying to treat is as no big deal. “So?”

“I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“That there is some good in you after all.”

“Oh, no.”

“Admit it!”

“Wrong.”

“Yes, there is.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Hey, you could have let me fall.”

“What’s the big deal? Nobody’s _that_ heartless!” Kuzco gasped and shut his mouth, realizing that he had said the exact same thing that Pacha had said the previous night, but it was too late.

Riku smiled. “I won’t argue on that one,” he muttered.

“Yeah, don’t read too much into it. It was a one-time thing,” Kuzco insisted.

Pacha nodded, not buying it. “Right. Sure.” He smiled with pride. “Well, we better get going. With that bridge out, it’ll take a four-day walk to get to the palace.” He turned and began to walk down a path that went parallel to the cliff.

Kuzco did a double take in Pacha’s direction. “What?” he said in disbelief. “You mean you’re still taking me back?”

Pacha shrugged. “I shook on it, didn’t I?”

Kuzco looked at Sora, Donald and Goofy with a raised eyebrow. “You guys too?”

Sora shrugged. “Hey, we were hoping for a tour of the area, anyway,” he answered casually. “And there’s no point not helping a guy get back home, right?” Riku nodded, and Donald hesitantly did the same.

Kuzco was taken aback. “Uh, but I hope you realize that doesn’t change a thing. I’m still building Kuzcotopia when I get back.”

Pacha started walking along the path, not letting Kuzco’s claim bother him. “Well, four days is a long time. Who knows? Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

With that, Kuzco, Sora, Riku, and Donald followed Pacha down the path, taking the long way to the palace.

* * *

Yzma’s rage-filled screams rang out through the jungle. Mickey, Kairi and Goofy ran away and hid behind a trio of trees. When they were sure they were in the clear, they started laughing.

“Wow, your Majesty. I never would have thought you were such a trickster,” Kairi said in between giggles.

Mickey shrugged. “Well, I was plucky and a bit of a troublemaker in my youth,” he admitted. “I gave Pete a lot of trouble long before he started doing the same to the rest of us.”

Goofy chuckled. “But that was a good joke, convincing all those squirrels to throw their acorns at her,” he commended.

“It wasn’t too hard; at least one of them already hated Yzma,” Mickey replied. “Though, they seemed to like Kronk.”

Kairi giggled. “I wish Sora and Riku could have seen that!” A squirrel scurried down the tree trunk and stood on Kairi’s shoulder, chattering enthusiastically. “Yeah. That mean old lady really should think before yelling at you, right?” she cooed. The squirrel nodded happily, though this was soon followed by more apologetic chattering. “Huh. He’s saying that he told them which way Kuzco and Pacha went. Well, don’t worry about it. We were hoping to catch back up with them anyway.” The chipmunk chattered some more. “The bridge is out? But everyone made it okay, and they’re taking the long way? Thanks, little guy!” The squirrel perked up, glad to have been helpful. He raised his paw for a high-five, which Kairi met with her index finger, then he scurried back up the tree. “Bye, now,” Kairi said, waving up to the squirrel. She turned back to Mickey and Goofy, who were staring in bemusement, and grinned. “You know, this animal translation thing the Keyblade gives you is pretty fun. Though, it didn’t look like that Kronk guy really needed it.”

Goofy tilted his head slightly, but Mickey shrugged it off. “Come one. Let’s get ahead of these two and find the others.”

Kairi and Goofy nodded in agreement, and they took to a jog through the jungle, making sure not to be spotted by Yzma and Kronk.

* * *

Sora, Riku and Donald looked across the diner in utter disbelief. “You know,” Riku said, “when I suggested we find a place to stop and eat while we waited for Kairi, Mickey and Goofy, and we saw that sign that said that llamas were not allowed, I thought we would have to leave Kuzco outside and take food to go. I was not expecting… that.”

Kuzco and Pacha sat at a booth halfway across the diner, which was known as “Mudka’s Meat Hut”. As a disguise, Kuzco wore Pacha’s poncho and hat, but he also had applied red lipstick and blue eye shadow. With the emperor “sufficiently” disguised as a human woman, the two of them were acting like lovesick newlyweds. Their overly-sweet act seemed to create an awkward atmosphere that would keep people from noticing anything off, but knowing the truth seemed to make things worse for Sora, Riku and Donald. No one had argued when Donald suggested finding the furthest possible table away from them.

“If anything, we could have said we were a bunch of guys on a road trip, and we got separated from some friends, and that would not have raised too many questions,” Sora said, agreeing with Riku.

“Ordering! I need two heartburns and a deep-fried doorstop!” the waitress called as she left Kuzco and Pacha’s table and headed for the kitchen. Kuzco and Pacha started laughing.

Riku shrugged and raised a menu, hoping to block them from his view. “I guess we should decide on what to eat,” he suggested, turning the focus away from the llama and the villager.

Sora nodded and raised his menu. “Hmm… Pill bug? I take it that’s the heartburn,” he commented. He took a whiff and took in the ambient aroma. “Smells pretty good.”

Riku looked at him in surprise. “Wait? You’re actually going to eat this stuff without a second thought?” he asked in amazement.

Sora shrugged. “I’ve been to a lot of worlds with a lot of different cultures. Some of them serve some interesting things as ‘food’. If they can make giant pill bugs appetizing, who am I to argue?”

“Well, in that case, put one down for me.” Sora, Riku and Donald turned and saw Kairi standing next to Sora. Mickey and Goofy stood behind her.

“Hey! What took you so long?” Sora greeted. He scooted down to make room for Kairi to sit.

“We ran into someone controlling the Heartless,” Mickey answered. “And you won’t believe who it was.”

“Who?” Donald asked.

“Kuzco’s advisor, Yzma!” Kairi told them.

“What?!” Sora, Riku and Donald shouted at once, drawing the attention of everyone in the diner. The six of them looked out at the crowd with sheepish grins until they all returned to their usual business.

Kairi opened her mouth to continue, but stopped. She looked back out into the room, then turned back, now wearing a bemused expression. “Is that Kuzco in drag?” she asked. Sora, Riku and Donald nodded. After a few seconds of silence, she shrugged. “I take it he saw the sign?” Again they nodded. After a few more seconds, she shrugged again and said “Okay.”

Mickey took the opportunity to continue. “We think she and her assistant Kronk turned him into a llama while trying to poison him,” he explained.

Donald tilted his head. “Doesn’t sound like they’re smart enough to control the Heartless,” he commented.

Sora, Riku, Mickey, and Goofy all coughed at the same time, hacking out something that sounded like “Pete” under their breaths.

Donald sighed. “Point taken,” he said resignedly.

Meanwhile, the waitress had brought the “special” over, and I was quite disgusted. I mean, who calls this stuff “food”? But Pacha didn’t seem to mind. Of course he wouldn’t. So, I went back to the kitchen to have a word with the chef. Now that I think about it, no one seemed to notice that I was walking on all fours. Oh, well. Hey, wait a minute! This story’s supposed to be about me! You guys should be reading this through my perspective, not some third-person narration about the lamers across the room. Oh, the others made it back. I guess that should probably be… good? I don’t really care either way, especially since it’s taking time away from me. Urgh, this is worse than that time I screamed and the camera zoomed out until it focused on a chimp eating a bug.

Jiminy poked his head out of Mickey’s pocket. “Is it me, or did someone hijack the narration?” he asked.

“Did who what?” Goofy asked, utterly confused by Jiminy’s comment.

“It’s just that the narrator started to sound a lot more snarky and self-absorbed for a moment,” the cricket tried to explain.

“Jiminy, we have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sora said.

Jiminy shrugged and disappeared back into Mickey’s pocket.

“Look,” Goofy whispered, pointing toward the door. Yzma and Kronk had entered the diner and taken their seats at a table behind Pacha.

“We’ve been walking around in circles for who knows how long,” Yzma complained. “And those Heartless have been of no help in finding him. That is the last time we take directions from a squirrel! I should have done away with Kuzco myself when I had the chance!”

Pacha, who had up until this point been obliviously eating his dinner, stopped dead and nearly gasped when he heard that. Of course, since he had food in his mouth, he was left having to cough his meal up.

“You’ve really got to stop beating yourself up about that,” Kronk assured his boss. Still frustrated, Yzma bent her fork. “Uh-oh. I’ll get you another one there, Yzma.” He turned around and tapped a nervous Pacha on the shoulder, causing him to jump. “You using that fork, pal?” Pacha grabbed his fork and held it up for Kronk, looking away quickly as he did so. Kronk raised an eyebrow, as the sweating man seemed to be familiar to him. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Pacha answered nervously.

“Wrestled you in high school?” Kronk guessed, taking the fork out of Pacha’s hand.

“Don’t remember that, no,” Pacha said rapidly.

“No? Metal shop?”

“Uh, no…”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy watched this exchange occur, curious. “Oh! That must be how Kuzco ended up with Pacha,” Kairi whispered. “Kronk was trying to get rid of him and lost him on Pacha’s cart.”

Mickey’s eyes widened. “In that case, we have to get them out of here before Kronk figures out where he’s seen Pacha.”

“Uh, no, look. I don’t think we’ve ever met, but, I gotta go,” Pacha stammered before he stood up and snuck back to the kitchen.

“Don’t worry. I’ll think of it,” Kronk said, waving as Pacha walked away.

“Where is Kuzco, anyway?” Sora asked.

“I think he went to the kitchen,” Goofy answered.

* * *

Finally. Back to me. Yeah, I was in the kitchen. Thank you very much, a-hyuck. I was just checking with the chef, this huge guy with pretty impressive sideburns, and making sure that the food here actually did fit my reasonable standards.

“Look, all I know is the food looks iffy. All right? And I’m not the only one who thinks that, I’m sure.”

Pacha poked his head through the door. “Psst! Hey!” he whisper-called, trying to get Kuzco’s attention.

“So, I’m just checking to make sure that you’re gonna take the main course up a notch.”

Out in the dining area, Yzma looked through the menu. “Is there anything on this menu that is not swimming in gravy?!” she asked aloud in bewilderment.

“Hang on. I’ll go ask the chef,” Kronk said. He stood up and walked over to the kitchen doors. The six customers who sat in the distant booth gave each other panicked expressions.

“It’s a simple question. Is there or is there not anything edible on this menu?” I continued with my reasonable questions voicing my reasonable concerns. However, Pacha grabbed me and dragged me back.

Pacha looked back through the window and gasped, as Kronk was on his way. He pushed Kuzco through the kitchen and into a storage closet. “Hey, I didn’t ask about dessert yet!” Kuzco complained.

Kronk entered the kitchen, unaware of anything amiss, and approached the chef. “Hey, pal. What’s your policy on making special orders?” he asked.

Even though Kronk meant no trouble, this was the last straw for the chef. “Alright, buster, that’s it! You want a special order? Then you make it! I quit!” the chef shouted, taking his hat off and bringing it down on top of Kronk’s head. He began to quickly pack his things up into a suitcase. “You know, I try and I try, but there’s just no respect for anyone with vision. That’s it! There’s just nothing I can do about it!” He put a teal hat and marched off.

“Wait a second. Please, don’t go,” Kronk pleaded, but his words fell on deaf ears.

“Ordering.” He turned and saw the waitress, a heavyset elderly woman with pale ginger hair, at a slot window leading out into the dining area. “Three pork combos, extra bacon on the side, two chili cheese samplers…” She rattled off the order in a dry tone.

“No, no…” Kronk tried to explain.

“…A basket of liver and onion rings, a catch of the day, and a steak cut in the shape of a trout.”

Kronk blinked.

“You got all that, honey?” the waitress asked, not changing her tone of voice at all.

Kronk steeled his gaze. “Three oinkers wearing pants, a plate of hot air, a basket of Grandma’s breakfast, and change the bull to a gill. Got it,” he replied in rapid-fire lingo before he set to work.

In the closet, Pacha struggled to open a tightly-closed window.

“What’s going on?” Kuzco asked.

“No time to explain! We gotta get out of here!” Pacha replied, lifting the window open. “Come on!”

“In a minute. I’m still hungry,” Kuzco said, not noticing the urgency in Pacha’s voice. He walked back out into the kitchen.

Yzma rapped her fingers on the table impatiently. “What is he doing in there?” she asked herself. She got up and made her way to the kitchen. This did nothing to help Sora and friends’ nerves.

“Okay, I’ll make it simple for you,” Kuzco said, not noticing that the chef was a different person, nor that it was Kronk. “I’ll have a spinach omelet with wheat toast. Got it?”

“Can do,” Kronk replied, not recognizing his boss’ old boss’ voice.

Pacha tiptoed back into the kitchen as Kuzco walked out into the dining area. At the exact same moment, Yzma entered through the adjacent door, which opened on the same axis as the one that Kuzco went through, so neither of them saw the other. Pacha promptly hid under the chef’s table.

“What’s taking so long?” Yzma asked.

Kronk approached the slot and rang the bell sitting on the ledge. “Pickup!” he called.

“Kronk, what are you doing?”

“Kinda busy here.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Yzma rolled her eyes.

“Yo! Order up!”

Yzma groaned. “Oh well. While you’re at it, make me the special. And hold the gravy.” She turned and exited the kitchen.

“Check. Pickup!”

Kuzco entered as soon as Yzma exited. “You know what? On second thought, make my omelet a meat pie,” he said before leaving again.

“Meat pie. Check.”

Pacha crawled out from under the table and ran after Kuzco, but stopped and hid when Yzma entered again. At the same time as Kuzco.

You know what? You get the picture.

“Kronk, can I order the potatoes as a side dish?” Yzma asked.

“I’ll have to charge you full price.” Kronk began chopping carrots as he said this.

Kuzco: “Hey, how about a side of potatoes, my buddy?”

Kronk: “You got it. Want cheese on those potatoes?”

Yzma: “Thank you, Kronk. Cheddar will be fine.”

Kronk: “Cheddar spuds coming up.”

Kuzco: “Spuds yes, cheese no.”

Kronk: “Hold the cheese.”

Yzma: “No, I want the cheese.”

Kronk: “Cheese it is.”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy watched this cycle take place with bemusement, which soon turned into amusement. After three cycles, they had difficulty holding in their laughter.

“Well, I guess this buys us some time,” Sora said with a chuckle. “We might as well eat.”

Right on cue, the waitress appeared. “How may I help you?” she asked dryly.

Sora glanced at his menu again. “I’ll have the special.”

“Make that two,” Kairi added.

“I’ll have a catch of the day,” Donald said.

“Potato salad, please,” Mickey requested.

“Pork combo with onion rings,” Riku said.

“I’ll also have a pork combo,” Goofy finished up.

“Happy to oblige. Ordering!” The waitress took their menus and left.

Riku sniffed the air. “I don’t smell any Heartless nearby,” he observed. “The only darkness I can detect is coming from her.” He pointed at Yzma, who had entertained another trip into the kitchen.

“Okay. So we eat, pay, get Kuzco and Pacha, and get out of here before Yzma finds anything out,” Mickey affirmed. Moments later, the waitress brought their meals over.

“Let’s see. I saw Pacha open this up to eat,” Sora muttered, holding a straw as he studied the giant pill bug. “Now to put my treasure-opening skills to good use.” He hit the top of the crustacean with his straw, causing the exoskeleton to unfurl, revealing yellow mush inside.

Kairi laughed. “You’re such a goofball!”

Sora shrugged and smiled proudly. “Well, let’s dig in.”

By the time they had finished eating, Kuzco and Yzma had finished their roulette through the kitchen doors and had sat back down to wait for their meals. Yzma was looking over the menu again when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. She moved the menu out of her line of sight and noticed what to her appeared to be a strange-looking woman with a long face wearing a brown cap and a green poncho. She began to study the “woman” curiously.

Sora and Mickey slipped out of the booth and found Pacha coming out of the kitchen door. “Any ideas?” Mickey whispered.

Pacha looked to the side and smirked. He walked over to a waitress and whispered something in his ear, pointing in Yzma’s direction.

“No problem, hon. We do that all the time,” the waitress said in reply.

Yzma thought there was something vaguely familiar about the woman across from her, but she could not figure out what.

“One, two, three, four!” Yzma turned with a start and yelped in surprise as five waiters stood by her, dancing and singing. One of them held a cake adorned with dozens of candles. “ _Happy, happy birthday, from all of us to you! We wish it was our birthday so we could party too!_ ”

Pacha ran over to Kuzco and grabbed him, pulling him out the front door. Sora and Mickey left Munny to pay for the meal, then the rest of the party followed them. Goofy ducked back in to leave some more Munny as a tip. He caught a glimpse of the waiters singing for Yzma, who now wore both an enormous sombrero and an enormously peeved grimace.

“ _Happy, happy birthday. May all your dreams come true! We wish it was our birthday so we could party too!”_

Kronk stepped out of the kitchen when he heard the commotion. He chuckled. “It’s your birthday?” he asked in amusement, not noticing Yzma’s less-than-jovial reaction.

Once everyone was outside, Pacha huddled the group behind a wall. “Is everyone okay?” he asked.

Riku wagged his head lightly back and forth. “Well, it’s no _Gusteau’s_ , but the food was pretty good,” he answered. Sora and Donald looked at him in confusion. He felt embarrassed as he realized what Pacha was referring to. “Oh. You mean with those two. Yeah. We’re fine.”

“What are you doing?” Kuzco asked in confusion.

“Look, there’s two people in there, looking for you,” Pacha explained.

“What?”

“A big guy and a skinny old woman,” Pacha elaborated.

Kuzco recognized the description. “Wait. Was this woman scary beyond all reason?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Pacha agreed with the description.

“Like Dracula’s ugly grandmother,” Kairi added. Sora, who had seen many things that were scary for pretty good reasons, agreed.

“So old that your brain gets wrinkled,” Donald added.

Kuzco’s face lit up. “That’s Yzma and Kronk! I’m saved!” he cheered.

“Trust me. They’re not here to save you,” Riku warned.

“They’ll take me back to the palace!” Kuzco continued, not heeding the warning. “Thanks for your help. You’ve been great. I can take it from here.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. They’re trying to kill you!” Pacha explained.

Kuzco scoffed. “Kill me? Their whole world _revolves_ around me.” He tried to walk past Pacha to go meet up with Yzma, but Pacha stood in his way.

“No. I can’t let you!”

“What?” Kuzco’s eyes narrowed. “Oh. Oh, I get it.”

“What?” Pacha asked, confused.

“You don’t want to take me back to the palace,” Kuzco accused, pointing a hoof at Pacha. “You want to keep me stranded out here forever.”

“No!” Pacha protested.

“This has all been an act. All of you! And I almost fell for it.”

“No. Kuzco, we’re trying to help you,” Sora said.

“Will you just listen to me—” Pacha pleaded.

“No. You listen to me,” Kuzco spat. “All you care about is your… your stupid hilltop.”

“What?”

“You don’t care about me. Now, just get out of here. Go!”

“But… but…” Pacha stammered.

“Kuzco, don’t go down this path,” Riku pleaded. “We’re on the same side. You’re just misunderstanding.”

But Kuzco would not listen. “Go on. Get out of here!” he yelled.

Pacha stared in shock. Sora looked back and forth from the despondent Pacha to the angry Kuzco. Kairi reached her hand out as if to try and start explaining. “Fine,” Pacha said, catching the others off guard. He started to walk away.

Donald was the first to follow him. Riku regarded Kuzco solemnly, then started walking after them. “Suit yourself,” he said.

Mickey was next, reluctantly. “Come on, Pacha. Your family must be worried about you,” he consoled the villager. Sora, Kairi and Goofy followed them. Goofy stopped and looked back at Kuzco sadly before continuing.

Kuzco’s ear pricked up when he heard the diner’s front door open. He turned and saw Yzma and Kronk exit the building. Kuzco took a step to start following after him.

“Oh, this entire mess is your fault,” Yzma complained. She ripped the sombrero off of her head and threw it aside.

“What did I do?” Kronk asked.

“If you hadn’t mixed up those poisons, Kuzco would be dead now!” Kuzco stopped dead in his tracks. His jaw dropped. Had he heard correctly?

“There’ll be no more diversions until we track that llama down and kill him!” Yzma continued. Yep. Kuzco had heard right. He could not believe what he was hearing.

“I said I was sorry,” Kronk said. “Can’t even let it go, not even on your birthday.”

“Now where are those Heartless? Can’t get good help even from demonic slaves. Bah! Kuzco must be eliminated! The empire will finally be rid of that useless slug!”

“Well, you got a point. Nobody really cares that he’s gone, do they?”

Yzma and Kronk were out of sight, and Kuzco could hear no more of their conversation. Kuzco could not believe it. His most trusted subjects really were out to kill him. Yzma was using the Heartless too? Those were the creatures that had been attacking them all the way up here! And what was that last part? Nobody cared that he was missing or dead? Nobody cared? But… everybody loved him. Right?

Kuzco backed away, staring in horror out into space. Nobody cared. He always thought he was the best thing ever, but nobody cared that he was gone. Could he really have been that heartless? Was he so bad that nobody wanted anything to do with him?

He stopped and realized something. Pacha had been there for him. And Sora, and Riku, and Donald. Mickey, Goofy and Kairi, too. And he had just sent them away. He sent them away so callously.

He turned around and ran in the direction they had gone. “Pacha!” he called. He ran further, but his friends were nowhere in sight. “Pacha?” His run weakened into a halfhearted trot as he realized that they were all gone. He had driven them off. He was all alone.

He moseyed off, sulking, not paying attention to where he was going. He soon wandered into another section of jungle. Eventually, he just gave up on moving and sat down, reflecting on his past attitude. _Could it get any worse_ , he wondered. It immediately started raining, skipping past the first scant drops and going right for a heavy downpour.

Well, you see? This is how I got to my lowest point. I’m the victim here. I didn’t do anything, and they ruined my life and took everything I had.

“Will you just give it a rest up there?” Kuzco asked somberly.

What? I’m just telling them what happened… Wait. Did I tell them what happened? Hold on. They didn’t see this from the beginning, did they? Ugh, those other guys took away my screen time.

“Hey, they’ve got their things to show. And I’m starting to wonder if I’m really worth seeing.”

Nonono. I’m taking this back to the beginning. They need to see me when I was on top of the world, not this sad load. 

“Who you kidding, pal? They already read everything they needed to know. They know what happened.”

Well, yeah, but… but…

“Just leave me alone,” Kuzco sighed.

* * *

In a different, drier corner of the jungle, Kronk slept in the open air while Yzma rested in an extravagant purple tent. Kronk wore striped pajamas and held a teddy bear close to his chest. He woke up with a start when he realized something.

“The peasant at the diner! He didn’t pay his check.”

Kronk fell back to sleep and snoozed for several more seconds before he awoke once again, realizing something a tad bit more important.

“He’s the peasant who I saw leaving the city who disappeared into the crowd with Kuzco on the back of his cart,” he muttered to himself. “He must have taken him back to his village, so if we find the village, we find him.” He snapped his fingers. “And if we find him, we find Kuzco! Oh, yeah. It’s all comin’ together.” He threw the flaps of Yzma’s tent open to tell her what he had figured out.

* * *

The sun rose over the trees and illuminated the jungle. Kuzco stood up and wandered out of the trees. He found himself in a llama pasture. Well, this would be a good place to start anew, he thought. He waved nervously to the other llamas, who all glared at him, then turned and walked away, leaving him with fresh feelings of rejection. These were llamas, of all things, and even they knew he was a horrible person. He watched the llamas stop and start eating grass. Kuzco looked down at a clump of grass and decided to give it a go. He leaned down and took a bite, ripping it out of the ground. He chewed and swallowed. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

He heard a familiar voice, causing him to look up. Looking past a group of llamas, he saw Pacha sitting by some more llamas. He seemed to be regaling the story of their journey to them. The others were further back, packing up a tent and… Did Mickey just call a beam of light from the sky to make the tent disappear? Kuzco decided not to worry himself about that.

“You know, call me crazy for following that guy all the way out here,” Pacha told the llamas, “but as much as he tries to deny it, I know there’s some good in him. Besides, I couldn’t just leave him out here all alone. He’s a lousy llama. And I mean a _really_ lousy llama.” He chuckled.

Kuzco smiled, touched. He walked toward Pacha. Pacha saw Kuzco and smiled back. He stood up and dusted his poncho off. Goofy noticed Kuzco from a distance and waved cheerfully. This let the others know that he was there, and they all offered a similar greeting.

“Hey, listen, Pacha. You know, what I said to you, back at the diner, that… that… I didn’t really…” Kuzco stammered, trying to find the words for an apology.

Pacha raised his hand, letting him know that he did not need to say any more. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy walked toward them.

“So, are you tired of being a llama?” Pacha asked.

Kuzco’s eyes watered up. He sniffled briefly. “Yes,” he answered.

Sora nodded and held out a scroll. He unrolled it and crouched down so that everyone could see it. It was a map of the mountain region.

“Where did you get that?” Kuzco asked.

“From that big chest over there,” Sora replied, nodding his head to the side to indicate where it had been.

“All right, then. We’re just gonna stop at my house and get some supplies,” Pacha explained. “Then we’ll be on our way. If we really hurry, we can make it back to the palace by noon tomorrow. If we really, _really_ hurry, as in a constant sprint, we can make it back by dusk.”

Kuzco laughed. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”


	55. Chapter 54: To the Secret Lab!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Phew. I have no idea what happened last chapter. But it looks like Kuzco got that guy to back off so I can do my job properly. Well, Kuzco and my trusty frying pan. Or, _someone’s_ frying pan. Now, on with the story.  
> Admittedly, that last chapter took way longer to write than I thought it would. I sort of had the chapters outlined and I may have been too general and quick with the summary on that one, so I guess most people, and myself under other circumstances, would have split that up into two chapters. But that shouldn’t play as too much of an issue. So long as you enjoyed it, right?

Not wanting to waste any more time now that they all know that they were being pursued, Pacha led the party in a run up the hill leading into his village. They stopped when two old men called out to Pacha.

“Hey there, Pacha,” one of them greeted. “Hey, you know, you just missed your relatives.”

“My relatives?” Pacha repeated in confusion.

“Yeah. We just sent 'em up to your house.”

“What did they look like?” Pacha asked, starting to worry that something was amiss.

“Well, you see, there was this big guy, and this older woman who was, uh… How would you describe her?”

“Scary beyond all reason,” the other man answered.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

Kuzco gulped.

* * *

Yzma sat a table, smiling, while Pacha’s wife, Chicha, poured her some tea. Chicha was a heavily-pregnant woman wearing a yellow dress, a green headband, brown sandals, and gold earrings.

“So, remind me again how you’re related to Pacha,” Chicha requested, skeptical of her new houseguest.

“Why, I’m his third cousin’s brother’s wife’s step-niece’s great aunt,” Yzma replied. “Twice removed.”

“Uh-huh.” Chicha clearly was not buying it, but she did not know what to make of this old woman.

“Isn’t that right, Kronk?” Yzma asked her assistant, hoping to get him to back her up.

Kronk, however, was not listening. He was busy playing double-dutch with Chicha’s children, a girl with pigtails and buckteeth named Chaca and a shirtless boy with his hair tied up on top named Tipo. 

“ _Ninety-nine monkeys jumpin' on the bed_ ,” Chaca and Tipo sang as they swung the jump rope around.

“ _One fell off and bumped his head_ ,” Kronk sang along as he hopped over the rope.

Yzma groaned silently.

“You know, I am so sorry that you had to come all this way, but as I said to you before, you may recall, Pacha is not here,” Chicha explained. “I’ll be sure to tell him you came by.”

“Oh, would you please? That would be just great.” Yzma waved her hand and “accidentally” knocked her cup over. “Oops. Silly me.”

“No, no. Allow me,” Chicha said in an almost bored and annoyed tone. She leaned back against the table and, with some difficulty, stooped down to reach the cup.

Yzma used this distraction to sneak away and hop into the jump-roping loop to speak to Kronk. “She’s hiding something,” she whispered. “When I give the word, we search the house.”

“Okay. But I still have ninety-four monkeys to go,” Kronk replied. Yzma seethed briefly before jumping back out to retake her seat. By this moment, Chicha had grabbed the cup, and promptly rose back into a standing position.

“So, while we’re waiting for Paca—”

“ _Pacha_ ,” Chicha corrected her.

“Yeah, I, oh, yes. Um, perhaps, we can have a tour of your lovely home,” Yzma suggested.

“You know, why don’t you just come back when Pacha gets home?” Chicha interrupted. “I’m sure he’d love to show you the…” She trailed off when she glanced out the window and saw Pacha, swiping his hand in front of his neck in a gesture telling her to stop. Chicha got the hint. “Uh, excuse me, won’t you? I think I left something in the oven.” Chicha slipped away and met her husband in the kitchen.

Pacha explained the situation. “…We have to get back to the palace, find the lab, and change him back,” he finished.

“Hi there,” Kuzco greeted, sticking his head up into the window. Chicha yelped in fright and hit him in the face with a frying pan, causing him to fall down.

Pacha winced. “That was him,” he said weakly.

“Whoops.” For a moment, Chicha regarded her frying pan with confusion and looked back at the spot on the counter where she had picked it up. “Strange. I thought I left this hanging up after I used it yesterday… Oh, well.” She looked back out the window to see if Kuzco was okay, then saw Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy standing a short distance away. “Are those guys with you?” she asked. She watched Sora summon his Keyblade and bring it down on a Shadow Heartless’ head. Kairi waved amicably.

“Those guys, yes. Heartless things, no,” Pacha answered.

Chicha nodded. “Okay. Go. I’ll stall them long enough for you guys to get a head start.”

“Thanks honey,” Pacha said. He gave Chicha a kiss, slung a bag of tools over his shoulder, and exited the hut.

Kuzco stood up but started wobbling, still dizzy from the blow by the frying pan. “You have a lovely wife. Both very pretty,” he said in a daze. Pacha grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out. He beckoned the rest of the party to follow him.

Chicha smiled, then went to attend to Yzma. “So, where were we?” she asked.

Yzma was in a much sourer mood due to having to put up with the kids’—and Kronk’s—antics. “Listen, sister. We’re not leaving until—“

“I show you the house. Of course!” Chicha finished, grabbing Yzma and dragging her along.

Pacha, Kuzco, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy began running down the hill. “Hey, was it a good idea to leave your family with those two?” Kuzco asked, mildly concerned.

Pacha waved him off. “Oh, don’t worry. They can handle themselves,” he replied. As if on cue, they heard Yzma’s screams as she was sent down another side of the hill in a cart. She flew past Tipo, who was holding a beehive on a stick. Yzma hit the beehive, which became stuck on her head. She pulled it off and threw it away without being stung, but she was completely covered in honey. She then passed Chaca, hitting a pillow that she was holding in her path, and was covered in feathers. The cart’s wheel hit a rock, and the sudden stop sent Yzma flying. She flew into a child’s birthday party, where she knocked a piñata off of its string, only to get stuck to it herself an instant before an adult gave the kids the word to start swinging their sticks.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey stopped to watch this comedy routine take place and laughed. “This whole place is like a cartoon,” Riku commented. The others voiced their agreement.

Yzma steeled herself against the hits, which, due to the “attackers” being small children, were not too painful. She noticed several sets of footprints in the road a short distance away, and that one set consisted of hoof prints. She followed the trail until she saw a party of eight, one of which being a llama and three others being anthropomorphic animals, fleeing the scene.

She growled in rage. “KRONK!” she shouted. However, her assistant was watching her in her predicament with amusement. She gritted her teeth, which soon began clattering due to the fact that she was still being hit by the children and the adult had not noticed that anything was wrong.

“All right, that’s it,” she grumbled. “HEARTLESS!” Several seconds passed, but nothing happened. She blinked a couple times in bewilderment, before she came to a realization. “Bah! The Key kids got rid of them all”, she muttered in annoyance. “Very well. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Bring out the big guns!”

Responding to her words, and not bothering to wonder how she knows what guns are, a large shadow fell over the hill. The adult pleaded for the children to stop, at which point they removed their blindfolds. After briefly wondering why their piñata looked different, they looked around and saw a bunch of purple monkey-like Heartless wearing witch’s hats and skirts made of leaves. The Heartless stretched their arms out, and glowing green orbs materialized in their hands. One by one, they threw the orbs around. The orbs exploded in flashes of light or green smoke when they hit, burning patches of grass and breaking cracks in the stone walls. The children and their chaperone fled the scene, to Yzma’s slight satisfaction. One of the Heartless threw a green orb that melted the string, causing her to drop to the ground. She pushed herself to her feet, at which point one of the Heartless ripped the feathers and honey off of her.

She pointed at her fleeing quarry, and the Heartless threw their orbs across the hill, causing explosions to take place all around them. Riku was hit in the side and fell to his knee in pain. Donald cast Cure to heal the burn.

Sora, Mickey, Kairi, and Goofy got to work. As the Heartless, which Jiminy sketched in his journal and nicknamed “Wild Shaman”, approached, the four heroes fought them off. Sora and Kairi used Reflect to bounce the green orbs back at their throwers. As soon as Riku recovered from the burning sensation, he shot a volley of Dark Fire to blast a few of the monkeys to kingdom come. Donald hung back, since he had used up his mana with the Cure spell, though he did hit an enemy on the head with his staff when it came close. Some of the Heartless jumped on Pacha, but the man grabbed them and threw them off. There was one that he could not reach, but Kuzco bit onto its leg and yanked it off. Another tried to sneak up on him, but the llama bucked and kicked it away.

Soon, all of the Wild Shaman Heartless had been vanquished. Yzma clenched her fists and growled. “Okay, buster! Your move!” she shouted. On cue, a dark portal appeared on the ground behind her. Tendrils of dark smoke floated about and congealed until they formed a shape. That dark shape melted away to reveal a humanoid figure. It stood twenty feet tall, had a bushy grey beard growing out of its standard Heartless face, and wore a white lab coat, black rubber boots and gloves that fit over its clawed four-fingered hands, and a tall, lavender, slightly-tapering hat. In front of it sat a black cauldron emblazoned with a Heartless emblem. The cauldron was filled with a pink bubbling liquid not unlike the fluid in Yzma’s potions.

The Heartless conjured a glass vial in its hand. It dipped the vial into the cauldron and filled it up with potion, then willed a cork to appear and stopper it. It then threw the vial in a random direction. The vial exploded into a conical burst of flame. Villagers scattered in a panic. Some stopped to untie their llamas so they could flee as well, but others ran only on base self-preservation instinct.

“Uh-oh,” Kuzco remarked. “That doesn’t look good.”

“We have to save them,” Pacha said. The others nodded in agreement, though Kuzco quaked in fear.

Sora turned to his companions and started throwing out orders a split second faster than Mickey could. “Kairi, Donald, get the people to safety. Goofy, stay with Kuzco and Pacha. Riku, your Majesty, let’s take this thing down.”

Mickey smiled in approval. “Right behind you,” he said. The three experienced Keyblade wielders summoned their weapons and charged at the Heartless. Kairi and Donald ran around the buildings, making sure everyone could get to safety. Goofy summoned his shield and stood his ground, looking in every direction to make sure no one could get to Kuzco and Pacha.

Sora dodge-rolled out of the way of a potion, which exploded into an upside-down pyramid of ice. The ice scraped his knee and left a freezing burn that made it difficult to move his leg. He stumbled and hit the ground. Mickey came to his aid and inspected the injury, noticing that there appeared to be frost around his knee.

“Esuna,” the mouse muttered, waving his hand over Sora’s knee. Almost instantly, Sora could feel his toes again as the frost melted away. Sora thanked him and jumped into the fray.

“Hmm,” Mickey mused. “Fire and water are signified by a right-side-up and an upside-down triangle, respectively, in alchemy. This thing’s mixing chemicals and elements to create effects, like some sort of alchemist.”

“I’ve already got the name down,” Jiminy said, writing in his journal. He looked up for a brief second. “Look out!”

Mickey cast Reflect, bouncing a potion vial away harmlessly. It was a good thing, too, because the grass it exploded on turned into brittle stone. “Gosh. Thanks, Jiminy.” The cricket gave him a thumbs-up.

Riku attacked the Alchemist from behind, but the Heartless swatted him with his hand, then tossed a potion over its shoulder for good measure. The potion broke on Riku’s head, and he stumbled back in surprise and confusion. He turned his head in multiple directions, then put his hand in front of his face. However, he could see almost nothing. The effects of the potion had almost completely blinded him, though there were some small, fuzzy specks that he could make out with considerable effort.

“You know what? I can handle this,” he said to himself. He closed his eyes completely and breathed through his nose. Relying on the senses that drove him during the months he spent wearing a blindfold, Riku jumped back into the fight.

Sora jumped up and landed on the lip of the cauldron. He flailed his arms to avoid falling in, then leapt again to throw himself at the Alchemist’s face, swinging his Keyblade. Mickey climbed up the Heartless’ body and attacked its wrists whenever it conjured and filled vials, forcing it to drop them harmlessly into the cauldron. However, it responded to this strategy by trying to swat them away. Sometimes that worked, but whenever that failed, it simply crushed the vials in its hands. Sora and Mickey were forced to jump away to avoid the explosions of fire, bursts of ice, and blasts of toxic gas.

At one point, Sora was caught in the blast of a breaking vial and hit the ground hard. He tried to get up, but found it much harder. It took much of his strength just to get to his feet, and it was incredibly difficult to even walk. _Potion must’ve made me heavier,_ he thought. He flexed his arm muscles. _But only in my legs. Which means I can still use magic._

He pointed his Keyblade at the Heartless and cast Fire. The spell launched successfully, and the fireball hit the Alchemist under the armpit, causing it to lurch and drop the vial it was holding. Sora smirked and cast Thunder, bringing a bolt of lightning down on its head.

Donald charged in, screaming. He cast Blizzard, sending a chunk of ice right into the Heartless’ beard. It responded by lobbing a potion, which hit Donald dead on and shrunk him to three inches in height.

Sora saw him disappear into the grass and turned to Mickey, who had been thrown a few feet away from where Donald was. “Watch your step, your Majesty! Donald’s been shrunk. He’s right over there!” he warned, pointing to where he had seen Donald vanish. Mickey peered closely at the spot and saw what Sora meant. He nodded in thanks and picked Donald up. The duck crossed his arms in annoyance as Mickey held him by the collar. Mickey chuckled at Donald’s expression, then walked over and placed him on Sora’s shoulder.

Sora craned his head to address Donald. “So, you have any ideas to turn the tables on this mixologist?” he asked.

Donald thought for a moment, tapping his foot, then smiled as an idea came to mind. “Maybe we can make the potion go off while it’s in the cauldron,” he suggested. “We just cast Fire and Thunder, and maybe mix it up with Aero.”

Sora smiled. “Works for me,” he said. “Now, if only I could actually move my legs…”

Mickey, hearing this, ran up to him, pointed his Keyblade at Sora’s feet, and said “Esuna!” Sora lifted one leg, then put it down and lifted the other. The extra weight was gone!

“Thanks,” Sora said. “Hold on, Donald.” Donald grabbed tightly onto Sora’s hood as Sora jumped high into the air. He spun in midair to give himself an extra boost and landed on the Alchemist’s shoulder. “Now, let me see. Fire! Aero! Thundara! Fire!”

The Alchemist tried to knock him off, but the damage was done. The potion fluid in the cauldron bubbled and steamed more violently. Geysers of flame and noxious gas shot up. The Heartless gripped the sides of its head in a panic, instantly regretting it as smoke rose up due to the fluid on its gloves reacting.

“All together, now!” Mickey called. He, Sora and Riku jumped up and body-slammed into the Alchemist’s back, knocking it over and causing it to fall headfirst into its own cauldron. They ran as this caused potion liquid to splash out and spill over the side. Fireworks burst out of the cauldron. The Heartless’ legs, which were the only parts of it that were visible, twitched and convulsed. Fire and frost spread all over it. Mickey winced when he saw the left boot turn to stone. Another convulsion and the boot crumbled to dust, and the potion fizzled where the dust hit.

Realizing that there could be a lot of damage if the potion continued to erupt before the whole thing faded away, Sora pointed his Keyblade at the cauldron. He levitated a few inches off of the ground as a sphere of red-orange light formed at the tip and grew until it was a foot in diameter. At this point, Sora pushed the Keyblade into the center of the sphere, which burst into dozens of tiny orbs that flew through the air, leaving glowing trails, before they all hit the cauldron and what was left of the Heartless. The energy bursts hitting the cauldron from all sides split and caused it to burst, and the potion liquid reacted instantaneously in a contained eruption. Sora shot a final beam of light, causing the whole thing to explode into vapor. A crystalline heart floated away and faded away.

Mickey cast Esuna on Riku. Donald jumped off of Sora’s shoulder and returned to his normal size, the effects of the Mini potion wearing off. The four of them reunited with Kuzco, Pacha and Goofy, and they were soon joined by Kairi.

“That was interesting,” Donald said, baffled by the Heartless’ unique gimmick.

Kuzco laughed. “Okay, that was awesome!” he cheered.

They heard Yzma scream with rage. “KRONK!” she yelled. Kronk appeared in front of her, carrying the backpack tent, which Yzma climbed into from behind. “After them!”

“Aaaand that’s our cue to go,” Sora said. No one bothered to reply; they all turned and ran down the hill. Sora unfurled the map and the group studied it quickly while running. He put it away, confident that they have the route memorized. A quick glance over their shoulders told them that Yzma and Kronk were in hot pursuit.

The party ran all across the mountain range, heading up and down hills as they made their way toward the tallest mountain. Everyone kept at a sprint; though Sora and Riku intentionally held themselves back, the entire group was able to keep pace without getting tired. Unfortunately, so did Kronk, who followed their every twist and turn while carrying Yzma in a box on his back. Riku had to silently admit that he was impressed.

They eventually reached a ravine. But Pacha was prepared. He pulled a bow and arrow out of the pack he had slung over his shoulder. A rope had been tied to the back end of the arrow ahead of time. He nocked the arrow and fired it at a tree on the other side. Donald and Goofy quickly tied the other end of the rope to a nearby tree and made sure it was secure. Using some more lengths of rope, he, Kuzco, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi used the long rope as a zip line to reach the other side. Sora, however, opted to glide across while Riku decided to launch himself across with a burst of darkness propelling him.

When Kronk and Yzma drew near, Kuzco chomped on the rope, snapping it and rendering the zip line unusable. He smirked confidently, considering whether to keep going or stay there to watch Yzma’s frustration. Pacha made the decision for him by grabbing him by the neck and dragging him along while everyone else was already going ahead.

However, Yzma seemed to be prepared. She signaled to Kronk, put on a pair of aviator goggles, and pulled a cord. A pair of purple wings sprouted from the box. Kronk leapt off of the ledge and let the wind carry them across.

Halfway across, they were both hit with a bolt of lightning that reduced the box’s entire frame to skeletal sticks. They both looked up in bewilderment to see a single dark cloud hovering above them. A second later, they fell into the ravine.

Riku stopped to watch this happen, staring dumbstruck. “What the actual…” he wondered aloud, but stopped and understood when he heard Donald snicker. He shrugged and joined his friends in completing the journey. Within a few minutes, they were running up the tallest mountain, heading straight for the golden palace.

“All right,” Kuzco said. “Once we’re in the city, I’ll lead you to the ‘secret path’ to Yzma’s ‘secret lab’.”

“Side entrance two-hundred feet to the right of the main entrance, down a stretch of corridor, second left, third right, pull-the-lever-Kronk?” Sora guessed.

Kuzco stopped and looked at him in awe and bewilderment. “How did you…”

Sora shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I’m just used to this kind of thing by now,” he replied. After spending a moment trying to comprehend this, everyone shrugged and continued into the city.

* * *

Several minutes later, Sora, Riku and Kuzco walked into the dark chamber containing the entrance to the secret lab. They were soaking wet, with a shared look of annoyance on their faces. Sora held a crocodile in a headlock.

“Okay, why does she even have that lever?” Kuzco asked.

“Say, Sora, you want to let him go?” Riku asked.

Sora looked at him in mild confusion, then remembered the crocodile. “Oh. Sorry, buddy,” he said. He released the reptile, which whimpered and scuttled out of the room.

They rejoined Pacha, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy at the boar-head statue on the opposite wall. Pacha pulled the tusk on the right, which came down like a lever. The wall and floor around them flipped inward, dropping them all into what appeared to be a roller coaster car. A second cart was attached as they landed in, possibly as an effect of the mechanism detecting their total weight, and half of the group fell backward into that cart so that the first one was not crowded.

_Please remain seated and keep your arms and legs in at all times_ , a mechanical voice chimed from around them. Water was poured along the landing the cars sat in, and the carts were sent down a winding chute. Kuzco and Pacha screamed in terror and bewilderment, while the younger trio and the anthropomorphic animals cheered and screamed with excitement.

When the carts stopped in a slot at a vertical angle, everyone fell out, but they all landed on their feet. After taking a moment to regain their bearings, they ran toward the laboratory station and perused the tables and drawers.

“What does it look like?” Goofy asked.

“I don’t know. Just keep looking,” Kuzco replied.

“Probably something like the vials the Heartless was throwing,” Mickey suggested.

Kairi turned and saw a tall, owl-shaped cabinet. “Over here!” she called, pointing. As everyone ran over to the cabinet, she noticed a pair of gloves on a nearby table and decided it would be wise to put them on.

Sora pulled the doors open, revealing entire shelves of vials filled with pink potion. Under each set of potions, the shelves were marked to indicate which animal it represented. He raised an eyebrow. “No other method of compartmentalization? No wonder she got the poison and llama mixed up,” he commented.

They scanned the shelves, looking for the label for human potions. Looking across one row, Pacha pointed them out. “Lions, tigers, bears…” he finally found a stick figure carving of a human frame, only to find that the space above it was empty.

“Oh, my,” a voice rang out. Everyone turned around to see a thin figure standing in the shadows. Yzma stepped into the light and held up a vial filled with the pink liquid. “Looking for this?” she asked mockingly, flashing a wicked grin.

The party was utterly dumbfounded. “No. It can’t be,” Kuzco gasped. “How did you get back here before us?”

Yzma raised her finger and prepared to explain, but she was at a loss for words. She turned around. “Uh, how did we, Kronk?” she asked her accomplice.

Kronk, still wearing the ruined harness, tapped his chin, thinking. “Hold on a second,” he said, before he— Wait, what’s happening? What’s going on? What are you doing here? Hey!

“’Scuse me, pal.”

Hey! You can’t be up here! How are you even—?

“Just checking a few things.”

Ugh, not this again. Get down from there!

“Wow. You really didn’t show the dinner potion scene.”

Too far back, Mr. Barkin. Too far back.

“Oh, thanks, pal. Now, let me see here…”

I’m getting Deadpool on the phone. He is not going to be happy. Okay, he’ll probably find it hilarious, but he’ll still—

“Found it.”

OW! Watch it, buster!

“My bad.”

Kronk rejoined a baffled Yzma and shrugged. “Well, you got me,” he answered her question. “By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.”

Riku raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t use a Corridor of Darkness?” he asked.

“I don’t… think so,” Yzma replied uncertainly. She shrugged. “Oh, well. Back to business.”

“Okay, I admit it. Maybe I wasn’t as nice as I should have been,” Kuzco said. “But, Yzma, do you really want to kill me?”

“Just think of it as ‘you’re being let go,’ that your life is going in a different direction, that your body is part of a permanent outplacement,” Yzma taunted.

“Hey, that’s kind of like what he said to you when you got fired,” Kronk interrupted.

Yzma gritted her teeth. “I know,” she replied. “It’s called a cruel irony, like my dependence on you.”

Goofy scratched his head in confusion. “Well, I guess it would work better if the rest of us weren’t out of the loop on the joke,” he commented.

“You want me to get the aide to show them the list?” Kronk asked.

“So they can tell him to tell the guards about our murder attempts?” Yzma retorted.

“So… no on the aide, then?”

“I can’t believe this is happening!” Kuzco panicked.

“Then I bet you weren’t expecting this!” Yzma said. She pulled up the bottom of her dress. Her audience screamed in terror. Pacha covered his eyes. Sora closed his eyes and covered both Kairi’s and Goofy’s. Riku quickly put his blindfold on. Donald covered his eyes. Kuzco and Mickey cowered, their vision unobscured.

Yzma pulled the dress up further to reveal a dagger held by a strap against her thigh. She pulled it free and let her dress fall back down. Everyone sighed in relief. She laughed and tossed the dagger over her shoulder to Kronk. “Finish them off,” she ordered. Shadow Heartless rose out of the ground around the room.

Kronk looked at the dagger in his hand uncertainly. He never really signed on to murder people…

“You’re not backing down now, are ya, big guy?” A smaller version of Kronk dressed in a full-body devil costume, complete with horns, wings and tail, appeared on Kronk’s left shoulder in a burst of flame. He held a three-pronged trident in his left hand.

Kronk looked at his shoulder devil in confusion. “Uh, where’s the other guy?” he asked. At that moment, another version of Kronk, dressed in an angel’s robe complete with wings and a halo ring, appeared on his right shoulder in a puff of sparkling clouds. The shoulder angel was sitting in a hair dryer chair while reading a magazine. “Yo!” Kronk shouted, getting his conscience’s attention.

The shoulder angel threw the chair, helmet and magazine to the side. “So, what’d I miss?” he asked.

“Well, Yzma just tossed me this knife and asked me to, you know, take them out,” he explained. Yzma and the party watched in confusion, as they were unable to see the angel and devil on Kronk’s shoulders and were only aware of him talking into the air. Yzma turned to the party and pointed her thumb at him in bewilderment. The others shrugged. “…And then this guy popped up, and then we waited for you, and quite honestly…”

“Hold it!” Jiminy interrupted. He climbed out of Mickey’s pocket, dropped to the floor, and ran over to Kronk. He hopped up and scaled the man until he stood on Kronk’s wrist, right next to the dagger. “Sorry to interrupt guys, but we’re kind of doing this in public.”

“You can see them?” Kronk asked, mildly surprised.

“You can see us?” the shoulder angel and shoulder devil said simultaneously, greatly surprised.

“Well, of course,” Jiminy answered. “I’m an official conscience, after all. Lord high keeper of the knowledge of right and wrong, guide along the straight and narrow path, and all that. I’m kinda freelancing for the moment, but I still have the medal.”

“Ooh. Can I see it?” the shoulder angel asked, fascinated.

“Maybe later, angelface,” the shoulder devil interjected to bring him back to the topic. “We kinda have a moral debate going on.”

“I understand,” Jiminy agreed. “Now, I’d like to hear Mr. Kronk’s viewpoint on the whole thing. From what I understand, you are Yzma’s assistant, correct?”

Kuzco leaned over to whisper into Mickey’s ear. “He usually like this?” he asked. Mickey shrugged.

“Well, yeah. I do her cleaning, help in the lab, this lab, actually, and cook meals,” Kronk replied. “Basically, whatever she needs help with, I help. I really enjoy the cooking part.”

“See? Real nice guy here,” the shoulder angel added.

“But he’s making his way up in the world doing the kind of thing we’re dealing with now,” the shoulder devil countered.

“Hey, you see those little black things over there?” the angel asked.

“Yeah. Cute little things, aren’t they?” the devil replied.

“Yeah. They are pretty cute with their little antennae and glowing eyes,” Kronk agreed.

The angel facepalmed. “Creatures of DARKNESS, people! They follow the darkness in your hearts and eat you when you let it get ahold of you.”

Kronk gave the Heartless a double take. “Oh, yeah. I guess there’s that,” he concurred.

“There most certainly is that,” Jiminy agreed. “But let’s talk about the task at hand.” He rapped his knuckles on the flat side of the dagger blade. “Murder. Assassination. Stabbing people to death. Is that really the kind of guy you are? The kind of guy you want to be?”

“Uh, well, this is kind of new territory for me,” Kronk replied nervously. “And, well… uh…”

Yzma groaned and shook her head in disappointment. “Kronk!” she shouted. All three Kronks as well as Jiminy looked up at her. “Why did I think you could do this? This one simple thing? It’s like I’m talking to a monkey!”

“Whoa, now,” the angel interjected, not liking her attitude. But, of course, she could not hear him.

“A really, really, big, stupid monkey named Kronk!” Yzma elaborated.

“Ouch,” the devil remarked pitifully.

“And do you want to know something else?” Yzma asked. “I’ve never liked your spinach puffs!” The Kronks gasped. “Never!”

Kronk began to cry. The angel touched Kronk’s cheek comfortingly. Jiminy patted Kronk’s arm in a _there, there_ gesture. Sora and Goofy’s jaws dropped. “Wow. And I thought Maleficent was mean,” Riku remarked. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

The devil brandished his trident. “That’s it. She’s going down,” he muttered angrily.

“Now, now, remember guys,” the angel called their attention. “From above, the wicked shall receive their just reward.” The three Kronks and Jiminy looked up and saw a candle-lit chandelier hanging several feet above Yzma.

“That’ll work,” they all said in unison. Kronk switched the dagger to his right hand and slashed the rope that led down from above the chandelier to a column nearby. Jiminy jumped off from Kronk’s arm so that he would not fall off.

Sora followed Kronk’s gaze and noticed the chandelier. He raised his finger to interject. “Uh, Kronk…”

The chandelier fell, and Yzma and the heroes could only watch it come down. It crashed into the floor. The force of the landing caused the candles to become extinguished.

Yzma stood in the middle of the chandelier, completely unharmed. She was so thin that she passed harmlessly through the center circle. She was still holding onto the human potion, which meant that it was probably a good thing that the attack failed.

“Strange,” Kronk remarked. “That usually works.”

“And so does this!” Yzma retorted, running over to a table and pulling on a lever disguised as a potion beaker.

A trapdoor opened up beneath Kronk’s feet. He looked down and realized what was about to happen. “Ah. Should have seen that coming.” He fell through the newly-made hole. The shoulder angel and shoulder devil looked down and hugged each other in fear before they fell as well. Jiminy walked over to the edge and looked in, watching them fall.

While Yzma was distracted with punishing Kronk for his betrayal, Mickey leapt to grab the vial. However, Yzma called a trio of Heartless to knock him out of the air. Pacha managed to sneak up on her and pull the vial out of her hand.

“Give me that vial!” she shouted, jumping on his back and pounding on his head. This forced him to accidentally throw the potion. Sora dove down and caught it before it hit the ground. Yzma brought her knee up and hit him under the chin, then took the vial out of his hand. Donald swatted her in the leg with his staff, and Yzma dropped it from the pain. A Shadow Heartless tugged at his coat as he tried to go catch it, but Goofy came to the rescue. He was soon dogpiled by more Heartless, and one of the Shadows pulled the vial out of his hand and handed it to Yzma. As soon as she took it, Kuzco rammed into her, throwing her across the room and causing the vial to fall to the floor harmlessly. Yzma crashed into the cabinet, knocking a few potions off of the shelves (also harmlessly). She looked down and around at the identical potions as the wheels began turning in her head.

The party ran after the vial as it rolled across the floor. Yzma stood behind the cabinet and pushed it. Every single potion fell off of the shelves and landed on the floor around the human potion.

“Oops,” she said mockingly. “Clumsy me.” She watched as her foes got down on their hands and knees and inspected each potion, not sure which was which. “Which one? Which one?” she sang. She pulled on a cord to her left and an alarm sounded. “Better hurry. I’m expecting company.”

Three of the walls were carved to resemble a large, imposing face baring sharp teeth. Those teeth opened in two parts vertically, like three doors. Standing behind each entrance, the party could see half a dozen muscle-bound warriors carrying a variety of weapons. Each guard was painted so that the left side of his body was blue and the right side was red. They wore, aprons in front of their legs, helmets, and arm bands.

“Kill them!” Yzma ordered. “They murdered the emperor!” The guards let out a battle cry and charged forward.

“No! Wait! I’m the emperor! It’s me, Kuzco!” Kuzco tried to explain. But the guards ignored the talking llama. “They’re not listening to me!”

“Just take them all!” Pacha advised. Kairi reached down toward one of the vials. Sora stood up, unbuttoned and opened one of his pockets, and reached his hand out toward the vials. Every one of them floated up and spun around Sora before inserting themselves into his pocket. The magic of the clothes allowed them to fit in the small space as if his pocket had greater volume.

“What?!” Kuzco remarked, bewildered by what he had just seen.

The guards charged at them with the same level of fury. A few of them attacked the Heartless as they went by, evidently recognizing them as threats, which Yzma did not seem to mind. Pacha saw a table lined with a multitude of experimental potions in front of him. With Riku’s help, he pushed it over, tossing the potions on all of the guards, who each turned into a different animal. The guards stopped and looked at themselves in surprise.

“Get them!” Yzma insisted.

One of the guards, who had taken on a bovine form, regarded is new shape nervously. “Hey, I’ve been turned into a cow. Can I go home?” he asked.

“You’re excused,” Yzma politely relented. The cow guard walked away, waddling on his hooves. “Anyone else?”

“No. We’re good,” the remaining guards answered. Sora smiled, amused at how unperturbed they were at the situation.

“Get them!” Yzma ordered again. The transmogrified guards charged forward. The party turned and ran for the exit.

“Sora, I was about to grab the right potion before you did that!” Kairi scolded as they ran down a set of stairs. “I had my eye on it the whole time from before Yzma dumped the other potions.”

“What? Really?” Kuzco remarked. “Wow. You have a good eye.”

“Why, thank you,” Kairi replied.

“Sorry,” Sora said. “But that means we have it somewhere in here, so we have the advantage. Now, we just have to get to safety.”

“If we use the right potion and change Kuzco back, we can clear up this mess before it gets out of hand,” Riku suggested.

“Fine. Give me a potion,” Pacha said. Sora reached into his pocket and grabbed a random potion. He handed it to Pacha, who popped the cork out and poured it down Kuzco’s throat. There was a puff of pink smoke as the potion took effect, but a second passed and Kuzco was nowhere to be seen.

“Uh, guys? A little help here?” Kuzco croaked. They all stopped and turned around, and were shocked to see that Kuzco had turned into a small turtle. The guards were catching up to him fast!

Pacha reached down and picked him up, then turned back around to start running again. They came out to a stairwell, but saw that some of the guards were coming down the stairs to either side of them. Pacha put Kuzco on the ledge next to the stairs going down and hopped on his shell, surfing down the length of the stairs just as a guard, who had been turned into an octopus, brought three axes down where they had been. Riku, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi ran down the stairs while Sora cast Blizzard on the opposite ledge, then he and Mickey surfed down the frozen surface just like Pacha and Kuzco did.

Three guards showed up at the bottom, waiting to intercept them. Pacha held his arm out in Sora’s direction, beckoning for another potion. Sora complied, and threw a vial to Pacha.

“Please be something with wings,” Pacha muttered. He ducked down and shoved the potion into Kuzco’s beak.

Donald cast a Fire spell to knock the guards away, and Kairi cast Aerora at the same time. Both spells blasted the guards off of their feet, and they had the added bonus of vaulting Pacha and Kuzco into the air. Kuzco was enveloped in a cloud of pink smoke.

Kuzco flapped his newfound wings. “Yeah! We’re flying!” he cheered. He looked down and realized that he was a tiny red bird that was about the size of Pacha’s hand, and Pacha was holding onto him by the tail feathers. “Uh-oh…” They fell and slammed onto a statue that hung over a doorway. They slid off and hit the ground.

“Ouch,” Sora muttered sympathetically. He and Mickey jumped off and soared through the air, landing right beside them. The guards came after them, but they stopped and fell backwards, as if they had hit an invisible wall. Riku’s shields flashed and disappeared as he, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy leapt past them and joined their friends.

Kuzco screamed as a Soldier Heartless appeared above him, but Pacha kicked it into the wall with no effort. Sora picked Kuzco up and let him stand on his index finger.

The party ran, coming onto a narrow bridge. “We’re not getting anywhere with you picking the vial,” he complained. “I’m picking the next one!”

“Go right ahead,” Sora replied, lowering the bird down to his pocket. Kuzco poked his head in and grabbed a random vial with his beak. He pulled his head out and showed it to Sora. Riku uncorked it and fed it to Kuzco.

There was an enormous cloud of pink smoke. When it cleared, Kuzco was a giant red whale. Everyone looked at his new form in utter shock.

“Don’t you say a word,” Kuzco warned. They all looked down and saw the stone cracking beneath Kuzco’s weight. The bridge broke and everyone fell into a canal below.

Yzma ran to the bottom of the stairs and looked down over the edge of the broken bridge. She turned to the guards. “Quick! Drain the canals!” she ordered.

Kuzco sank into the water, but soon started swimming with ease. Even though everyone was submerged when they landed, they got their bearings and started swimming as well. Sora, Donald and Goofy decided against entering their Atlantica forms, reasoning that it would be prudent that they retain arms and legs through the whole escapade. That, and if Sora’s clothes disappeared, the potions would as well.

Sora grabbed onto Kuzco’s tail and clambered up onto his back. He took a potion out of his pocket and leaned over to look Kuzco in the eye. “Open wide,” he said, before throwing the bottle into his mouth. There was a puff of smoke and Sora fell into the water.

A llama head popped out of the water. Kuzco looked at his hooves and smiled. “Yay! I’m a llama again!” He paused in his celebration as he realized that it was no reason to celebrate. He was a llama _again_. “Wait…”

They all heard a sound like stone grinding and water draining out of a sink. Before they could realize what was happening, they were all caught in a whirlpool that pulled them down to a hole in the bottom of the channel.

Wide jets of water poured out of the nose of the top part of the palace. The water ran down the stairs and into the city, sure to leave a lot of people bewildered and panicking.

As the last of the water flooded out of the channel, the party went through, but half of the group grabbed onto the ledge and held on, then caught the other half by the arms when they went through.

Yzma hopped down and pointed down the hole they fell through. “There they go! After them!” she shouted back to the guards.

“Come on, men!” one of the guards, who had been turned into a lizard, said encouragingly. “No one lives forever! Charge!” The guards ran down into the funnel leading down and out of the channel, but they all lost their footing and slid through the hole. Meanwhile, the party had managed to climb over to the wall on the side.

Heartless poured out of the palace’s front door, some of which began to climb the wall to try and reach the party. Spellcasting Heartless floated out of the nostril holes and pursued them. Mickey and Donald fought them off while Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Goofy helped Kuzco and Pacha climb up the outer face of the building until they came upon a flat landing which made up the palace’s unibrow.

Angry at the failure of the guards, Yzma pulled a curtain down, tied it to a statue above the funnel, and, holding onto the other end and placing a discarded sword between her teeth, dropped through the hole. In a mad rage, she ran up the side of the building, still holding onto the curtain, and quickly made her way up to the landing.

Sora took out the remaining potions, which counted to about a dozen. “Okay, just to be safe,” he said, then popped the cork off of one of them and poured a drop on Donald’s beak. Donald instantly transformed into a turkey. “No…” He dropped the vial over the side, seeing no further use for it, and tried another one. Donald became a rabbit. “No…” Another one turned him into a Billy goat. Then a horse. Then a squirrel. Then a llama. “Wait. How many llama potions does Yzma have?” Sora asked aloud. He shrugged and continued, turning Donald into a lion, a bear, an ermine, and then a horse-sized bird with yellow feathers and long legs.

“Wark?” Donald crowed in confusion.

“Try again,” Sora muttered. The next potion turned Donald back into a duck. He reached for more only to pull out the last two. He showed them to Kuzco and Pacha.

Pacha took the potions and turned to Kuzco, who looked at them joyfully. “Okay, two left. It’s got to be one of these,” Pacha told him.

However, Yzma would have none of it. She swung over the group and came down in between Kuzco and Pacha, kicking out with both legs to knock them away. Pacha dropped the potions as he was sent back, and they landed in between Kuzco and Pacha. Kuzco gasped and ran for it, while Yzma made her way toward it. Sora ran after her, Keyblade in hand, but Yzma took the sword from her mouth and fought him back. Sora did not put much strength into his swing, as he did not expect a rail-thin old woman to put up much of a fight, so he was surprised by the deftness in her swing and the strength of the blow, and he was sent reeling back.

Yzma turned back around and dove for the potions, at the same time Kuzco did as well. They bumped into each other and tumbled on the landing for a moment. They pushed the other off and Yzma inadvertently fell backward onto one of the potions.

“No!” Pacha called, but it was too late. The potion burst in an enormous blast, one tinged with a dark aura. Purple smoke fell over the landing, a haze that no one could see through.

A sinister laugh echoed from the center of the cloud, a bone-chilling cackle that, if one listened very hard, almost sounded as though there was something caught in the person’s throat.

The smoke cleared, revealing a small white kitten. Yzma let out a soft meow. Sora, Riku and Donald laughed. Kairi and Goofy cooed at Yzma’s fluffy new form. Even the Heartless that had made their way up to the ledge with them stared in bewilderment.

Kuzco leaned in and grabbed the remaining vial, which would turn him back into a human. “I’ll take that,” he gloated. He held it up triumphantly.

“This is the one,” Pacha said. “This’ll change you back to a human.”

Yzma threw herself at Kuzco and started clawing at his face. “Ow! Hey! Get her off me!” Kuzco screamed. Pacha pulled her off but she started clawing at him. Sora pulled her off of his face and held her at a distance, but she bit his arm, causing him to drop her. Goofy grabbed her in a bear hug, but she squeezed her way out. She jumped on Kuzco again. Pacha pulled her off again, but Yzma drove her claws into his arm. He stumbled back and fell off the ledge. Luckily, he managed to grab onto a ledge around the shape of the right eye. Mickey ran to help Kuzco, but Heartless jumped in his way.

Kuzco shook his head trying to shake Yzma off, before he finally slammed his head into the wall, causing her to let go and fall off, stunned. He ran over to check on Pacha.

“Drink the potion!” Pacha shouted.

“Okay, okay,” Kuzco replied. He raised up the leg holding the potion, only to find that he was not holding the potion. He gasped and looked around frantically. “Where did it go? Where is it?”

“Looking for this?” Yzma teased, holding the vial in one paw and speaking in a high-pitched squeak. Kairi giggled. Yzma stopped when she heard how she sounded. “Is that my voice? Is that _my_ voice?” After a second, she shrugged. “Oh, well.” She held it up and shot Kuzco a wicked grin.

Sora held his bleeding arm, which still stung with pain from Yzma’s bite. He turned to his friends. “Riku, Goofy, go down and help Pacha,” he instructed. Riku nodded and Goofy saluted, then they both started to climb down the building.

“No, no! Don’t drop it!” Kuzco begged.

“I’m not going to drop it, you fool!” Yzma shot back. “I’m going to drink it. And once I turn back into my beautiful self I’m going to KILL YOU!” She flashed a surprisingly terrifying grin full of sharp teeth and laughed. She bit onto the cork and tugged, but it stretched, refusing to come out. She pulled with her paw, but it still would not budge. She put it down and stomped on it, then threw it against the wall in frustration. It bounced off and went flying out. Yzma gasped and jumped after it, only to then remember that there was nothing below her for several hundred feet. “Uh-oh,” she muttered before she fell, screaming all the way down.

The potion bounced off a wall and slid off a curved ledge which sent it flying parallel to the wall but still within range, though Yzma sailed past that ledge. It bounced off of walls until it landed on a small ledge.

Kuzco gasped and ran after it. Heartless tried to impede his progress, but Kuzco head-butted one, bit the arm of another, and slapped a third off of the building.

Sora, Mickey and Kairi ran to the other side and clambered after the vial as well. Heartless tried to get to the potion before them, but Donald pulled them up into a Magnera spell, getting them out of the way. The Magnera spell happened to be close enough to the wall that the Heartless repeatedly hit their heads and limbs on the stone. They landed on a ledge above the vial, but before any of them could drop down and retrieve it, a Hook Bat flew into Sora’s face. He was caught off guard and stumbled backward, accidentally knocking Mickey and Kairi over, and they fell off, though they managed to grab onto a ledge. Sora hopped down and started to help Kairi up. Donald climbed down and reached for Mickey as well.

Kuzco reached the nearest ledge to the vial and stretched out to grab it, but it was just out of reach. He looked down to see how far the drop was and noticed Pacha start to slip down the curved side.

“Kuzco!” Pacha called. He was starting to lose his grip. Riku and Goofy watched in horror. They were not going to make it in time!

“Be right there. Gimme a minute,” Kuzco said, reaching as far as he could for the potion, which rocked back and forth as if it was having trouble staying balanced on the ledge. Despite his desperation, he was starting to realize that it was a lost cause.

“Kuzco! Kuzco!” Pacha’s arm slipped, and he was left to hang on with one hand. A few seconds later, his fingers slipped and he lost hold. But before he fell, two hooves clasped themselves over his hand. Pacha looked up to see that Kuzco had come back for him, and sighed in relief. He mounted his feet on the side of the ledge and climbed up with Kuzco’s help.

At the same time, Sora and Donald pulled Kairi and Mickey up to safety.

Pacha looked over to the potion and saw that it was about to fall. “The vial!” he gasped, pointing this out. The vial tilted and fell over the ledge.

Riku appeared out of thin air and reached down to catch the vial. “I got it!” he shouted. He held the potion up triumphantly. He beckoned to Kuzco. “Come on up!”

Meanwhile, Yzma was still falling. At the bottom, near one of the side entrances to the palace, a guard was in an argument with a delivery man.

“For the last time, we did not order a giant trampoline!” the guard complained.

“You know, pal, you could have told me that _before_ I set it up, the delivery man retorted.

Yzma landed in the center of the trampoline and bounced back up, saving her from broken bones and non-comical injury. She was still screaming in terror. After several seconds, she flew past Kuzco and Pacha, who looked up after her in bewilderment, and right by Riku. It took a few seconds for Riku to notice that something was wrong, and he realized that he no longer held the potion vial in his hand. He looked up and saw it in Yzma’s paw. He looked down, wondering how she was sent back up. He looked up again, then down again. He raised an eyebrow.

“Is that a giant trampoline?” he asked. He looked back up at Yzma and shook his head.

Yzma stopped screaming and noticed that she was holding the human potion. She started laughing victoriously, until she crashed into the bottom of the unibrow section, leaving a sizeable crack in the stone and dropping the potion. It bounced around some more until it settled on another ledge. Yzma popped free from the ceiling and landed safely on the next ledge below, her head spinning from the concussive blow.

Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald scrambled along the building to try and reach it. Riku and Goofy, meanwhile, reached Kuzco and Pacha and began to help them up and over. Yzma regained her senses and, scanning about, located the potion. Using her newfound nimbleness, she jumped around and caught up to the heroes as they got close to the vial. Mickey jumped over to it, but he did not quite clear the jump and grabbed onto the ledge. He reached up to grab the vial, but Yzma hopped down and grabbed it before him.

With the vial in hand, Yzma jumped to a decoration just above and to the left. She cackled in her high-pitched voice. “I win,” she said, smiling wickedly.

A blue circular window opened suddenly, slamming her against the wall and causing her to throw the vial inadvertently. Kairi jumped onto the ledge above Mickey and caught the vial out of the air. “Got it!” she cheered.

Kronk looked around, chuckling as he leaned out of the window. “Whoa,” he remarked. “What are the odds of that trapdoor leading me out here?”

Kuzco and Pacha arrived at the ledge with Kairi and Mickey. Around them, Sora, Riku and Donald were clearing out the last of the Heartless. Kairi smiled and wagged the vial in Kuzco’s direction. “Your Highness, I believe this is for you,” she said. She popped the cork off and handed it to Kuzco.

Kuzco took it and raised it up as if for a toast. “Well, guys, I’ll see you on the other side,” he said before drinking the potion.

While this was happening, Yzma dropped off of the wall. Kronk climbed out to the ledge she was on and chuckled when he saw her. “Well, Yzma. Fancy seeing you here,” he greeted. He picked her up and petted her like a housecat.

Yzma grumbled under her breath and rolled her eyes. As she did so, she noticed a familiar figure sitting up on the “ear” of the palace. The silver-haired figure giggled at the spectacle.


	56. Chapter 55: The Emperor's New Groove

Mickey, Donald and Goofy watched in astonishment as Kuzco’s servants remodeled the rooms and replaced the purple and blue walls with red and gold. “Gawrsh, how are they changing all this so fast?” Goofy asked.

The now-human Kuzco shrugged. “I dunno. Probably the same way they changed it in a few hours the first time when Yzma took over,” he replied. Kuzco was a slim young man with a pointed chin and shoulder-length black hair. He wore a red tunic with a yellow collar, yellow feathered anklets, black sandals, a pair of blue disc-shaped earrings, and a gold crown that consisted of a hollow hemisphere and a wider half-circle which made it look like a rising sun. After he turned back into a human, Kuzco revealed himself to the guards and aides, who immediately sent out word that Kuzco was alive. After that, Kuzco offered to give his friends a tour of the palace.

“So, Kuzco, what’s next?” Mickey asked.

“The last few days taught me that, despite what I always thought, I was not the best guy around,” the emperor admitted. “And from what I heard back at the diner, the people weren’t too happy with how I’d been running things. Well, that’s all gonna change, pal. I’m turning myself around. I’ll be making things right. No more ‘no touchy’, no tossing old guys out my windows for throwing off my groove, none of that jazz. I got a new groove to dance by, baby!”

Sora smiled at this. “Glad to hear that,” he said.

Mickey chuckled. “Gosh, I think you’re gonna do great,” he assured him.

“Thanks for everything, guys,” Kuzco said sincerely. He noticed everyone smiling warmly and realized he was getting emotional. He cleared his throat. “So, uh, guys. You said you’re from way outta town, right? Anything special bring you to visit? Anything I can help you with?”

“Well, actually, there is something we were hoping to take a look at,” Sora answered. “You see, there’s this group of bad guys that’s controlling the Heartless. We think Yzma might be part of the group. They’ve been going around a bunch of worlds searching for some closely-guarded artifacts. Like, centuries-old, no-one-can-know, artifacts. We’ve been trying to track them down and get ahead of them before they can gather them all, but we don’t really know what it is we’re supposed to be looking for. Would you happen to know anything that might help?”

Kuzco pondered the question for several seconds, then he snapped his fingers when he came up with something. “I don’t know anything specific, but I do remember one of the guards telling a new guy about some things in the dungeon’s vault that are no-touchy,” he told them. “There had been one guy who touched this really big, really old tablet thing the wrong way, or something, and that guard arrested him. I don’t remember what happened to him. Does that help?”

Sora traded glances with Mickey, Riku, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi, then turned back to Kuzco and nodded. “Well, that’s a good place to start,” he said. “Can we ask him about it?”

Kuzco averted his gaze. “Uh, I think we lost him during the chase yesterday,” he answered. “I think he was the guy who got turned into a lizard.”

“Oh…” Sora scratched the back of his head uncomfortably.

“But I’ll give you permission to take a look around, if you’d like,” Kuzco said.

“Thank you, Kuzco,” Mickey replied. The others nodded.

Riku turned to Donald and Goofy. “Hey, how about you two check out Yzma’s lab. Maybe she left something that could give us clues,” he suggested.

Donald and Goofy nodded. “Good idea, Riku,” Donald said.

“Okay, guys. Let’s go take a look,” Mickey affirmed.

They turned to leave, but Sora realized something. “Uh, how do we get to the vault?” he asked.

“Oh. Right. Hey!” Kuzco called to one of the guards. “Show these guys to the treasure vault.”

The guard nodded and led them out of the room and down the hall.

* * *

“Wheeeeeeeeeee!” Goofy screamed as he and Donald rode the roller coaster into the laboratory. Donald was less cheerful, having lost a few feathers trying to get into the lab.

When they landed, they found themselves dressed in Yzma and Kronk’s lab uniforms. On noticing this, they simply shrugged.

“So, where do you think we should look?” Goofy asked.

“Well, first we should check where she keeps her equipment and the materials she mixes to make the potions,” Donald suggested. He shrugged. “Who knows? We might be able to find something about the bad guys lying around. We did make a mess of the place.”

Goofy crouched when he approached the potions cabinet and lifted it so it stood upright again. He studied the markings on the shelves. “You know, Yzma might not have been the brightest plotter, but she was good at what she did,” he commented, amazed by the wide range of potions she had concocted all by herself.

“Yeah,” Donald agreed, perusing a scroll of notes that he found in one of the drawers in the desk that Riku and Pacha had knocked over the day before. She was resourceful, he had to admit. She had access to a wide range of ingredients.

Goofy glanced around the room for other places in which Yzma might hide her secrets. While scanning the area, his attention was drawn to a small item resting on the floor. _What could that be?_ he wondered.

Donald read the scroll further, wondering why there had only been a single vial of human potion. He read the list of ingredients, many of which were quite common on other worlds. In fact, if they only had the recipes, he and Sora could have hypothetically had the Moogles create it in large amounts. He noticed that Yzma had added side notes next to most of the ingredients. From what she had determined, the ingredients were incredibly rare in this world. _Makes sense_ , he thought. _Now that I think about it, we haven’t picked up any Lightning, Power or Serenity elements at all. Even Mythril was in short supply._

“Hey, uh, Donald,” Goofy called to his companion. Donald turned to see what Goofy wanted to tell him. The duck tilted his head in confusion when he saw what Goofy was showing him. In the knight’s hand was a large white feather with purple edges.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Donald asked.

“Um, I think someone else had been in here,” Goofy answered, a worried look on his face.

* * *

Sora, Mickey, Riku, and Kairi split up to search the entire treasure room. Mickey had advised them to look for the tablet but also to keep an eye out for anything else that might be of importance. Sora was fascinated by the sight of many large statues. Kairi saw a wall lined with a large number of jewels. While she did think they looked nice, she decided that none of them would be the kind of thing they were looking for, so she passed them. Mickey and Riku went to the opposite end of the room, which was lined with statues, tablets and steles depicting historical and religious documentation.

Riku came across a large tablet that appeared to depict what appeared to be two deities. From some text, Riku had guessed that the two deities were the sun god Inti and the death god Supai. He sniffed and found an interesting odor about it. He looked down and noticed that there was a ribbon barring him from stepping closer.

“Hey, I think I found it,” he shouted, alerting his friends to his discovery.

Sora and Mickey ran over to join him. Kairi began to do so as well, but she sensed something amiss. She felt a strange power, a mix of darkness, nothingness, and something else she could not put her finger on. Realizing that the power hovered above her, she looked up.

The silver-haired man lounged on the shoulders of an enormous stone idol that was in the shape of a hooded figure. He giggled. “How amusing, thinking I sought the tablet,” he said. He sat up and caressed the head of the statue. “It was merely a stage prop to set the scene. Alas, it will serve no purpose in the legend that shall be written.” He conjured an enormous ball of ice, which he threw at the tablet with little effort. The ball of ice crashed into the tablet and broke it into many pieces. Riku ran away to avoid the stone remains from falling on top of him.

Sora, Riku and Mickey met up with Kairi by the idol. Sora glared up at the stranger. “Who are you supposed to be?” he shouted.

The silver-haired man flipped his hair back. “I am known as Kuja,” he replied. “But you may know me as your Angel of Death.”

“Try me! Firaga!” Sora summoned his Keyblade and fired the spell at him. The fire ball hit Kuja square in the chest and sent him flying back into the wall. Despite leaving a sizeable crack in the stone, Kuja pushed himself away and dusted himself off. Sora cast Thundaga, and a lightning bolt came down on Kuja’s head. However, he did not seem to notice.

“If you’ll excuse me, I shall be taking this,” Kuja said. He waved his hand and a dark portal opened up beneath the idol, which started to sink into the gateway.

“We can’t let him get away with that!” Mickey gasped. He cast Zero Graviga, but Kuja fired a bolt of energy that broke the spell’s field. Kuja fired another spell that shrank the idol to human height.

Riku fired a Dark Firaga spell at Kuja, but this time he did not budge from it. Sora cast Blizzaga and Thundaga at him, but the ice crystal shattered against his skin and he did not react to the lightning surging through his body.

Kuja chuckled. “My, my. That tickles,” he teased.

Sora gasped, unable to believe it. “She… she doesn’t even feel it! It’s not doing anything to her!”

Kuja raised an eyebrow. “She? You should know that I am a man,” he remarked.

Sora tilted his head. “Wait… what?” he said, flabbergasted. “Oh. Um, you mean you identify as…”

“No,” Kuja interrupted him. “I am actually biologically male. For real.”

Sora was even more confused. He stared at Kuja in bewilderment, trying to reconcile his claims with everything that his entire appearance would imply. “But… you… you have… are…” Unable to come up with the right words, he simply moved his arms up and down in a wavy motion.

Kuja sighed. “Don’t worry. I get that far more often than you can imagine. Now, back to business.” He waved toward the idol, which was now neck-deep in the portal.

“I think I can get it,” Riku said. He ran into the pool, but Kuja snapped his fingers and a pillar of fire blasted him into the air. The idol vanished into the portal and vanished.

“Don’t let him get away!” Mickey shouted. He jumped up multiple statues, then leapt up to engage Kuja. He swung his Keyblade at him, sending him flying, but Kuja regained his balance and flew straight toward him. Kuja conjured a circle of glowing white orbs of light, which he sent right at Mickey. The orbs exploded and sent the mouse flying across the room.

“Give me a boost!” Kairi called. Sora threw his Keyblade at Kuja, then crouched and cupped his hands for Kairi to step in. He threw her up and she slashed Kuja in the back while he was on the recoil from getting hit in the side by the Kingdom Key. Instead of cutting his skin like she intended, however, the Keyblade bounced off of him, and Kairi lost her aerial balance. Kuja turned around and smirked, before he backhanded her, knocking him down to the ground. She laid prone, groaning in pain.

“Kairi!” Sora gasped. He glared up at Kuja, gritting his teeth. He jumped high into the air, leaving shoe-print-shaped indents in the floor. As soon as he got within range of Kuja, he swung his Keyblade at him with all of his strength. He struck Kuja several times in the span of a few seconds, then sent him flying with a finisher. But he was not finished yet, and he flung himself at Kuja for a prompt encore. The finishing blow sent Kuja straight through several statues and tablets before he finally crashed into a wall, leaving a huge imprint.

Sora fell to the ground and barely stuck the landing. He swung his arms around to get his joints back into gear. The Limit Break had taken a lot more out of him than he had thought. Seeing Kairi get hurt must have provoked him into putting more into each swing than usual. He breathed heavily, realizing how much energy he had burned with that. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. _That ought to have done something to him/her,_ he thought to himself.

Kuja walked out of the dust and rubble, appearing to be unharmed, though he seemed to be breathing a bit heavier and there may have been a slight limp in his step. Sora’s eyes widened in fear.

“Hehe. Impressive,” Kuja commended, clapping his hands. “But it appears that your performance is not quite up to snuff.” He threw a fireball and a giant ice crystal, both of which hit Sora and sent him flying. He crashed into a statue and slumped to the ground.

Riku warped in and threw himself at Kuja, but the sorcerer was ready for him. Kuja spun around and shoved his hand into Riku’s gut. A blast of silver light exploded and sent Riku tumbling through the air.

Mickey leapt through the air and threw three Pearl spells at Kuja, but the man swatted them aside like they were nothing and raised his fist. A Flare spell exploded above Mickey, launching him into the ground at great speed.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey were all down for the count. Kuja walked over to Mickey and smirked.

“Such a shame,” he lamented. “I had expected more from you all. No matter. I suppose that your power simply cannot approach mine.” He turned around and walked away. A Corridor of Darkness appeared in front of him.

“You’re just gonna leave us?” Mickey choked.

Kuja smirked back at him. “Killing you would be beneath me,” he replied confidently. “Besides, I did not come here for you. You were merely an amusing diversion.” He walked through the Corridor, which closed behind him.

Mickey groaned. He tried to force himself to his feet, but soon fainted from the pain.

* * *

“Curaga.”

Mickey opened his eyes. Three fuzzy images hovered in front of his vision. He blinked several times until his vision cleared. Sora, Riku and Kairi looked down on him, their eyes filled with worry. He groaned and started to stand up. His friends smiled on seeing that he was okay. Riku helped Mickey to his feet.

Mickey groaned. “Where’s Kuja?” he asked.

Riku shook his head. “He’s long gone,” he replied solemnly. “And he got the idol.”

“I can’t believe it,” Sora lamented. “He beat us without even trying. We didn’t even do anything to him.”

“If this is really the kind of power Maleficent has aligned with,” Kairi said, “then this is going to be a lot harder than we thought.”

Mickey surveyed the immense damage and sighed. “We should meet up with Donald, Goofy and Kuzco,” he told his friends. “Tell them what happened and plan our next move.”

Sora sighed, surveying the damage. “I don’t know about Kuzco, but I doubt the guards and custodians are going to be happy about all this.”

* * *

Kuzco found Pacha sitting next to a diorama of the hills that Pacha’s village was built on. Instead of Pacha’s hut, Kuzco had placed a model of his prospective “Kuzcotopia” water park summer home. Kuzco frowned, remembering the way he had acted previously. Now was time to change things. He walked up to Pacha.

“So, you lied to me,” he said.

“I did?” Pacha asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Kuzco replied. “You said, ‘when the sun hits this ridge just right, these hills sing. Well, pal, I got dragged all over those hills and I did not hear any singing.” He put on a mock pout. Pacha raised his eyebrow in confusion, but then understood what he actually meant. “So, I’ll be building my summer home on a more ‘magical’ hill, thank you.”

He reached his hand out, and Pacha handed him a model of his own hut. “Couldn’t pull the wool over your eyes, huh?” Pacha said, keeping up the act.

“No, no. I’m sharp. I’m on it. Looks like you and your family are stuck on the tuneless hilltop forever, pal.”

Pacha smiled warmly. He tilted his head to look past Kuzco and his smile faded. Kuzco turned around, curious, and saw Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey enter, looking rather beat up. Donald and Goofy walked in from the opposite direction and, on seeing the state their friends were in, ran over to check on them.

“Hey, what happened?” Pacha asked.

Sora and Mickey explained what happened. Donald and Goofy winced at multiple points throughout.

“Ouch,” Kuzco sympathized. “You guys all right?”

“Yeah. We’re fine now,” Kairi answered.

“You guys find anything?” Riku asked Donald and Goofy.

“Well, we didn’t find anything about the bad guys or what Yzma knew about what they’re doing, but we found this,” Goofy told them, holding up the feather.

Sora nodded. “That matches the ones in Kuja’s hair,” he affirmed. “That means Yzma was working with them.”

“And I found Yzma’s notes on all the potions she made,” Donald added, holding up the scrolls. “I figured we could learn a few tricks from them.”

“That’s pretty interesting, Donald,” Mickey replied, intrigued by the possibilities.

“You know, guys, there’s something eating at me,” Kuzco said. Everyone turned their attention to him. “You said he started dropping the idol through a dark portal thingy, and then shrank it, right? Why would he need to shrink it?”

The others pondered this question, realizing that he was right. “Maybe for easy storage?” Goofy guessed.

Riku shook his head. “If it was so hard to move and store, he would have shrank it and then carried it out with him,” he countered. “And even then, he shrank it until it was as big as him, not into anything that would actually be easy to carry. It seemed like more of an afterthought, like he remembered that he was going to need it to be that exact size later, so he decided to get it over with.”

“Maybe all of these artifacts, while they’re in different shapes and sizes for safekeeping, have to be in the same size and general shape to work well together,” Kairi suggested.

Mickey gripped his chin, considering what she had said. “You know, Kairi, you might be on to something,” he said. “But I guess there’s nothing else we can find here.”

“You’re leaving?” Pacha asked, sad to see them go.

“Yeah. We have to figure out what their endgame is and how we can stop them from getting there,” Sora replied.

“Well, good luck, you guys,” Kuzco said, waving. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“Thanks, Kuzco, Pacha.” Sora waved good-bye, as did his friends. They turned and left the room, heading for the exit so they can use the Safe Point they found when they first entered the city to return to the Gummi Ship.

After a moment of silence, Kuzco walked over to sit next to Pacha.

“You know, I’m pretty sure I heard some singing on the hill next to us,” Pacha said, almost out of nowhere. He shrugged. “In case you’re interested.”


	57. Chapter 56: Cat Yzma

Kronk stood in front of his Squirrel Scout troop, which consisted of half a dozen children, including Chaca and Tipo, all dressed in Squirrel Scout Class A uniforms. Kronk, wearing his counselor’s uniform, was teaching his first squirrel-speaking lesson since signing up a new scout. A familiar, chipper squirrel, which the troop had come to name “Bucky”, stood on Kronk’s shoulder.

“My acorn is missing,” Kronk said.

“Squeak, squeakin’, squeak, squeakity,” the scouts, save for the grouchy new member, repeated in squirrel “language”.

“Did you eat the acorn?” Kronk continued.

“Squeaker, squeak, squeak, squeakin’?” the scouts translated.

“You owe me a new acorn.”

“Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeaker…” One of the scouts noticed that the white-furred kitten next to him, who was also wearing a scout uniform, was not participating. He nudged the grumpy cat and held up an acorn. Yzma sighed and did the same, along with the other scouts. “Squeakin’,” they all finished.

Kronk sniffled and wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m so proud of you guys,” he said.

* * *

After the meeting had been adjourned, Yzma stalked away. Once she was out of view of the scouts, she violently threw the uniform off and screamed in indignant rage. She clawed deep gashes in a nearby tree, venting her rage. While she was still slashing fiercely even after cutting off a large amount of bark, she stopped immediately when a red dot on the ground drew her attention. She approached it curiously, then jumped after it when she saw it move. She followed it for a few seconds before she noticed someone standing nearby.

“My, aren’t you adorable,” Kuja said. He held a laser pointer in his hand. He dropped it and stooped down to gather Yzma in his arms. “And soft, too.” He stroked her fur. Yzma was annoyed to be subject to such disrespectful treatment.

“What are you doing here?” Yzma asked coldly.

“I take it your plan of murdering your ex-boss did not go so well,” Kuja teased. “Never fear, however. I have succeeded in our main objective and retrieved the artifact, at the expense of all the other treasures.”

“Great,” Yzma mumbled. “Now, if we’re done here, change me back!”

Kuja sighed and shook his head. “I’m afraid that the emperor used up all of the human potion, so it appears as though you will be stuck like this for a while.” Yzma growled. “But you’re right. We are done here. So, let us return to the Vale.” He opened a Corridor of Darkness and stepped through, still cradling Yzma.

* * *

Zeromast, Maleficent, Pete, Hades, Loki, Kefka, Mozenrath, Dr. Hämsterviel, Horned King, Cruella, Dr. Facilier, and Doug turned when they heard a portal open, and they saw Kuja step through, holding a white cat. Facilier smiled, understanding the situation, but the others were confused.

“Say, uh, Kuja, what’s with the kitten?” Pete asked. The white cat hissed at him.

“Let’s just say that not all of us came out of our altercations in the Empire of Llamas unscathed,” Kuja said cryptically.

Some of them were still perplexed for a moment, but then they watched the cat scowl at them and it dawned on them that the cat _was_ Yzma. Maleficent, Pete, Hades, Loki, Kefka, Mozenrath, and Dr. Facilier burst out in laughter. Yzma rolled her eyes.

Zeromast allowed himself a soft smile and shook his head lightly. “I see that you delivered the idol. Good work,” he said.

“Why, thank you,” Kuja bowed, giving Yzma the opportunity to escape. “I received some resistance, but I found it… lacking.” He shot Maleficent a pitiful stare. “They put on a good show, but I would have thought someone strong enough to give you a grand finale would have posed a challenge to me.”

Maleficent’s eyes widened. Pete looked back and forth from her to Kuja, utterly baffled by the latter’s claim. Maleficent regained her composure and looked at him with mild annoyance. “Do you mean to inform us that you defeated Sora and his friends and yet neglected to put an end to him?” she asked.

Kuja shrugged dismissively. “They were undeserving of my blessing,” he replied. “You might be more forgiving, however.”

Pete shrugged. “Well, at least we’ll actually get to go up against them again,” he admitted. “It kinda woulda been disappointing if we got all riled up and then he came back and told us they were done for.”

Maleficent seemed to agree, though her hatred of the Keyblade wielder, particularly after yet another mention of her demise, seethed. “Very well. We will have multiple opportunities to destroy him in the future,” she conceded.

“They deserve the fires of pandemonium to consume their very souls,” the Horned King muttered.

“By the time I showed up, the Keyblade wielders were already exploring the vault,” Kuja added. “It appears that they know we are seeking to gather the artifacts.”

Mozenrath stroked his chin. “Interesting,” he said. “Makes sense, though. After our first attempt to retrieve the artifact in Agrabah failed, Xerxes and I found them in the treasure vault conducting their own search.”

“And we may have dropped a few hints when we clashed in the cursed prince’s castle,” Kefka said.

“But they definitely knew about us from the start,” Loki pointed out. “By the time we fought in the castle, they had already determined that Hades was among our ranks, which meant that they had already determined that said ranks existed.”

“Of course. They had to have known that something was amiss, else there would have been no reason for them to gather together like they had in the previous conflicts,” Hämsterviel deduced.

“However, they did not seem to have any idea as to what sort of artifacts we sought,” Kuja said. “They sought out a religious tablet based on a hunch, which means that they have not yet determined how to find these artifacts.”

“But if they are taking notes based on each encounter, it is likely that they will come to understand our search patterns soon,” Zeromast warned. “If that happens, they will start gathering the items, and that will prove to be a significant obstacle.”

“Huh. If only we knew how much they know,” Pete mused. “Then we can make sure to keep a lid on how much we spill, and we can be ready for when they’re ready to catch up to us.”

“Exemplary idea, Mr. Pete,” Zeromast said. Pete looked at him in confusion. “Perhaps we should follow them and determine just how much they know of our search. Would you like to volunteer yourself for the task?”

Pete took a step back, taken by surprise. “Well, I… I mean… well, you see… huh?”

“You might as well, cat,” Doug said with a chuckle. “That way, you can get _them_ to spill the beans while they beat you up.” He took a sip of extra-foamy coffee.

“Hey, you don’t have to get right up in their faces if you don’t want to,” Hades assured him. “Probably better that way, 'cause then you’d probably screw it up. Just tail them from a distance. Think you can handle that, big guy?”

Pete rubbed the back of his head nervously. “So, um, how do I know where they’re gonna go?” he asked.

“Excuse me one moment,” Zeromast said. He walked upstairs and inspected a model of all of the worlds. The models were mounted on rings that moved by a mechanism that simulated the worlds’ motion and paths around the stellar system over time. He located the model of the Empire of Llamas and then found the nearest worlds. He had a good idea which world his enemies were most likely to visit in their next trip. Satisfied with his conclusion, he descended into the meeting room to inform Pete of his destination.


	58. Chapter 57: Pure of Heart

Mickey pulled Sora out of the MRI machine and Sora turned to sit up. “How’s it look?” Sora asked.

Mickey examined the X-Ray images. He smiled when he saw that there did not seem to be anything out of the ordinary. “Looks like you’ll be fine,” he said. “Whatever injuries you sustained during the fight with Kuja, they’re all healed up.”

“Really?” Sora stretched his arms over his head. “Then why do I still feel like I got hit by a truck?”

Mickey shrugged. “Fatigue,” he guessed. “Your muscles are sore. Curaga might have repaired all damage, but the beating we got left us all physically exhausted. I guess the best thing we can really do for ourselves is rest.”

Sora shrugged. “Well, then, I’ll see you when I wake up,” he said as he began to walk out of the medical bay.

As he turned to walk down the hallway to his room, Kairi walked by him from that direction and grabbed him by the arm. “Oh, no you don’t, you lazy bum,” she scolded as she dragged him along. “Riku’s piloting the ship, Mickey’s keeping everything running, and I’m cooking dinner. We’re just as exhausted as you. You are not leaving all the work to us while you take a nap. The least you can do is help me in the kitchen.”

Sora sighed and shook his head. “So close,” he mumbled to himself before he turned to walk alongside Kairi semi-willingly.

* * *

Sora set the table while Kairi passed the food around. “Okay, a Lasagna al Forno for me, Sora and Riku, a Taelpar Harvest Galette for the king, an Oil-Drizzled Steamed Fish for Donald, and Prairie-Style Skewers for Goofy. Enjoy,” Kairi said. She sat down and everyone began eating. Mickey and Donald tied their napkins around their necks while Riku opened his napkin up and laid it in his lap. Sora had removed his gloves and jacket before he and Kairi started cooking, and at the start of the meal Donald and Goofy removed their hats.

“Mmm… This is delicious. Thanks, Kairi,” Riku complimented.

“A-hyuck. Yeah, this is really good,” Goofy agreed. Donald nodded.

“Hey! I cooked too!” Sora protested. Mickey and Kairi laughed, followed by Riku, Donald and Goofy. Sora pouted for a brief moment before joining in as well.

While everyone was eating, Jiminy hopped up onto the table and took out his journal. Everyone gave him their attention, recognizing that he wanted to discuss matters

“So, Jiminy, what’d you figure out?” Goofy asked.

Jiminy opened the journal to the section dedicated to notes on the artifact hunt. “I believe that I’ve made sense of a few more details that would help us on our search,” he said. “It appears we finally have confirmation on the qualifications of a so-called ‘guardian’ of these items. Specifically, they are highly-trusted figures. Our conversations with the king of Corona and Emperor Kuzco proved that this does not mean they are all rulers of their respective worlds, but they must possess the resources to hide and protect it.”

“Yeah. We already figured that,” Riku pointed out. “But it’s good to know for sure.”

“Next, I have gathered multiple key points on the nature and characteristics of each individual object,” Jiminy continued. “First off, they are indestructible. We know this because Mozenrath intended to use a wind jackal to disintegrate the entire city of Agrabah, but he was confident that the artifact would remain intact.”

“That would definitely make sense,” Donald agreed. “Something that could let you change reality isn’t going to break just like that.”

“Second, they can be made to take on different forms to better conceal them. This was confirmed when Kefka and the witch doctor mentioned that the item in Beast’s Castle was _in the form_ of a clock. And, obviously, the artifact in Empire of Llamas did not bear a similar form.”

“That still leaves the question of how we’re going to track them down,” Kairi reminded him after swallowing a bite of her lasagna.

“True. That’s still a conundrum. But there might be a way to narrow the search.”

“How do you mean?” Mickey asked.

“Kuja mocked you for thinking that the artifact could be a large tablet,” Jiminy explained. He began to pace back and forth. “He didn’t just say that you were looking at the wrong thing, or that you were close but not close enough; he just plain made fun of you for being so far off. It’s as if he expected someone who was following their trail to have the sense to look for something that looked something even remotely like the actual thing.”

Goofy scratched the top of his head contemplatively, then his eyes widened and he gasped at a realization. He grabbed one of his skewers and held it vertically upward. “Maybe it’s supposed to be shaped kinda like this,” he suggested.

The others looked at the skewer in confusion, trying to see what he was getting at, but they soon understood. “You mean tall, straight and thin, like how that idol looked like a man standing upright?” Sora asked. Goofy nodded.

“Huh. I guess that makes sense,” Mickey said. “But why would they keep them in that shape? And why would they all need to be in that shape? If their guardians can change them into any form, why leave them in that frame?”

“That’s a question for another time,” Riku said. “Nice work, Jiminy. That really helps. It at least gives us something to keep an eye on as we continue our journey.”

“Yeah. And if we keep traveling to other worlds and running into those guys, we’re sure to make sense of it all, and maybe even get ahead of them,” Sora affirmed, his mouth full of food and sauce around his lips. He finished chewing and swallowed his food and burped.

Kairi giggled. “So, what’s our next destination?” she asked.

“Castle of Dreams,” Donald answered. “That’s where Cinderella lives.”

“Huh. You know, I never actually got the chance to meet Cinderella,” she admitted. “And Naminé didn’t get any memory data from Sora on her, so I can’t even picture her from what she knew.”

“Really?” Sora said, puzzled. “Oh, yeah. I guess you didn’t. We sort of had to get out of Hollow Bastion before Cinderella and the other Princesses really woke up. And I didn’t really talk to her much when we went back. We were more concerned with sealing the Keyhole and seeing that Jasmine and Alice were okay.”

“Uh, I’m still kinda confused,” Donald admitted. “Why did Ansem need the Seven Princesses of Heart again?”

Silence fell over the group as they tried to remember and piece together what had actually happened. After a minute, Sora began his attempt at explaining.

“Ansem wanted to open the Door to Darkness to get more dark power, but he seemed to think it was Kingdom Hearts, even though Kingdom Hearts was light,” he began, speaking slowly, somewhat uncertainly. “Somehow, that involved unsealing the Keyhole in Hollow Bastion, which he needed the Seven Princesses of Heart to do. He had Maleficent, the Heartless, and Riku kidnap the Princesses and gather them in front of the Keyhole. He also created a dark Keyblade that could unlock people’s hearts, and took out six of the seven princesses’ hearts with it, and wanted to use it to get Kairi’s heart out of me. Since they all have hearts of pure light that couldn’t be corrupted by the darkness, the hearts didn’t become Heartless but they instead got trapped inside the Keyblade, or something. I beat him and used the Keyblade of People’s Hearts to set Kairi’s heart free, removing my heart as well, and that destroyed Ansem’s Keyblade… somehow…”

“Let’s just chalk that up to ‘Heroic Sacrifice Light Magic’,” Kairi said.

Sora shrugged. “The Keyhole was still unsealed because the Seven Princesses were all together, even though the Keyblade that housed six of their hearts was destroyed, so Ansem didn’t really need that Keyblade in the first place,” he continued. “So he went to the Door to Darkness, we beat him, and he caused the Door to open. He thought he would be filled with whatever dark power was in Kingdom Hearts, but then he was destroyed by the light of… what I think was the _actual_ Kingdom Hearts… but then the light faded and on the other side of the door was the Realm of Darkness. Then we closed it, and Mickey and I used our Keyblades to lock it.”

Goofy scratched the top of his head again. “Uh, I still don’t get it,” he admitted. “For one, why did Kingdom Hearts shine out of the Door to Darkness, then disappear?”

“Well, you see, the Door to Darkness bridged the dimensions between light and dark,” Mickey explained. “And, from what I’ve been able to guess, the Kingdom Keys, the Keyblade from the Realm of Light and the Keyblade from the Realm of Darkness, have some connection to Kingdom Hearts, though I’m not entirely sure how.”

“So, the proximity between both Kingdom Keys, on either side of the Door to Darkness bridging between dimensions, reached out to Kingdom Heats and bade it to shine its light through the Door, if even for a moment?” Jiminy suggested. “I guess it makes sense that it would show up long enough to prove Ansem wrong and vanish as soon as he was destroyed, then let you guys finish the work yourselves, if Kingdom Hearts had a level of sentience. It could have shown up just to pass judgment on Ansem and also make your job a bit easier.”

“Yeah. I guess that makes sense,” Sora agreed, nodding. “Sort of. Maybe. So, Ansem needed the Seven Princesses of Heart, Kairi, Cinderella, Jasmine, Belle, Alice, Snow White, and Aurora, to unseal the Hollow Bastion Keyhole, which somehow unlocked the Door to Darkness, and tried to get power from the Realm of Darkness, while convincing himself for some reason that it was Kingdom Hearts. Anyone still confused?” Everyone hesitantly raised their hands. Sora breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. It’s not just me.”

Everyone voiced their questions and concerns regarding Ansem’s bizarre plot.

“Why did the Door to Darkness appear on the Heartless world?”

“How did Ansem make the Keyblade? I’ve been wondering for most of the time I was possessed.”

“If he knew that much about the Heartless and Kingdom Hearts, why did he think Kingdom Hearts was darkness?”

“Why did he need the Keyblade of Hearts? Did he want to do something with us after the Door to Darkness thing was over?”

Jiminy whistled, encouraging everyone to quiet down. “Kairi raised an excellent point,” he said. “Why did he need the Princesses’ hearts trapped in the Keyblade? He could have had Maleficent keep the Princesses in stasis until they were all gathered together, then the Keyhole would have been opened automatically. Granted, Kairi’s heart being within Sora proved to be cause for a change in plans, but I doubt there was only one way of doing that. Perhaps… Perhaps he had a further use for the Princesses. Perhaps there was more to their pure lights that Ansem hoped to take advantage of.”

Mickey shifted his gaze nervously. Riku noticed this, but he was more focused on Jiminy’s words and thus did not press him.

Donald shrugged. “I guess we might never know,” he said. “Ansem’s gone, isn’t he?”

“He is, but when a person’s Heartless and Nobody are destroyed, the Somebody is reborn,” Riku reminded him. “And we beat both Ansem and Xemnas, but the original person, Xehanort, was nowhere to be seen.”

“Correct,” Jiminy affirmed. “But for now, I guess there’s nothing we can do to explore the matter further unless something else comes to light.”

Mickey nodded. “You’re right. The most we can do is focus on our current objectives and keep an eye out for anything unusual.”

Everyone nodded in agreement. They could not think of anything to continue the conversation, so they finished their dinner in silence.

Riku yawned. “That was delicious,” he said. Sora and Kairi thanked him. Riku stood up and departed from the table. “Well, I think we might as well take a nap. We’ve been up for two days straight and we still need time to recover from the fight with Kuja.”

Sora wiped the sauce off of his mouth. “Fine by me,” he agreed. He and Kairi cleared the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then they all exited the kitchen and headed for their rooms.

As everyone was entering their rooms, Kairi stopped with one foot in the doorway and poked her head back out. “You know,” she said, getting everyone’s attention and causing them to stick their heads out to hear her, “I think it’d be nice to pay Cinderella a visit.”

Sora smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Let’s do that, ASAP,” he agreed. They all went in and closed their doors, then kicked their shoes off and laid in bed. They clapped their hands simultaneously, causing the lights to turn off.


	59. Chapter 58: Jaq the Mouse

Riku whistled, impressed by the view of the castle in the distance. Kairi traced her finger arcing over the castle like a shooting star. Sora crossed his hands behind his head and enjoyed the view and the sight of the castle’s white stone contrasting against the deep blue of the night sky.

“Gosh, this is a nice view,” Mickey said, voicing everyone’s sentiments.

“Cinderella’s in there, right?” Sora asked. He had only met Cinderella one time, very briefly, and thus he had never learned her story. He had met her Fairy Godmother, who had taken up residence in Merlin’s house to aid him in his first adventure. She had mentioned that she guided Cinderella on a path from her life under her abusive stepfamily to marrying the prince.

“She should be,” Goofy confirmed. “You think they’ll just let us in?”

“Let’s see how far asking nicely will go,” Kairi suggested.

“That’s always one way to go,” Sora agreed.

The party walked down the path and came across the main gate leading onto the castle grounds. They noticed that the gate was unguarded and ajar, but Sora simply shrugged and led his friends through.

“You’re not concerned that there aren’t any guards here?” Riku asked, bemused by Sora’s nonchalance.

“Hey, it was even easier getting into the Imperial City in The Land of Dragons,” Sora countered. Donald and Goofy nodded in confirmation. “The second time, when it wasn’t open for celebration.”

Riku had to concede the point, having snuck into the city and walked right into the palace himself.

They walked into the courtyard and walked around a fountain that sat in the center. Looking up at the porch along the front face of the castle, they noticed that there were still no guards keeping watch.

“Huh. I guess this world is usually peaceful enough that they don’t have to worry so much about intruders,” Mickey guessed.

“I wonder if they’ve had to worry about any Heartless,” Sora mused. Donald patted him on the arm and pointed off to the right. Sora followed his gaze and, speak of the devil, saw some Heartless. There was half a dozen of them. They appeared to be oblong balls of yarn, each with four enlarged clothing buttons acting as wheels and two more sitting on top, resembling mouse ears. One end of the yarn stuck out of the back and took on a zig-zagging shape as the tail, and there was a jagged opening in the front to reveal Heartless eyes.

Sora crossed his arms and watched them curiously, wondering why they were zooming around the courtyard like they were without turning their attention to them. Looking at the ground ahead of the Heartless, he saw a mouse with brown fur, running away from the monsters on its hind legs. The mouse wore cloth that was made into a miniature shirt, shoes, and a stocking cap.

Sora looked at his friends and saw that Riku, Mickey and Goofy were just as confused as he was, though Kairi and Donald were simply surprised. “You know, I’ve never seen Heartless go after regular animals like that,” Sora pointed out. “Even if they did, normally, they should turn on us the moment we show up.”

“You see the clothes he’s wearing?” Kairi asked. Sora looked back at the mouse, then turned back to Kairi and nodded. “Maybe he has a strong heart from a strong friendship.”

Sora raised his eyebrow and turned back to the chase. “In that case, we should help him.” He summoned his Keyblade.

The mouse turned and ran around the Ratty Rats. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sora and his Keyblade. Smiling with relief, he ran toward him. “Venven!” he chirped in a high-pitched cheer as he ran between Sora’s legs.

Jiminy jumped out of Sora’s pocket and landed beside the mouse. “This way!” he said. “Donald, stick with us!” Donald nodded and followed Jiminy as he started running to safety.

“Zugk-zugk!” the mouse agreed, following Jiminy.

The Ratty Rats tried to follow the mouse through Sora’s legs, but Sora jabbed his Keyblade into the ground between his feet. The first Heartless ran straight into the Keyblade’s teeth and dissipated, but the others managed to stop and back up. The Heartless sized up their new enemies, then, on realizing how much larger they were, started riding around each of them at high speeds.

The party tried to follow the Heartless’ movements, but there were so many going so fast that it was impossible to do so. One of the Ratty Rats cut a wide arc, then turned in and jumped at Mickey, knocking him down. Riku slashed at a Heartless as it went by, but it was too fast and he only just clipped the tail. He was then promptly knocked down from behind in the same manner as Mickey. Kairi dodged a lunge and struck back, knocking the Heartless aside, but another one simply ran into her legs, causing her to lose balance and fall down. Goofy was strafed three times, and while he had trouble maintaining his balance, he somehow avoided falling down. Sora sidestepped to avoid getting hit in the back, but this opened him up to get hit in the stomach, sending him sprawling on his back.

Sora rolled over and pushed himself to his feet, his teeth gritted in irritation. “Okay, that’s it. You like to hit fast? Fine. Everyone, get down!” At his command, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, and Goofy crouched to the ground.

Sora held his arm out and stared in one direction. He Scanned each of the Ratty Rats that zoomed by and willed energy gathering in his Keyblade to focus on them. Then, he spun his Keyblade around in his hand, allowing it to build up power, then swung it in the direction of a Ratty Rat in front of him. A bolt of energy shot out of the tip and arced around, tracking the Heartless at lightning-fast speed. He swung his Keyblade wildly, unleashing even more energy bolts, which followed and struck the Ratty Rats. Next, he jumped over his friends and hovered outside of the ring of Heartless. He pointed his Keyblade toward the center of the group and willed energy to charge up in the tip. When the energy was at critical mass, he twisted the Keyblade and released a dozen bolts of energy which homed in on the Heartless, blasting them into the air. With that finished, he landed on his feet and bared his Keyblade.

The Heartless landed hard, two of them bursting into dark smoke. Riku, Mickey, Kairi, and Goofy took the opportunity to counterattack and get some payback. With the trio of Ratty Rat Heartless incapacitated and unable to defend themselves, they were defeated with ease.

After the last freed heart vanished, Sora, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, and Goofy turned and walked over to Donald, Jiminy and the mouse. The mouse stared at Sora’s Keyblade in wonder, then looked up at Sora’s face.

“Thanksa Venven,” the mouse said. “Hey, you gotta big!”

Sora looked at the mouse in confusion. “Excuse me? What’s a ‘Venven’?” he asked.

“Huh?” The mouse studied Sora further and realized that he was not who he thought he was. “Oh, whoopsie. Jaq-a thought you was sutta else.”

“Oh. Yeah. I kind of get that a lot,” Sora replied. He bent down on one knee to get a closer look at the mouse. “My name’s Sora.”

The mouse smiled. “Zugk-zugk. Name-a Jaq,” he introduced himself.

Kairi leaned over and smiled at Jaq. “It’s nice to meet you, Jaq. My name’s Kairi,” she said. “Are you a friend of Cinderella’s?”

Jaq perked up at this. “You know-a Flinderelly?” he asked.

“A little bit,” Sora answered. “We met over a year ago, and we even helped her out of some trouble.”

“Oh, thassa good. A friend a Flinderelly is a friend a Jaq. Come on. Jaq-a sure she’d be happy to see you! Zugk-zugk.” He jogged over to the doors leading into the castle, beckoning for Sora and company to follow. He stopped in front of the door and waited for his new friends to catch up. Sora opened the door and Jaq led them through.

“Say, that-a thing you have, thassa like Venven’s,” Jaq said.

Sora raised his eyebrows in amazement. “Wow. You knew a Keyblade wielder?”

“Zugk-zugk. Venven help-a Jaq fix Flinderelly dress for the ball. Got a dream, he said. Dream-a be a Keyblade Master.”

“Aw, that was nice of him,” Kairi said.

“I wonder where he’s been all this time,” Riku mused. Mickey looked down in what might have been sadness, but no one noticed.

Jaq led them to the end of the corridor and they entered the foyer. The floors were made of blue tile and laid with a red carpet, and the walls and curtains were salmon and pink. A set of stairs went in straight up, then branched off in two directions before reaching the upper level, where a doorway led into a ballroom.

“You there! Hold it!” The party turned to see two guards approaching them. The guards studied them suspiciously. “What business to you have here?” one of them, the same one who had spoken previously, asked.

“Uh, sorry to intrude,” Sora said. “We’re friends of Cinderella’s. We were, um, in the neighborhood, and we thought we’d pay her a visit.”

The other guard raised his eyebrow. “Friends of the princess’, eh?” he questioned, skeptically. “Truth be told, I have made rounds all over town, and yet I have never seen any of you before.”

“What is your name, young man?” the first guard asked.

“Uh, Sora, sir,” Sora replied.

The guards looked at each other curiously, then turned and started whispering between themselves.

“Miss Cinderella mentioned someone by the name of Sora while disclosing her ordeal.”

“Truth be told, I had not entirely believed her claims, though the recent sightings of dark creatures similar to those which she had described made me wonder.”

“Perhaps he is an outsider, from another land not unlike those who visited on the eve of that ball. Those companions of his were unusual, and reminded me of two of the figures she told us about.”

“You may be right. And perhaps this Sora could be the ‘defender of worlds’ that Miss Cinderella described.”

“Perhaps we should inform her, as well as the king and the prince.”

They finished talking and turned back to face Sora and his friends. We will inform the royal family of your arrival,” the first guard told them. “Wait here until we return.”

“Thank you,” Mickey said politely. Sora nodded in affirmation. The guards turned and marched up the stairs, heading for the ballroom. The party members turned to face one another.

“So, Cinderella told them about us,” Donald beamed with pride.

“Gawrsh, it sounded like they said Heartless have been showing up lately,” Goofy noted.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing we came when we did,” Mickey said.

“I hope we don’t get in too much trouble for showing up on such short notice,” Riku mused.

While they continued to wait for the guards to return, something had spied them from above. The observer eyed them curiously, wondering who these new characters were. Three of them were human, and one of them seemed vaguely familiar. Another stood up like a human, but its face reminded it enough of a familiar rival that it growled with a basic anger. Deciding to ignore the offending one for the moment, the observer turned to the shorter duo, and licked its lips. Those two will be fun to chase around, though they might be too big to work as a midnight snack. It noticed something on the floor in front of the group. Squinting its eyes, it smiled wickedly when it saw the mouse. Time and again, it has tried to catch and eat that mouse, along with his little friends, but it had always failed. But it could not resist another try.

Mickey looked up and tilted his head curiously when he saw a fat black-furred cat leap off of the balcony high above and run toward them. Everyone turned their attention to the cat. Jaq jumped and squeaked in fright.

“Look out! Roosafee!” he cried. He turned and ran off.

“Wait, Jaq!” Sora called after him, but the mouse was already halfway across the room. He sighed and turned back to the cat, which had changed its direction to pursue Jaq. “Hold it right there!” He jumped in front of the cat and grabbed it, holding it in the air. The cat thrashed about and slashed at his arm. Pain shot up his arm and he let go of the cat.

The cat ran after Jaq, but Kairi had already reached him. She picked the mouse up and held him protectively. The cat skidded to a halt and growled at her in frustration. Its eyes shifted from side to side until it remembered the large mouse and duck. It might as well try to get something out of them.

The cat turned and stalked toward Mickey and Donald. It hissed menacingly, then lunged at them. Donald quacked in surprise. Mickey braced himself. The cat charged, but it was jerked to a stop by something pulling on its bushy tail. Sora, having used Cure to heal his arm, was kneeling down and holding tight onto the cat’s tail.

The cat pulled angrily, trying to break free, but stopped when it heard a growling sound. It looked up at the tall animal-headed one, who was glaring at it and baring his teeth. Goofy let out a loud, sharp bark, which took even his friends by surprise. Goofy barked some more, scaring the cat, which decided to cut its losses and turned to run away. Sora let go of his tail as this happened and watched it flee.

Kairi rejoined the party and set Jaq down on the floor. Jaq laughed at the sight that he had beheld a moment before. Riku looked at Goofy warily, though the knight did not seem to notice.

Moments later, the guards returned. When they had approached the party, they each offered a respectful nod. “You may proceed to meet the royal family,” the first one said. “Come with us.”

Each member of the party offered a quick thank you and followed them up the stairs. The guards noticed strands of fur lying on the floor, and one of them saw the cat out of the corner of his eye, watching them.

“I always hated that cat,” the first guard muttered to his friend.

The other guard nodded. “I can see why. Who names their pet ‘Lucifer’?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, writing Jaq's lines wasn't exactly easy. I mainly went off of Birth by Sleep cutscenes to get his speaking pattern and vocabulary down, but I think I did well enough.
> 
> I hope you're all enjoying. Be sure to leave a comment, positive or negative (but certainly constructive), and I thank you all for following along.


	60. Chapter 59: Cinderella

The guards led Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy into the ballroom. They could see four figures at the other end. Seated in a throne was a portly older man with white, balding hair, a thick moustache, and bushy eyebrows. He wore a white suit not unlike a military uniform with gold buttons and epaulets along with brown shoes. On his right stood the Grand Duke, a tall, skinny gentleman wearing a light blue suit with silver epaulets and a red sash, a silver belt, black shoes, and a monocle over his right eye. He had thinning black hair, thick mutton chops leading into a thin moustache, a slightly-long neck, and a large nose. To the left of the king stood his son. Prince Charming was taller and more physically fit than his father. He had dark brown hair and brown eyes, and wore a cream-colored royal jacket with gold epaulets, red pants with a gold stripe along either side, a golden belt, black boots, and opera gloves.

Cinderella stood next to her husband. She had her long blonde hair tied into a bun and held back with a white headband. She wore an elegant, shimmering white dress that had puffy disks decorating the shoulder straps, long white gloves that reached halfway up her upper arms, white pearl earrings, a black choker, and, hidden beneath her dress, a pair of perfectly-fitting glass slippers.

Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, and even Jaq dropped to one knee and bowed. Sora simply waved. “Hello.” Mickey, Donald and Goofy groaned. Kairi giggled. The King and the Grand Duke recoiled indignantly. Prince Charming and Cinderella, however, laughed.

Sora realized what he had done and rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. “Uh, sorry,” he said sheepishly.

His friends stood up. “Don’t mind him, your Highness,” Mickey said defensively. “He still needs to work on his manners.”

After a moment, the King chuckled. “Well, I presume that this impolite young man is the ‘Sora’ chap my daughter-in-law has told me about,” he guessed. “I suppose I can let that slide, though I would advise you to mind yourself around persons of authority, particularly those who can have your head chopped off if they are in a bad mood.” He winked mischievously.

“Uh, thank you,” Sora stammered. He mentally chided himself for his inadvertent disrespect. He had been lucky that Yen Sid, Queen Minnie, and the Sultan of Agrabah had given him a pass without much of a thought, but he did not want to push his luck too often, in case certain figures took his casual reaction to meeting someone of such esteemed veneration a little too personally.

Cinderella clasped her hands together and smiled warmly. “It is so good to see you again,” she said. She sized up each member of the party. She recognized Sora, Donald and Goofy, having met them before back at Hollow Bastion. She had not met the other three, but from what she had heard from conversation with the former trio, the other princesses who had worked alongside her in pushing the darkness back after the Keyhole had been opened, and the warriors who returned to the castle to reclaim their former home, she was able to guess who was who. “You must be… Kairi… Riku… and King Mickey,” she guessed. Kairi, Riku and Mickey nodded in confirmation.

“It’s a pleasure to finally get to meet you, Cinderella,” Kairi greeted.

“Likewise.”

“Just a heads-up,” Sora chimed in, “your cat could learn to behave himself.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about Lucifer. Actually, he was my stepmother’s,” Cinderella explained. “He was spoiled, and he could be quite troublesome for me and my friends. But after my stepmother and stepsisters passed, I was the only one left to take care of him.”

“Ah. Sorry to hear about that,” Sora said sympathetically. He had heard that Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters had been cruel and domineering toward her, but he could tell that she had cared about them at least to some degree.

“Oh! And I was worried that there was a serious matter that warranted the Keyblade Master to visit me personally,” the King grumbled. “But it appears to just be a social visit with my daughter-in-law.”

Prince Charming chuckled. “Lighten up, Dad,” he said.

“Ahem. Actually, your Highness,” Mickey addressed the King, “there has been a matter that we have been traveling around to explore.”

The King raised an eyebrow. “You are their king?” he asked.

Mickey nodded. “Yes, sir. Mickey Mouse, king of Disney Castle,” he replied.

The King chuckled. “Well, it is an honor to make your acquaintance. Now, tell me: what severe matter brings you to my kingdom?”

“We have come across an organization of evil characters who are using the Heartless to further their schemes,” Mickey began.

Cinderella and the Grand Duke gasped in horror. Cinderella had seen the danger such entities posed firsthand, and while the Grand Duke possessed no recollection of the attack on his world, he knew from Cinderella’s tale, as well as experience in the field of a different variety of demon, that this was indeed a severe matter.

“Have the Heartless been a problem lately?” Mickey asked.

“Oh, why, yes, they have,” the Grand Duke answered. “You see, over the past few days, those creatures that you call ‘Heartless’ have been sighted all around the town, and these sightings have only become more frequent over time. However, they appear to be roaming about on their own, as no one has been seen controlling them. We can presume that their recent encroachment is a gradual process of their own curiosity and accord. Early on, they had either been too far away to notice the civilians, or the townsfolk have fled from the scene before the creatures could properly attack, but some guards have reported that the monsters have become more numerous and violent.”

“That sounds like a problem,” Riku commented. “Has anyone been hurt?”

“Fortunately, there have not been any severe injuries,” one of the guards answered, “nor have there been fatalities, or whatever would occur once a Heartless has had its way with its victims. However, they become more vicious by the day, and that will surely change if they are allowed to—”

“Look out!” Prince Charming shouted. Everyone turned around and saw an Armored Knight sneaking up on the guard. It began to swing its sword, but Riku teleported between the guard and the Heartless and blocked the blow. He threw the Heartless off balance and sliced it in two.

Cinderella gasped and the King screamed in terror as more Heartless appeared by the droves. There were four Heartless shaped like giant brass bells, each with a shadowy face on top. Three Heartless had the shape of a Blue Rhapsody but were colored in stripes of different shades of blue. Some part of Sora identified them as “Turquoise March” types, though he could only guess why. Two more appeared, resembling six-foot-tall candelabras with high-collared coats, a single eye each, and bushy moustaches. The last two to materialize were a pair of Soldiers.

Sora, Mickey and Kairi summoned their Keyblades. Cinderella gasped, surprised to see that Kairi also held such a weapon. Donald and Goofy conjured their weapons as well.

The Turquoise Marches shot spheres of water at Donald and Goofy. Donald got out of the way, and the sphere exploded into a pillar of water when it hit the floor. Goofy was hit and engulfed in an explosion of water, blasting him across the room.

Sora’s eyes widened as he felt a twinge of jealousy. _Wait, there’s water-based magic?_ he thought. _Why can’t I use water-based magic?_

He rolled out of the way of a torch-tipped swipe from one of those Wicked Wicks (Jiminy had been in the process of trying to think of a better name, but the near-miss of the fire brushing near Sora’s pocket forced him to mentally settle on something, and he went for an alliterative appellation). On his way to stand up, he shot a Blizzard spell at it, doing his best to aim for its head. The Wicked Wick was not only knocked back, but the freezing effect caused it to move more slowly. Sora considered whether to take advantage of it being a lesser threat to move on to more serious enemies, but ultimately decided to just cut it down.

Mickey threw himself at the giant bells, but when he hit one of the Ring-a-Dings with the rounded end of his Keyblade, which for the moment treated itself as a blunt object, the Heartless shook with a loud reverberation and reflected him back. Kairi watched this happen and, regarding the thinner blade of her Key, decided to give it a go. She ran at the Ring-a-Ding and thrust the point of her weapon into it, willing it to cut right through rather than bat it about. As she hoped, she pierced straight through it. She then pulled her Keyblade down, cutting a sizeable gash through the metal. Once her Keyblade had exited the metal, she brought it up and swung it horizontally, chopping the head off of the body and destroying it. One of the guards, inspired by this tactic, carved through one of the other Ring-a-Dings.

Riku fought with the second Wicked Wick, which deftly dodged his attacks and launched some fireballs out of its candle hands. Soldier Heartless sought to ambush Riku while he was busy and slashed him across the back. This allowed the Wicked Wick to swat him aside. Both Heartless converged on him when he was down, but Riku created a shield to block the Wick’s fireballs while he slashed the Soldier into oblivion. He followed this up by leaping over his own shield and stabbing his weapon vertically down through the Wick.

Sora ran after a Turquoise March. Unsure of how water magic worked, he took a logical guess and shot a Fire spell after it. The spell hit and sent the Heartless spinning, but Sora noticed that it only did an average amount of damage. He decided to Scan the Heartless and figure out how it all worked. He saw that it possessed a pale blue aura, which suggested a water specialization. Looking more closely, he saw weak links of honeycombs for every known color, except one: yellow.

_Thunder? Let’s see… water shorts out electronic devices, and electricity conducts through water, sometimes with painful effects if it is not pure H2O… Worth a shot._

He cast a Thunder spell and a bolt of lightning struck the Turquoise March. The Heartless burst into spasms and was thrown back hard. He smiled triumphantly, then he ran after the Heartless and finished it off.

Donald cast Blizzard on one of the remaining Ring-a-Dings, immobilizing it, and Goofy shattered it with a well-placed strike from the edge of his shield. They watched one of the guards fight a Turquoise March.

A Soldier Heartless took notice of Cinderella and ran after her. She backed away and turned to start running, but she tripped and fell to the ground. As it drew near, she rolled over so she was facing up and brought her leg closer. When it was just about on top of her, she pulled her dress up and removed one of her slippers. It drew its arm back to swipe at her, but it was sent reeling back when she shoved her slipper heel-first into its eye. It stumbled backward in pain while Cinderella pulled her glass slipper, quite roughly, out of its head. Jaq jumped up and started tugging on the antenna of the Soldier’s helmet, disrupting its balance even further and causing it to fall backward. Prince Charming ran in, sword in hand, and finished the fiend off.

“Are you alright?” Charming asked, offering her his hand. Cinderella nodded and, after putting her slipper back on, took his hand. He helped her to her feet and led her back to the throne with his father and the Grand Duke.

Mickey cast Thundara to eliminate the remaining Turquoise March while Riku and Kairi defeated the last Ring-a-Ding. Goofy vanquished the last Soldier Heartless.

After making sure that there were no more Heartless in the ballroom, everyone relaxed and dismissed their weapons.

“What?! What is the meaning of this?” the King asked furiously. “How did these Heartless creatures get into my castle?”

“They teleported,” Riku explained dryly. “It’s what they do. No amount of vigilance or locked doors will keep them from getting in.”

“Your Highness,” Sora addressed the king, “do you know if the Heartless have been swarming around a specific point, as if they were looking for something?”

The Grand Duke raised his eyebrow in nervous intrigue. The two guards traded uncertain glances. “No. Not from what we could see,” one of them answered.

Before the matter could be discussed further, they heard the clank-clank-clank of metal footsteps running into the ballroom. All present turned around and saw a guard approaching them at full sprint, a panicked and worried expression plastered across his features. The two guards who were already present stood on guard.

“Y-Your Highness…” the newcomer panted, “the creatures… they are attacking the town! We cannot face them and defend the people on our own! We require reinforcements!”

The King nodded toward the other two guards, who marched over to join their comrade. “We shall lend the defense our blade,” one of them said. The other nodded in agreement.

Riku nodded toward Sora. “We’ll come with you,” he said. Donald walked over to stand beside Sora and gave the guards a supportive nod. Mickey, Goofy and Kairi took a step forward, but Riku shook his head. “No. You guys stay here, in case more Heartless show up.” Reluctantly, Mickey nodded.

Sora turned to the guards. “Okay. Lead the way,” he directed. The guards nodded and led them out of the ballroom and out of the castle.

When the six of them had left, Mickey, Kairi and Goofy turned back to the King, Cinderella, Prince Charming, and the Grand Duke.

Charming gave them an approving nod. “Your friends are very brave, and dependable as well,” he complimented.

“Thanks,” Mickey replied. “They’re good at what they do. I’m glad to be able to count on them.”

“Kairi,” Cinderella addressed the redhead, “you and your friends, and the way you use your Keyblades, you remind me of three people I knew a long time ago.”

“Oh?” Kairi’s interest was piqued.

“Now that I think about it, Sora looks a lot like a boy named Ventus. He was very small, and I never really saw him use his Key, but Jaq mentioned that he told him about his dream of being a Keyblade Master,” Cinderella continued. Mickey turned his gaze down nervously, and with a hint of sorrow, but no one noticed save for the Grand Duke. Goofy also looked sad for some reason. “Ventus helped Jaq make me a wonderful dress for the ball.”

“Yeah, Jaq told us about that. Would that be it?” Kairi asked, eyeing the dress Cinderella was wearing.

“Oh, no. Things… didn’t go as expected,” Cinderella admitted. Jaq growled in anger at this, apparently at a rotten memory, making Kairi wonder if that had something to do with her wicked stepfamily. “But my Fairy Godmother made me this new dress.”

“Well, glad to hear things turned out all right. But what about the other two?”

“This man, Terra, he helped me get to the castle safely so I could join in.”

“And he restored order when monsters attacked,” Prince Charming added.

“And the third, a woman named Aqua, she helped me get down to meet the Grand Duke and try on the slipper when my stepmother tried to keep me from my prince,” Cinderella continued. “Then she protected me from a horrible monster that was born from her jealousy and rage.”

“Wow. They’ve been on adventures across the worlds just like us. I wonder where they’ve been all this time,” Kairi mused, oblivious to the fact that Mickey had all but isolated himself, his eyes lowered in shame. Then she realized that one of the names sounded familiar. A flicker of a memory resurfaced, showing a woman with a unique hair color. “Aqua… Say, did that woman have blue hair?” she asked.

Cinderella nodded. Kairi gasped as the full memory formed. She was four at the time. She was picking flowers in the garden near the front gates of Radiant Garden’s castle, when strange blue monsters appeared around her. The menacing creatures converged on her, and Kairi fled to the castle gate, hoping to get to safety. That was when a woman, who appeared to be at the edge of adulthood, appeared and fought the creatures off. The woman carried her to safety and proceeded to defeat the monsters that were threatening her. Kairi thanked the woman by giving her the flowers that she picked, and the woman placed some sort of spell on her, which she said would take her to someone who would protect her when she was in danger.

No… The blue-haired woman was not alone. The woman had been backed into a corner by the creatures, trying to fight them off while keeping her safe. Then someone came to help her fight. A funny-looking guy with a round head and two circles for ears…

Kairi turned to Mickey. “Your Majesty, did you know those three?” she asked.

Mickey flinched in surprise. It took him a moment to process Kairi’s question. He realized that she must have remembered her childhood encounter with Aqua and himself, so the proverbial cat was out of the bag.

He sighed. He did not turn around. He did not dare to show the turmoil he was facing from old memories resurfacing. “I did,” he answered. “I knew Aqua and Ventus, twelve years ago. I never got to meet Terra. But I made friends and fought side-by-side with the other two.”

Mickey had done a poor job of concealing the sadness in his voice, and Kairi took notice. She hesitated for several seconds before voicing her next question, afraid of the answer. “So, what happened to them?”


	61. Chapter 60: The Lost Masters

The Ratty Rat chased its prey down the street, its wheels bouncing on the cobblestones. Both hunter and prey were illuminated by evenly-spaced street lamps. The terrified woman ran as fast as she could, but the Heartless was confident that she was not fast enough. The woman ran around a corner, and the Heartless followed. It promptly exploded when it zoomed straight into the teeth of the Kingdom Key.

Sora swung his Keyblade back up and struck a Turquoise March, sending it flying. Noticing more Heartless on a nearby roof, he hopped onto a nearby stack of crates and the jumped up to the roof of the house beside him. He ran across the roof and leapt over the street to reach the next roof, where he confronted a trio of Armored Knights. He parried the first sword strike and retaliated with three swings, destroying one of the Heartless on the finisher. One of the other Knights cut into his back. Sora tumbled forward, but spun around and swung a wide arc at the third Knight, obliterating it. He took a Potion out of his pocket and drank the contents. Instantly, he felt the gash close up and the pain vanished. He also faintly heard the self-repairing fabric of his shirt weave itself back together. He turned around and matched blades with the final Knight. They parried each other’s blows until the Knight put some extra weight into one swipe, pushing Sora back. It proceeded to spin on one pointed foot and make its way toward Sora, but the Keyblade wielder swung his weapon down, landing a direct hit on the flat of the blade, causing his foe to fall down. Sora then swung a final blow right onto the Heartless’ head.

Donald allowed all bystanders to get to a safe distance before he cast Thundaga, shocking and annihilating a half-dozen Turquoise Marches. He cast Blizzard to defeat a Red Nocturne and a similar-looking Heartless with an orange hat and a black body with orange edges. He was not quite sure what the difference between the Red Nocturne and the Scarlet Tango was, but he did notice that the Scarlet Tango’s orange fireballs flared longer and were more likely to ignite the flammable wood. That meant they had to go, and fast. He could not waste a single spell. He rearranged the items in his pocket so that his ethers and elixirs were in easy reach. He launched a Blizzaga spell that encased a Scarlet Tango in ice. He jumped and used it as a stepping stone to launch himself higher, then summoned a hammer which he brought down on the head of another Tango, sending it exploding into the ground at the same time that the frozen Heartless shattered against the cobblestones.

Riku came across a new variety of Heartless that looked like the Lance Soldiers, except that they were unarmed, their armor was grey, and their shoulders were covered in purple epaulets. The Heartless squatted and stretched back up like springs. One of them jumped, then stretched itself to its full length and closed its legs together, creating a pointed spearhead with its feet, aiming itself directly at Riku. Riku jumped out of the way and struck back when it pierced its way into the roof’s shingles. His Keyblade pierced the knight and, after about five swings, destroyed it. He ran after the other Piercing Knight and swung his weapon at it, but it stepped back with a bounce to avoid him. Riku threw a wide strike at it, but it crouched down as far as it could go, then bounced back up, striking the rim of its helmet into his chin.

Riku was sent flying backwards into a bakery. He brought himself to his feet, using the worktable as support. The Piercing Knight ran up to him, but soon realized that it could not use its jumping attack due to the low ceiling of the section they were in. Riku swung his Keyblade, but the Knight ducked and rose back up, bumping the Keyblade with its shoulder into the ceiling, where it was pinned. Riku tried to force his weapon free, but to no avail. The Heartless drew its arm back for a punch. Riku reached around behind him for something he could use and found his hand wrapped around the handle of a bread knife. He picked it up, spun it in his hand so that he held it upright, and jammed it into the Heartless’ side. The Knight stumbled in pain, allowing Riku to move his Keyblade again, though it ended up slipping out of his hand by mistake and falling to the ground. Unperturbed, he grabbed the Heartless and spun around, slamming it onto the table. He then placed the tip of the bread knife on the table and pulled it, sawing through the Piercing Knight’s neck in three strokes.

Sora and Donald found Riku in the bakery, wiping off the knife even though all remains from the Heartless had vanished when it was slain. “Heartless all taken care of?” he asked without bothering to turn around.

“All clear,” Sora answered. “The guards are looking for stragglers, but I doubt there’ll be anything more than a Shadow or two.”

“Good work,” Riku replied. Satisfied with his not-quite-necessary cleaning job, he put the knife back down and willed his Keyblade to vanish.

The three of them turned around when they heard footsteps and saw a portly man whom they presumed to be the baker.

“Are you the ones who fought off those monsters?” the baker asked. Riku, Sora and Donald nodded. “Well, thank you. You really saved us all.”

Sora waved it off. “Don’t mention it.”

“I should repay you for what you’ve done,” the baker said, walking past them and into the bakery.

“Oh, uh, that won’t be necessary,” Sora said.

“No, no. I insist.” The baker opened a cupboard and examined its contents. “I don’t have much, but I’m certain you will like this.” He grabbed a tray off of the table and pushed a bunch of bread loaves, pastries, and other baked goods onto the tray until there was a sizeable pile. He then carried the tray over to the three heroes, who were quite taken aback by this gift.

“Whoa! Hey, uh, don’t you need these to sell?” Sora asked, nervous but also inwardly flattered that this man was willing to offer such a handsome reward for their deeds.

“Don’t worry about me. I have plenty extra,” the baker replied. “You could use a snack after all that. And take some for the road. I insist.”

Hesitantly, with some silent encouragement from Donald, Sora and Riku took the tray from the baker. “Thank you,” Sora said politely.

“Thank you,” the baker reiterated. “And be sure to let me know how you like it.”

* * *

Sora munched on a Danish, savoring its delectable taste. Riku and Donald enjoyed slices of bread, which Riku had sliced with his Keyblade. They had estimated how much they were going to eat right there and set those loaves and pastries on the table at which they currently sat, then slipped the rest into one of Sora’s magic pockets to bring back on board the Gummi Ship.

“Okay, I’ve got to admit,” Riku said after swallowing his bite. “This stuff is really good.”

“Yeah,” Sora agreed, not following Riku’s example in table etiquette. “He puts a lot of effort into making everything delicious, and he still manages to turn out a lot of food.”

“You know,” Donald interjected, “something’s been bothering me about the attack tonight.”

“How so?” Sora asked.

“The guards said that up until now, the Heartless haven’t been causing too much trouble,” Donald explained. “But suddenly, they’re swarming all over the place and overwhelming the guards.”

“You think they sensed we were here?” Riku wondered.

Sora shook his head. “That could be true for the fight in the ballroom. But we didn’t even set foot in the town before the attack.

“And there were a lot of Heartless that could start fires,” Donald added. “It’s almost as if they were more interested in causing a scene than actually hunting for hearts.”

Sora and Riku contemplated what Donald said. He had a point: the Scarlet Tangos started a few fires, and there were few reported casualties. For the most part, the Heartless seemed to allow the civilians to run and cause a panic. “So, maybe they were trying to lure us out here?” Riku guessed.

Sora nodded. “So it looks like they are organizing,” he affirmed. “Which most likely means that someone from Maleficent’s club is around here.”

“And that would mean that they’re looking for the artifact,” Riku agreed.

“You think it might be at the castle, or out here?” Sora asked.

“The Heartless were causing chaos all around town without a care in the world,” Donald argued. “We already figured that they know roughly where the artifacts are, so if they were trying to find it in the town, the attacks would be more focused on a single location.”

“And from what we’ve seen around town, there isn’t really anyone who would be so important as to be the one guarding it,” Riku added.

“So they could only have been attacking like this to lure us away,” Sora muttered, understanding. “Maybe the Heartless attack in the ballroom was supposed to be their advance scouts. These guys were supposed to draw away the castle’s defenders.”

“It’s a good thing we left Mickey, Kairi and Goofy in there,” Riku said.

Sora nodded in agreement, then noticed something in the distance. Some black stubs stuck out over a pile of crates, and he thought he saw the tip of a large shoe sticking out of the side. He wondered what that could possibly be.

“But that means whoever is here will be heading up to the castle, if they’re not there already,” Donald pointed out.

“Then we should head back,” Riku said. “If there are Heartless there and some avoid a fight, we can follow them and see if they lead us to the artifact.”

Sora nodded, returning his focus to the conversation at hand. “And if not, we can ask for a tour of the castle, and keep a lookout for anything that fits the general shape,” he added.

He heard a shuffling sound up ahead and looked back at the crates, but whatever he had thought he saw was gone. He was apprehensive, but he did not feel any sense of creeping danger. He pushed it to the back of his mind. He did not want to worry his friends until he knew something was wrong.

They finished their food and got up from the table. Sora thanked the baker and told him that the treats were delicious. Riku tossed a tip onto the worktable and they left before the baker could protest. They found the guards and told them that they were heading back, and two of the guards agreed to accompany them. They walked through town and through the woods until they came upon the castle. From looking up at the clock at the top of the castle, they could tell it was ten minutes until midnight.

As they entered the ballroom, they heard something that caught them by surprise and filled them with worry.

“Your Majesty, what’s wrong? What happened to them?” Kairi asked.

Sora, Riku and Donald ran up to Kairi, Mickey and Goofy. They noticed that Mickey had his eyes lowered, sadness and shame on his face. He refused to even face Kairi and Goofy. Something was not right.

“What’s wrong?” Sora asked. “What happened to who?”

Mickey remained silent. Kairi answered for him. “There were three other Keyblade wielders that the king knew about a decade ago, Terra, Ventus and Aqua,” she explained. “I think something bad happened to them.”

Sora crossed his arms and looked up pensively. “Ventus? Oh. Maybe that’s who Jaq was talking about when he was saying ‘Venven’,” he said to himself.

Kairi nodded. “Yeah. Cinderella said that she met him,” she confirmed.

“Aqua… That name sound familiar,” he mused. He shrugged lightly, figuring he would worry about that part later. He turned to Mickey. “So, your Majesty, what did happen to them?”

There was no dodging it now. After a minute of hesitation, Mickey sighed and began the story.

“Terra, Ventus and Aqua were Keyblade wielders being trained by a Keyblade Master named Eraqus. He was an old friend of Master Yen Sid’s. I think they trained together, along with a man named…” He hesitated, feeling a swell of embarrassment and shame as he reflected on the connection between those past events and the more recent years.

“Along with who?” Riku pressed him.

“Xehanort,” Mickey finished his sentence.

“WHAT?!” Sora, Riku and Kairi blurted. Could he be the same person as the man who they knew as Ansem and Xemnas? No, he would have been an old man by now, whereas the Xehanort they were familiar with was much younger and was even the real Ansem’s apprentice. But could there be a connection?

Weakly, Mickey raised his head and turned around so that he was at least looking at them. “Yen Sid sensed the worlds were in danger from creatures he called ‘Unversed’, so he told Eraqus, who sent Aqua and Terra to investigate. Ventus went off on his own to follow Terra. I had also run away from my training to figure out what was going on,” Mickey continued. “I ran into Ven when he was in a fight with a masked Keyblade wielder named Vanitas. We got separated shortly after, and I ended up in Radiant Garden. There, I met Aqua and we fought the Unversed to protect Kairi. We decided to team up afterwards, but I was pulled away to another world by the Star Shard—that’s the thing I was using to travel between worlds. After a few more jumps, I was ambushed and taken prisoner by Vanitas, who was working for Master Xehanort. Xehanort wanted to use me as bait to lure Ven. I didn’t really make out the full conversation, but I was told later that Xehanort wanted Ven and Vanitas to fight and create the χ-blade.”

Sora, Riku and Kairi looked at each other in utter confusion, as they did not understand that statement at all. Even Cinderella, Prince Charming and the Grand Duke were befuddled. Did they not already have “Keyblades” of their own? Was there something special about this new “Keyblade”?

Mickey did not notice their expressions, so Sora took it upon himself to address the problem. “What do you mean by ‘the Keyblade’?” he asked.

“Oh,” Mickey gasped as he realized his mistake. “Sorry, fellas. The χ-blade, the 'key' sound being written like an ancient letter, shaped like an X—” he drew an X in the air with his finger to demonstrate “—was older and more powerful than the Keyblades we use. It serves as a counterpart to Kingdom Hearts. Never mind, I’ll explain it all later.

“Anyway, at some point afterward, I was thrown into the Lanes Between. Aqua rescued me and brought me to Yen Sid’s tower to recuperate. When I woke up, I learned that Xehanort had manipulated Ven and Terra so he could kill Eraqus, and was luring them to this place called the Keyblade Graveyard for the final showdown. Yen Sid warned me that I was not well enough to go, but I ran off to help them.” He sighed deeply, the memory clearly proving to be difficult for him to discuss. “But I was too late. Vanitas had already merged with Ven and created the χ-blade. Aqua and I fought him, and the χ-blade broke. The whole place was engulfed in an explosion. I found Aqua and Ven floating in the Lanes Between and brought them back to Yen Sid’s tower, but we realized that Ven’s heart had broken and disappeared. Terra was nowhere to be found.

“The last I saw of Aqua, she had gone to take Ven to a safe place before going to find Terra,” Mickey concluded his story.


	62. Chapter 61: Midnight

Everyone present remained silent, stunned by the tragic tale that Mickey had told. Sora, Riku and Kairi stared, the former two with their jaws agape. Riku noticed that Donald and Goofy looked down in sorrow. He was not surprised, as he did not doubt that Mickey’s oldest friends, who might as well have been with him during that time, would know the story.

“I’m sorry,” Sora finally said. “That had to have been really hard to go through.”

“And to have it weighing on your mind for twelve years… I couldn’t imagine that sort of trauma,” Kairi said sympathetically.

“That’s so sad,” Cinderella agreed.

“Poor, poor Venven,” Jaq added.

The King cleared his throat. “Yes, that is quite tragic. While we cannot do anything to help you with that, or to undo what has been done, perhaps there may be a way we can assist you in your current task.”

“Hm?” Sora, Riku and Kairi turned to face the King. Donald and Goofy soon followed their example, while Mickey was lost in his despair.

“Please, my boy, tell us more about the fiends who are controlling the Heartless,” the King elaborated. “What are they plotting? And how may we be of assistance?”

“Oh. Well…” Sora took a moment to get his thoughts in order. “Well, they’re trying to get to a dangerous power, and to do that they’re looking for these artifacts,” he explained, careful not to say more than necessary out of respect to the need to keep it a secret. “There’s one on each world, and from what we’ve figured out, someone’s been tasked with guarding it. We haven’t really figured out all the details, but we do know that we need to stop them from getting them all.”

The King raised an eyebrow quizzically. “So, you have come to the conclusion that the artifact the enemy seeks is within these walls?” he surmised. Sora nodded. “Well, I am sorry, but I know nothing of any such item.” Prince Charming shook his head, confirming that he knew nothing of the matter, while Cinderella merely followed the conversation with eyes full of intrigue.

Sora was not thrown by this statement. In fact, he, as well as some of his friends, were already suspecting that there was someone else who would be dedicated to ensuring the artifact’s security. “We’ve been to some other worlds and realized that it’s not always the ruler who’s in charge of it, so I’m not totally surprised you didn’t know.”

The Grand Duke harrumphed. “Well, then, suppose you do find these artifacts: what would you mean to do with them?” he asked strictly. Riku shared a curious look with Kairi and Goofy, and it was apparent that they had noticed it too. He had given himself away without even thinking.

“Well, we’re not really sure what we would do with them, exactly,” Sora admitted, “but we would do everything we can to keep them safe.”

All eyes turned on the Grand Duke. It was clear to everyone that he knew more than he had been intending to share. But, at least to Sora and Riku, and even Mickey, who had finally been brought back to the present, he was more concerned with the sanctity of the worlds and making sure the warriors who stood before him were trustworthy.

“My friend, do you know something about this?” the King asked.

The Grand Duke gasped and flinched. His monocle fell off and he fumbled to catch it. Once that had been done, he took a handkerchief from his pocket, cleaned the lens, and placed the glass back over his eye as if nothing was wrong. “Well, ahem…” he stammered, realizing that he could no longer maintain his secret until the moment he deemed the Keyblade wielders to be the best option available.

“Oh, please, sir,” Cinderella entreated. “They are trying to help us.”

“Well, I’ll have you know that the item is quite safe as is,” the Grand Duke told them. “In fact, its safety is affirmed every hour.”

The party pondered this clue. How would he know that it was safe every hour?

Donald’s eyes widened as he realized something. Or, to be more specific, he noticed something. “You mean _that_ hour?” he asked, pointing his finger upward.

This only confused the others more, but Cinderella seemed to understand. “Would anyone know what time it is?” she asked.

Mickey pulled out a pocket watch, which he had wound and set so that its display lined up with the time in Castle of Dreams, like he did every time he arrived on a new world. During the last few trips, he used the Gummi Ship’s computer to check the time of day on the point where they would land. Before that, when he was soaring between worlds with his Keyblade Glider, he either improvised or did nothing about it.

“It’s a minute after midnight,” he announced. His eyes widened as he understood what that meant. “Shouldn’t the bell have rung to mark the hour?”

Kairi gasped as she realized something. She whirled around and looked one of the guards in the eye. She shifted her gaze to the other guard, not sure which one she was thinking of before settling back on the first guard. “You said that the Heartless weren’t swarming around any place that you could see, right?” The guard nodded nervously. “What if they were searching someplace that wasn’t on your patrol routes?”

Everyone suddenly understood what was going on. “The clock!” Mickey blurted.

“The minute hand,” Sora guessed. The Grand Duke jumped, surprised that he had figured it out. He gulped when he realized what his body language had conveyed, and he realized that he was going to have to come clean. He then remembered the slightly more crucial part about the fact that the artifact had been stolen.

“They must have dismantled the clock mechanism when detaching the hand,” Mickey surmised. “That’s why the bell didn’t ring.”

“It was still on when we came in,” Riku said. “Whoever took it couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Let’s go!” Sora said. With that, everyone turned and ran out of the ballroom.

They exited into the courtyard and found a familiar figure jogging away. Their chubby rival carried a large clock hand.

“Hold it right there, Pete!” Sora shouted. He brandished his Keyblade, as did his friends.

Pete stopped mid-stride and turned his head to see who all was behind him. He found that all were behind him. “D’oh! This was supposed to be a simple mission. Spy a bit, then a grab-and-go job,” he complained to himself.

“Drop the art… arti… Drop the thing and go, Pete,” Goofy ordered.

Pete chuckled nervously. “Oh, hey, neighbor. I heard your boy Max made knight. Congrats, pal!”

“A-hyuck! Thanks,” Goofy replied. After a split second, he remembered what they were doing and reclaimed his battle-ready expression.

Sora was confused. “Wait. What did you mean by ‘spy a bit’?” he asked.

Pete realized that he had said too much. He would have facepalmed if he was not holding onto the clock hand. “Well, uh, about that…”

“You were eavesdropping on us at the bakery!” Sora accused, remembering the stubs he had seen poking out from behind the crates and realizing that they were Pete’s ears and the tip of his shoe. “You wanted to see how much we knew about these,” he guessed, waving his hand at the clock hand as he said “these”.

Riku raised his Keyblade. “Put it down and leave, and we won’t give you too much trouble.”

Pete shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m not letting you bozos take the point!” He let out a whistle. “Come on, chump! Get over here! Tick-Tock! Hurry up, Midnight Ball!”

The Keyblade wielders and their companions tensed up. They knew what that meant. Pete was summoning a semi-powerful Heartless to fight them.

_Huh. Pete names them too,_ Sora thought.

The Heartless that appeared looked distinctly robotic. Its main body was a large off-white box with a working clock face on the front. The inner circle, flanked by a ring marked with the Roman Numerals I through XII, was clear, almost glass-like, offering a look into the machine’s inner workings, which appeared to run based on clockwork gears. The head appeared trapezoidal and of a deep shade of blue, with a vertical triangle in front where a “mouth” would be. Aside from the circular eyes sticking out of the tapering head with asymmetrical pieces of metal rotating around the inner ring, the head looked a lot like a frontal section of roofing on the castle. Its limbs’ movement seemed to work around a pin-and-joint system. The right arm came out into a blocky hand, and the fingers were made of cylinders joined together by cables. The left arm, however, ended in a large metal ball that was the same color as the head. A silver band marked with thorns not unlike the marks on the Heartless emblem wrapped around the ball. Beneath the main body, a pyramid shape tapered inward until it met a blue gear, which turned along with the gears inside the main body. The whole body balanced on a transparent blue sphere. Two metal rings wrapped around the inner face of the sphere and spun at different speeds.

Pete cackled. “Well, good luck beating this guy,” he boasted. “Later, losers!”

“We can’t let him get away!” Mickey said.

“We shall deal with him,” one of the guards assured. He and his companion ran around the Heartless in pursuit of Pete. Prince Charming drew his own sword and followed them.

Sora led the attack on the Heartless. He noticed that the clock on its chest had only two hands, and the minute hand was ticking with every second, reminding him of a fiend he had faced before. He could only hope that this creature’s gimmick was not anything like before.

The Midnight Ball swung its right arm at him, but Sora rolled to safety and swung his Keyblade at the hand. It swung its left arm down and hit him in the side with the wrecking ball. Donald cast Firaga and Blizzaga at the ball. Kairi stood at a distance and cast Thunder. She watched the clock on the Heartless’ chest curiously. She noticed that the hour hand was almost at twelve.

Riku struck the right arm, but realized that physical attacks were not affecting the robotic Heartless as much as magic was. He pointed his Keyblade at the chest and prepared to launch a volley of Dark Fire when he heard a humming sound, a sound distinct from the tick-tick-tick and grinding of the gears. He lowered his gaze toward the sphere beneath the main body and realized that it was pulsing with multicolored light. He did not have enough time to get out of the way before the built-up energy shot out of the sphere and blasted him across the courtyard.

Mickey ran to his aid. Sora prepared to launch a string of Blizzaga spells. Kairi willed lightning to envelop her Keyblade and prepared to throw it at the Heartless.

Then both the minute and hour hands on the Heartless’ clock hit twelve. A dome of indigo light expanded from the crystal sphere. The wave passed through everyone, seemingly harmless. However, they were quick to notice that something was wrong. Sora watched one of his Blizzaga spells vanish in midair, and he found himself unable to cast more. Kairi arced her arm to throw her Keyblade just as the wave passed her. To her surprise, the lightning crackling around her weapon fizzled out and the Keyblade fell to the ground unceremoniously like dead weight. Mickey reached Riku two seconds after the wave passed both of them and raised his Keyblade to cast Curaga, but nothing happened.

“What the—?” Sora wondered aloud. He felt the Keyblade grow heavier in his hand, though it was not much of a burden aside from the fact that it felt slightly unbalanced. He jumped out of the way as the Midnight Ball swung its hand at him again.

Kairi stretched her arm out and willed the Keyblade to return to her hand, but nothing happened. She ran over to pick it up and found that it was heavier than she remembered it being.

Donald swung his staff and tried to cast spells. “Fire! Fire! Blizzard. Thunder. Aero?” Nothing happened. “What’s going on? Wak!” He ran away before the Heartless could bring its wrecking ball down on him.

Goofy was confused as well, but unperturbed, as he was the only one in the party who relied solely on his own strength. He swung his shield at the joint of the Heartless’ arm, but he was not able to do much before his foe swung its arm back.

Sora, Donald and Kairi regrouped with Mickey and Riku, the latter of whom was still aching from some broken ribs and possible bruising and was barely able to keep sitting up. Cinderella joined them and helped stabilize Riku.

“How are you doing?” Kairi asked, concerned.

“Never better,” Riku said sarcastically. Kairi rolled her eyes.

“What just happened?” Sora asked in regards to the broader situation at hand. “It just shut off all our magic. Even the Keyblade’s drained. How is that even possible?”

“That anti-magic pulse must have gone off when the clock in its chest struck midnight,” Kairi explained.

“Just like how my coach turned back into a pumpkin and the horses became mice again after midnight during my ball,” Cinderella agreed.

“And go figure, magic works better on this thing than blunt force,” Riku groaned.

“Look. The Heartless’ clock is still stuck at midnight!” Mickey pointed out. They all looked at the Midnight Ball and realized that he was right. They also noticed that the bands inside of the crystal sphere were glowing with the same indigo light.

“Maybe if we reset the clock, the magic will come back on,” Sora suggested.

“How did you figure that out so quickly?” Cinderella asked, surprised.

“I’ve been doing this for a while,” Sora replied bluntly. “Cover me, okay?”

He ran straight at the Heartless, followed by Mickey, Kairi and Donald. He rolled under a swiping arm and jumped up to his foe’s chest, grabbing onto the shoulder to hold himself level with the clock.

Donald swatted the hand ineffectually with his staff, hoping to at least get its attention. It worked too well, and the Heartless backhanded him. Mickey jumped around and swatted its left arm with his Keyblade, daring it to attack with its wrecking ball. He knew that it would not use the wrecking ball on Sora, lest it deal damage to itself, but drawing its fire was a good way to keep it distracted from attempting to thwart Sora in his goal. Goofy threw his shield repeatedly, trying to break through the crystal sphere. Kairi swung her Keyblade at the fingers, hoping to slice through the cables. She swelled with confidence when she made a cut into one of the cords, but it was not at the proper angle to break through.

Sora dropped his Keyblade and grabbed onto the minute hand with his now-free hand. He pulled on it, making it turn counterclockwise. When he had turned it a quarter of the way around, the hour hand clicked away from the twelve.

The light emanating from the bands faded. Sora smiled as he felt a power surge through him. It had been a long time since he had even registered that energy; since at least the point when he first learned Cure, he had grown used to that power flowing through his system. It felt like things were returning to normal in his body. With this swell of confidence, Sora lifted his leg up and kicked the minute hand down, spinning it around the clock until it was back at the twelve and the hour hand was now at eleven.

The others felt their strength returning. Mickey and Kairi felt their Keyblades become lighter and more balanced. Remembering that there was some need for magic aside from combat, Mickey ran back to Riku and cast Curaga. Riku breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. He flourished his Keyblade and ran to rejoin the fray.

Sora managed to bring the clock back to 10:50 before the Heartless’ hand grabbed him, yanked him off, and threw him aside. He tried to do more to disrupt the Midnight Ball’s clockwork before he was thrown away, but he only managed to crack the glass behind the hands.

Donald launched a series of Fire and Blizzard spells at both the crystal sphere and the wrecking ball arm. Mickey fired Pearl spells at the Heartless’ face. Kairi cast Gravity on the hand, pulling it down to the ground. Goofy worked his way around and, noticing the crack in the glass, threw his shield to break a sizeable hole.

Sora saw that while they were working, the clock on the Heartless’ chest had gone back to 11:30. He pointed his Keyblade at the clock and shouted “Stopga!”

The clock hands stopped moving, and for a few seconds it appeared to have worked. However, the gears inside the Heartless were still turning, struggling to make the hands move. Soon, they succeeded, and broke the clock free from the spell’s effects.

Sora’s eyes widened. “We need to beat this thing before it shuts our magic down again!” he shouted. He shrouded his Keyblade in fire and threw it at the crystal sphere. He then jumped toward the Heartless to try to crank its clock back, but he was knocked aside with the wrecking ball. With five seconds left on the clock, he cast Cure on himself.

The clock struck midnight and magic was turned off once again. The party regrouped.

“We can’t keep fighting like this,” Donald complained.

“There has to be some way to keep it from cutting off our magic,” Kairi said.

Cinderella studied the Midnight Ball. She examined the system of gears behind the clock and saw the hole that Sora and Goofy had made in the glass. Her mouth curled into a smile as an idea came to her mind. She looked around on the ground until she found Jaq, then crouched down to talk to him. “Jaq, can you get the others and bring them out here?” she asked.

Jaq nodded. “On it, Flinderelly!” He turned and ran over to the wall, then clambered through a hole that he and the other mice used to enter the castle.

Sora looked past the Heartless and saw that Pete was cornered by Prince Charming and the guards, but he was fighting back using the clock hand like a sword and occasionally dropping a few exploding balls.

“Kairi, Goofy, go help them,” he ordered. “We’ll try to get an edge on this thing.”

Kairi and Goofy nodded and ran off to assist against Pete. The bully swung the clock hand with enough force to knock one guard aside. Goofy threw his shield at Pete’s shoulder, throwing him off balance. Prince Charming kicked him, knocking him down and making him drop the artifact.

Pete grumbled in frustration and stomped hard on the ground, creating a shockwave that caused the prince and the guards to stumble. He stood up and threw a half dozen balls, which exploded on the ground and forced his foes to scatter.

Goofy ran over to the clock hand and tried to pick it up, though he had difficulty getting a good grip. Kairi ran up to Pete and swung her Keyblade at him. She hit him in the gut, causing him to grunt in pain. However, he noticed that she was not causing nearly as much pain as Sora, and simply picked her up by the arm.

“So, uh, who are you supposed to be?” he asked.

“Kairi,” she answered, struggling in his grip.

“Kairi, huh? I feel like I’ve heard that name somewhere before… Oh! You’re the girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Yep. So, what’s so special about that thing?” Kairi asked, nodding over to the clock hand.

“Oh, that? See, this strange feller told us that if we get that and things like it around the worlds, then we’ll be able to find and… I’m about to spill everything, aren’t I?”

“No, no. Please, continue.” Kairi smiled playfully. “This is very interesting.”

Pete cackled in amusement and mild confidence. “Oh, no. I’m not spoiling the ending like that! You won’t beat me that easily!” With that, he tossed Kairi aside, causing her to land on her rear end. He clapped his hands and the artifact magnetically flew into his hand, thumping Goofy in the chin as it flew up. He caught it slightly clumsily but managed to get his bearings. He tapped his foot to conjure a Corridor of Darkness, but then remembered that magic was still not working. “Whoops,” he muttered.

Kairi picked her Keyblade up and, holding it by the front end of the shaft, thumped Pete in the forehead with the butt of the weapon.

Meanwhile, while dodging attacks from the hand, wrecking ball, and crystal sphere with help from his friends, Sora managed to grab onto the Heartless and turn the clock back around. After kicking the minute hand back around to 11:00, he summoned his Keyblade to his hand and started smashing the glass, making the hole as large as he could. He managed to take out nearly a quarter of the glass disc before the Midnight Ball grabbed him and threw him off. However, the damage was done. Magic returned to the area and the party began barraging the Heartless with magic spells.

Kairi smirked at Pete and cast Thundara. A bolt of lightning came down and connected with the clock hand, which was raised like a lightning rod. Pete shook in pain and, after the strike left him scorched and smoking, stammered incoherently. Kairi then cast Aerora, which spun him around in a tornado, making him dizzy.

Pete groaned. “Don’t remember the kid knowing that when we met,” he remarked.

Kairi shrugged. “He remembered it a couple days after you last saw him,” she explained. “I’ve been catching up.” She cast Zero Gravity, lifting him in the air and leaving him to spin around slowly.

“Oh, that’s no fair!” Pete complained. Kairi and Goofy simply laughed.

Meanwhile, Mickey had lobbed a Pearl spell into the Heartless’ right eye when he noticed Jaq returning out of the corner of his eye. Jaq approached Cinderella, followed by five other mice. Mickey beckoned Sora and Donald to join them while Riku continued to attack the Midnight Ball.

“So, Flinderelly, how may Jaq and friends help-a Sora?” Jaq asked.

Cinderella shot a glance at Sora to include him in the plan as well. “If Sora can get you inside the Heartless, you can disrupt the gears and stop the clock from reaching midnight and depowering everyone,” she explained.

“But how do we do that?” Donald asked.

“I know,” Sora said, an idea forming in his head. “You guys create a distraction, keep it from focusing on us, then Jaq and his friends can climb into my hood. I’ll jump onto that thing’s chest and they can climb in.” He looked at Jaq and smiled.

Jaq looked at his friends, who all nodded. He turned back to Sora and nodded. Sora cupped his hands and the mice stepped in. He brought them up to his shoulder and they climbed into his hood.

“Alright. Let’s go,” Mickey said. He ran over to the Midnight Ball. The Heartless brought its hand down to try to smash Riku, but he leapt out of the way. Mickey hopped onto the hand and ran up the arm. Donald ran up and started casting Blizzard on the arm while Mickey jumped onto the head and then on top of the wrecking ball. He conjured fireballs to revolve around him and attack the wrecking ball.

With thirty seconds on the clock, Sora charged in and threw himself at the unprotected chest. He grabbed onto the shoulder and planted his right foot on the minute hand, keeping it from ticking further. He stuck his arm into the hole in the glass and whistled for the mice. Jaq led his friends out of Sora’s hood and along his arm. Jaq hopped off of Sora’s hand and grabbed onto the teeth of the large central gear. He climbed up and grabbed onto the gear to the upper left, allowing the next mouse to hop in and follow suit. The third mouse dropped down to the gear directly below and hopped off to a horizontal gear.

The rest of the mice had jumped into the Heartless’ machinery and found a place to work, and they had begun pushing and kicking the gears to try to dislodge them. Sora did his best to hold on and keep the minute hand stuck, but the Midnight Ball soon grabbed him and threw him off again. As he flew through the air, he pointed his finger at the Heartless’ head and shot a beam of concentrated fire into the left eye. The eye burst into flames as Sora landed with a thud.

The party continued fighting while Kairi was busy messing with Pete. The Zero Gravity spell had worn off, but she simply cast Magnet to pull him into a vortex. Prince Charming and the guards were waiting for Pete to drop the clock hand so they could take it back, but his grip stayed firm, as if it were still magnetized to his gloves.

As Pete spun around the vortex, a large ball fell out of his back pocket. When it landed, it rolled a few inches, then started releasing smoke. Goofy gasped. “Everyone down!” he shouted. Kairi, Charming, and the guards threw themselves aside as the bowling ball exploded.

The Magnet spell faded and Pete landed on his feet. Without waiting for his opponents to get to their feet, he turned and ran, expecting that the Heartless would hit Midnight in moments.

In the last five seconds of magic, Sora, Mickey, Riku, and Donald fired third-tier spells at the crystal sphere. Sora and Mickey nervously watched the clock tick down. At three seconds left, they saw the gear on the top right pop loose and stop moving, and the wrecking ball arm froze. But the clock ticked down another second. Another gear, this one in the top left, was dislodged, and the right arm stopped moving. The clock ticked down to the last second.

Then it stopped. The minute hand did not move. The large gear behind it froze as well, as did the two gears below. The bands within the crystal sphere stopped spinning, and the entire Heartless dropped to the ground. Aside from the metal around the right eye which continued to spin, the Midnight Ball was completely immobile

It started to arch forward. Realizing that if it falls forward, the mice would not be able to get out safely, Sora and Mickey threw themselves at the Heartless’ head and chest. They hit it with all of their strength and succeeded in sending it rolling backwards. Riku and Donald ran out of the way as the Heartless came crashing down.

Jaq and his mouse friends climbed up onto the central gear and jumped up through the hole in the glass. “Did we do it?” Jaq asked.

Sora nodded and gave him a thumbs-up. “You did it,” he replied. “Thanks.”

Kairi and Goofy smiled as they watched the Heartless go down. Pete gulped. While his foes were looking the other way, he tapped his foot on the ground. This time, a Corridor of Darkness did materialize behind him. Kairi and Goofy heard this and turned back to Pete.

“Well, see you later,” Pete said with a chuckle. Glad to finally have a victory, he turned and ran into the portal. Kairi and Goofy ran after him, but the portal closed before they could reach it.

“Nuts,” Kairi said under her breath. She shrugged. “Oh, well. I guess we’d better help them finish it off.

In less than a minute, with the combined power of all magic users as well as the sword and shield attacks by Goofy, Prince Charming, and the guards, the Heartless soon could not take any more damage and faded into dark smoke, leaving a crystalline heart behind to float away.

Mickey looked past Kairi and Goofy. “Where’s Pete?” he asked.

Kairi and Goofy looked down shamefully. “He got away,” Goofy replied.

“Well, no use wallowing in it,” Riku said. “Let’s head back inside and talk to the Grand Duke.”

His friends nodded and, accompanied by Cinderella, Prince Charming, Jaq and the mice, and the guards, they reentered the castle.

* * *

“I see,” the King said after they explained what had happened. “Well, that is unfortunate.”

“Oh, now what shall we do?” the Grand Duke lamented. “If they commandeer all of the artifacts, well… well…”

“Hey, they still have a long way to go,” Sora interrupted. “We’ll get ahead of them and make sure they don’t get them all.”

“Would you be able to give us any information to help us on our own search?” Mickey asked.

The Grand Duke sighed. “To be honest, when I was entrusted with the responsibility, I became so afraid of the power that it safeguarded that I refused to allow myself to learn more,” he admitted pitifully. “But, seeing how the artifacts are being sought out by a sinister party, and how you seek to thwart them, I now realize that it was a mistake to shirk the full responsibility.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Riku replied. “We all make mistakes and do things that we realize later on that we shouldn’t have. You did what you thought was right. You couldn’t have expected that someone who knew about the artifacts would use the Heartless and try to take advantage of them.”

The Grand Duke sighed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said.

“Well, I suppose we should get going,” Mickey said. He knelt before the King, and the rest of the party followed suit, including Sora.

“We’ll do whatever we can to bring the artifact back,” Sora promised.

The King nodded. Cinderella smiled. “Good luck. We’ll be right here, offering whatever strength we can,” the Princess of Heart assured them.

The King bade them to stand, then waved them off. “We’ll be fine here,” he told them. “We have faith in you.” Prince Charming and the Grand Duke nodded in agreement.

Sora waved good-bye and the party turned and walked out of the ballroom. They walked through the front door and found a Safe Point to the right of the fountain, which they used to beam up to the Gummi Ship.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy stood around the cockpit, contemplating recent developments. They were all aware that, while Pete had gotten away with the artifact, they were now close to understanding how to find the others. But there was one more thing that they had discussed that continued to eat at Sora, Riku and Kairi.

Sora turned to Mickey. “Hey, your Majesty,” he addressed the mouse. “What were you saying earlier about the χ-blade thing? And how does Xehanort fit into all this?”


	63. Chapter 62: The Black Pearl

“So, what you’re saying is,” Riku began after Mickey finished telling him, Sora and Kairi everything he knew about Master Xehanort and the χ-blade, “this Master Xehanort guy is the reason that Terra, Ventus and Aqua met such horrible fates, and you had no idea what happened to him after the dust settled?” Mickey nodded. “And you never bothered to follow up on it?”

Mickey sighed, ashamed of himself. “No, I…”

“You even met a guy named Xehanort, who was already experimenting with the darkness in people’s hearts!” Sora added, not happy with this revelation. “That didn’t even make you suspicious?”

“I was surprised when Ansem said the name,” Mickey admitted, “but I figured it was just a coincidence when I saw a young man. Now I know that Master Xehanort and that Xehanort were one and the same. But I didn’t know then. I couldn’t have known where the name ‘Xehanort’ would have been a thing. I don’t even know what world he was from originally.”

“Ours,” Riku said. All eyes turned to him in surprise. “There’s this seventy-something-year-old story about a kid who wanted to go beyond the limits of the islands, and he found a way to leave for good. I didn’t know that much when I first heard it, but after we returned to the islands, I decided to look it up. Turns out he was this silver-haired kid named Xehanort.”

“Oh. I had no idea,” Mickey said. “Master Yen Sid only mentioned him and Eraqus a few times. I never met either of them. I didn’t even know what Xehanort looked like until I got to the Keyblade Graveyard while everyone was fighting.”

“Again, why didn’t you even try to find out what happened to Xehanort, or even Terra and Aqua for that matter?” Sora asked.

Mickey sighed. “I waited with Master Yen Sid until Aqua came back with Terra, but after a few days, Yen Sid read the stars and told me that neither Aqua nor Terra were anywhere to be found. And… I guess I wanted to believe that their sacrifice wasn’t for nothing. I made myself believe that Xehanort was gone for good.”

“But instead of honoring their sacrifice by making sure the job was done, you stayed ignorant and let Xehanort run rampant for a decade!” Riku lambasted him. “You could have stopped everything Xehanort’s done before it even started. Countless worlds fell into darkness, thousands have lost their hearts and the Heartless have been allowed to run free because you let yourself be ignorant!”

Mickey’s heart sank. He knew that every word he said was true, as were every word that he did not say but deserved to, but they stung all the same. “I know,” he said weakly. “How could I be so blind?”

“I don’t know,” Sora answered. He was upset with Mickey, but he was not as bitter as Riku. In truth, he was not sure what to think. “But you’re supposed to be leading us. You’re supposed to be the wise king. We’re supposed to trust you to make the right choices for the good of everyone.” He looked Mickey dead in the eye, his gaze tinged with concern and disappointment. “How could you knowingly ignore something that could put everyone in danger, Mickey?”

Mickey gasped. Sora still had not gotten used to calling him by his given name, following Donald and Goofy’s example of addressing him as “your Majesty”. He had given Riku permission to be less formal with him, and he soon learned to call him by such familiarity. But hearing Sora just now drop the regal title, due to losing faith in his wisdom and leadership, just hurt.

Meanwhile, Donald, Kairi and Goofy flew the ship, listening regretfully but not interjecting. Not even Jiminy was sure how to best defuse the situation.

Kairi traced her finger on the copilot’s display sadly. She had almost never heard Sora and Riku so upset. They trusted Mickey so much until now, and she had a feeling that unless something happened soon, the argument was only going to get worse.

“Radiant Garden was in ruins for a decade!” Riku continued, his voice rising to a yell. “Our islands were destroyed, and Xehanort manipulated me into helping him, then possessed my body! Ansem the Wise is dead! So much suffering happened because of Xehanort, and you could have stopped it!”

“We’re here!” Kairi shouted abruptly, getting everyone’s attention. She breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that she managed to halt the argument, at least for the moment.

This world was familiar to half of the party. It consisted of a number of islands on a sea dotted by large ships and barges. The image on the heads-up display showed the same thing, but superimposed the head-on view of a ship as well as a skull and crossbones.

Sora chuckled. “Port Royal,” he identified. He began to hum a tune. Donald and Goofy bobbed their heads along.

“Okay, let me propose an idea,” Kairi said. “I think we should split into two groups.”

“Why’s that?” Mickey asked.

“What we just discussed now, it’s some heavy stuff,” she explained. “We all need time to process it, give us time apart from the issue so we don’t snap and kill each other.”

“Okay. What do you suggest?” Riku asked.

“Hmm… How about you go with Donald and Goofy, take a deep breath and see what they think about all this, and Sora and I will go with the King. Deal?”

Her friends mulled over the setup, then nodded. “I think we can manage,” Sora said.

“Okay, then. Eeny-meeny-miny-mo,” Donald chanted in a sing-song tone, picking points to disembark. “Alright, then. Your Majesty, Sora, Kairi, you guys go first.” He tapped on a green dot on a more civilized island and hit DISEMBARK. A white circle lit up behind them. Mickey, Sora and Kairi stepped on and vanished in a column of light. Donald pressed another green dot, this one sitting on an island that was more densely packed with trees, then hit DISEMBARK again. He, Riku and Goofy stepped into the circle of light and were beamed down.

* * *

Sora, Kairi and Mickey quickly noticed that they were on a dock. Dozens of sailors mulled about, almost all of them appearing to be pirates and roughly half of them stumbling around drunk.

“Yo ho, yo ho,” Kairi muttered when an old man with a dirty beard and an eyepatch tripped and nearly stumbled into her.

Sora, however, was looking around with a huge smile on his face. He was going to sail the seas like a pirate again! He spun around, taking everything in, but stopped when he saw a familiar ship docked at the end of the pier he was standing on.

Were it not for the nearby lanterns and the fact that it was so close to them, the ship would have blended in with the night sky. It had a soot-colored hull. Its three masts were adorned with tattered black sails. Sora could count sixteen cannons: nine on the gun deck and seven on the upper deck. The figurehead was carved in the shape of a woman with angel wings holding up a dove in her left hand.

Sora laughed at the unforgettable sight of the _Black Pearl_. Kairi and Mickey followed his gaze and stared at it with intrigue.

“You know this ship, Sora?” Mickey asked.

“This ship belongs to Captain Jack Sparrow,” Sora answered, “the greatest pirate who ever lived.”

“So, this is the famous _Black Pearl_ ,” Kairi mused. “A lot cooler than I imagined it.” She turned to face Sora. “That means your pirate friend is here, right?”

Sora nodded. “Well, unless someone mutinied against him and took the ship like last time, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

“Well, then let’s head into town and see if we can find him,” Kairi said.

They trekked along the pier, taking in the sights. They noticed that there were far more pirates roaming the streets than regular civilians. Some were rowdy and obnoxious, while others were just having a good time. A few got into fights. They passed an alleyway where a man with messy stubble was roughly pulling a woman along despite her protests. Kairi pointed her thumb in their direction and whispered “Gravity”. A sign hanging above them broke off and fell on the man’s head, knocking him out. The woman stared in confusion, then shrugged, lifted her dress, and marched off indignantly.

“So, where do you think we’ll find him?” Mickey asked.

Before Sora could come up with an answer, he heard a panicked scream. “Monsters!” The trio immediately ran through the crowd in the direction of the shout. Some people were running away and pushed past them as they fled. A few of them were pirates. Other pirates remained and stood their ground, holding their swords and pistols up in defiance. It was then that they finally saw the monsters in question.

There were roughly eight of them. The Heartless emblem was visible on their chests. They each wore brown pants with patches of tan, matching pointed shoes, a black turtleneck shirt that left the chest opened, a red sash around the waist, bright yellow wristbands, skull-shaped pauldrons, a red bandana covering the entire top half of the head with an angular black spiral over the left eye, and a black eyepatch decorated with a white cross over the right eye. They carried swords with wide, curved blades, which lacked hilts but were bound to the handles with heavy-duty clips. The grips were covered in a bright red fabric, and the blades were etched with red cracks and angular yellow spirals, making it appear as though each blade had a frowning face.

“Sod off, scurvy fiends!” one of the defending pirates slurred. “Rotten beasts like ye have no place in Tortuga!”

Sora ran up so he stood beside him, raising his Keyblade. “We’re with you!” he assured. Kairi and Mickey joined him, standing next to a man who brandished a shovel, who apparently decided to take the first “weapon” he could find.

“Aye!” the pirate snarled approvingly.

The Pirate Heartless in the middle was the first to strike. The pirate next to Sora parried its blow, and the fighting began. Some of the defenders were dizzy from being pulled out of what they presumed would be no more than a full night of drinking and social revelry, while a few others had simply taken up position in inconvenient spots, and they were quickly knocked down. The Heartless stepped over them and went for the defenders behind them. However, this also gave Sora, Kairi and Mickey the opening to enter the fighting as well.

Sora was quite used to parrying the Pirates’ attacks and retaliating. The weight he puts into his Keyblade swings makes it difficult for the Heartless to power through and they quickly get knocked off guard. Mickey’s small size meant that the Pirates had to strike low, which made things difficult when their weapons were large swords which they had to raise back up each time with one hand, and his fast movements meant that they could almost never hit him and he kept attacking them from behind. Kairi clicked and parried her Keyblade with her opponent’s sword like something out of a swashbuckling adventure film. As soon as she swatted the Heartless’ blade aside, she took the opening to stab right into its chest.

Sora allowed his second Heartless to push against him, seemingly forcing him back. The Pirate swung its sword down at him, and he blocked and made a show of putting all of his effort into holding the attack back. At the last second, he smirked, right before one of the pirates stabbed it in the back. The pirate pulled his cutlass back out of the Heartless’ body and Sora cut right through it, causing it to dissipate.

“Ye ain’t bad with a sword, kid,” the pirate complimented.

Sora nodded respectfully. “Thanks. You’re pretty good yourself,” he replied. With that, he jumped over his head and brought his Keyblade down over a Pirate’s sword right after it had made a failed attempt on Mickey’s life. He pinned the sword down, then kicked the Pirate in the side, pushing it right into Mickey’s Keyblade.

The pirate with the shovel brought his weapon down on the last Pirate’s head, stunning it. Two other pirates sank their swords into it, and Kairi finished it off with a stab through the back.

Once all of the Heartless were vanquished, the pirates cheered and patted each other on the back. Some of them helped their fallen comrades to their feet. Others simply stumbled over them without thinking.

The pirate who had fought beside Sora turned to him, Kairi and Mickey. “I haven’t seen any of you 'round here,” he noted. “This your first time in Tortuga?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. We were actually looking for a friend of ours. Captain Jack Sparrow.”

The pirate’s eyes widened with amusement. “Aye, you lookin' to join his crew?” he asked. “Well, he’s down that way in the _Twelve Daggers_ cantina, looking for blokes to join.” He pointed toward a building that was lit up and seemed full of activity.

“Thanks,” Sora said. He waved him off as he, Kairi and Mickey walked over to the tavern that had a sign depicting two crossed daggers with ten more blades surrounding them in a half-circle, all pointed toward the center. He pushed the doors open and stepped in.

The tavern was filled with pirates, though there were some other sailors and civilians. Most of them stood all over the place, talking amongst themselves and telling stories but otherwise disorganized. Many were drinking from bottles or mugs of rum, even though some of them clearly had more than their fill. Three musicians played together with a cuatro, a concertina, and a fiddle. The establishment seemed to exemplify the purpose and nature of the island of Tortuga, serving as a place for seadogs and scoundrels to eat, drink and have fun while taking a break from all of the sailing and pillaging.

Across the main room, the three newcomers saw some men lined up in front of a table, at which sat an older man with blue eyes as well as gray hair and white sideburns. The man wore a white dress shirt, a teal vest with silver buttons, and brown boots. Curious about what was going on, Sora led Kairi and Mickey over to the table.

“So, what makes you think you’re worthy to crew the Black Pearl?” the man asked, drawing Sora’s attention further. He studied the men in the line, who appeared to be enlisting for the crew Jack was gathering. Kairi looked at Sora in bewilderment, as the “sailors” did not appear very “ship-shape”. Sora simply shrugged.

“Truth be told, I never sailed a day in me life,” a thin, elderly man said. “I figure I should get out and see the world while I’m still young.”

The man at the table simply gave him a smile. “You’ll do. Make your mark. Next!”

Sora gave Kairi a bigger shrug. He had no idea why Jack was gathering and accepting such a pathetic crew. He looked past the line and, after the third man, one who was missing an arm, had been approved, saw a face he had been hoping to find.

The man had long brown hair tied into dreadlocks with beads. He had a moustache and a beard that was also tied into two smaller dreads. He wore a faded, loose white shirt that was opened by a few buttons, a black jacket, a tan belt and a tattered white piece of cloth tied around his waist, a faded red bandana with a small beaded ornament and a silver coin on his head, black pants, and brown boots. He wore a scabbard on his left hip, attached to a black strap that wrapped over his right shoulder, in which sat his cutlass, and he had a pistol holstered at his right hip.

“That’s him,” Sora told his friends, his gaze fixed on the legendary pirate.

Captain Jack Sparrow studied the compass in his hand. He flicked it in mild frustration. “I know what I want,” he muttered irritably.

The fourth volunteer stepped up to the man at the table, whom Sora guessed was Jack’s first mate. The volunteer had a dreamy look in his eyes and a wide grin.

“Ever since I was a little lad, I’ve always wanted to sail the seas. Forever,” the wide-eyed man said.

“Sooner than you think,” the first mate replied. “Sign the roster.”

“Thanks very much.” The wide-eyed man walked off.

“How we going?” Jack asked, flicking his gaze upward.

“Including those four? That gives us… four,” the first mate answered. He looked to his right and saw Sora, Kairi and Mickey walking toward him. “Hmm, maybe make that seven.”

Jack looked ahead and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps those two; I’m not sure if he’ll take the boy,” he muttered. “But then again, with him here, we might not have to concern ourselves with that.” The first mate looked back at him in confusion. The pirate captain stood up and put on a smile. “Sora, my boy! What can an old pirate do for you?”

“Good to see you, Captain,” Sora greeted back. “What’s going on here? I didn’t expect you to be looking for a crew that was so...” he looked back at the four volunteers and lowered his voice to a whisper so that they couldn’t hear him, “unequipped for the job.”

Jack chuckled. “Well, you see, I’ll need all the hands I can get for this game,” he explained cryptically. He looked past Sora and noticed Kairi and Mickey. “And who might you be?” he asked.

“I’m Kairi.”

“I’m Mickey.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure,” Jack said with a light bow. “What of your funny-looking friends?”

“Our group split up as we arrived. Donald and Goofy went somewhere else with our other friend Riku,” Sora explained. “So, why do you need all these people? What’s happened now?”

Before Jack could explain, his gaze fell upon a man approaching his first mate’s table and sitting in a chair in front of it. He wore a blue rum-soaked jacket and a hat that obscured his face. Under the hat, he wore what appeared to be a powdered wig, but it had become muddy and disheveled. His brown hair and beard grew long and unkempt. A pistol sat in a holster at his right hip while he held a bottle of rum in his left hand.

“So, what’s your story?” the first mate asked enthusiastically.

“My story…? It’s exactly the same as your story, just one chapter behind,” the man began. Jack studied his shadowed face intently, finding some modicum of recognition in the stranger. His voice certainly sounded like someone he had previously met. “I chased a man across the Seven Seas. The pursuit cost me my crew, my commission, and my life.”

The first mate squinted his eyes, trying to find any semblance of the man he thought this figure was. “Commodore?”

“No, not anymore. Weren’t you listening?” James Norrington, former commodore of Port Royal, shot back. He stood up abruptly. Jack tiptoed away, hoping not to be noticed. “I nearly had you all, off Agrabah. I would have, if not for… the hurricane.”

The first mate’s eyes widened. “The sunlight storm? Lord. You didn’t try to sail through it?”

So do I make your crew, or not?” Norrington asked. “You haven’t said where you’re going. Somewhere nice?”

The band stopped playing and all of the tavern’s somewhat coherent patrons turned their attention to the budding confrontation. Jack ripped a large palm branch from a potted plant and held it in front of him, hoping to sneak out unnoticed. However, Norrington noticed him.

“So, am I _worthy_ to serve under Captain Jack Sparrow?” Norrington asked mockingly. He took his gun out and pointed it at Jack. Sora took a protective step forward. “Or should I just kill you now?”

Jack stopped. He dropped his branch and stared warily at Norrington. He ducked behind a column and peeked around the other side. Norrington moved his arm so that he was still pointing his gun at him. He tried to duck around the other side, but he was still looking down the barrel of the gun.

“You’re hired,” Jack said with a grin.

“Sorry. Old habits and all that,” Norrington retorted. He drew the hammer back.

Sora jumped in and pushed his arm up. “Hold it!” he shouted as he sent the man’s arm pointing straight up just as Norrington pulled the trigger. The bullet bounced off of the chandelier and found its way across the room, shattering a man’s bottle. Already quite tipsy and looking for some form of retaliation, the man slugged the man in front of him.

This was enough to incite a full-on brawl. Pirates started punching each other, women engaged in cat fights, and bottles were thrown all over the place. The three-man band started playing again, adding upbeat music to the brawl. One man jumped off of a balcony and started swinging on a chandelier for some reason.

“Time to go,” Jack said, nodding to his first mate. The two of them walked around the action and traipsed up the stairs to find an exit. Jack ducked as a bottle flew over his head. At a few points, they stopped as a group of brawlers passed in front of them as they duked it out.

One man punched Norrington, sending him reeling away from Sora. The boy ducked out of the way of another pirate taking a swing at him. Sora broke into a wide grin and stuck his elbow back into the man’s gut.

Kairi and Mickey held their arms out to summon their Keyblades, but Sora grabbed them to stop them. “Don’t,” he said. “This isn’t something where everyone’s trying to kill you. This is just a free-for-all.” He smirked. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else if you brought them out.”

Kairi felt someone grab her wrist and try to pull her back. She turned and saw a man leering at her. “Come along miss. This doesn’t look like a place you should be,” he said, still maintaining his cocky grin.

Kairi snorted, and ducked under his arm. She turned around, grabbing onto the man’s own wrist as she did so, and stood up. She tugged, twisting his arm and causing him to wince in pain and loosen his grip. She smiled sweetly at him, then raised her left foot and kicked him in the gut, sending him tumbling backward over a chair.

An overweight drunkard picked Mickey up by the collar of his shirt and chuckled at him. Mickey punched him in the face, stunning him and causing him to let go before falling backward.

It soon came to the point where a number of patrons were surrounding Norrington. Norrington had lost his gun at some point and was waving his bottle around threateningly.

“Come on, men! Who wants some? Form an orderly line. I’ll have you all one by one! Come on, who’s first?!” he dared dizzily.

Sora saw someone whom he had not seen in the cantina yet, but his face seemed familiar. It took him a few seconds to realize for certain that the newcomer was a woman dressed in a white dress shirt, a brown jacket and brown pants to pass for a man, her dirty blonde hair tied into a bun and hidden under a black tricorn hat. It took a second longer of studying her pretty face for him to recognize her.

Elizabeth Swann, the daughter of Port Royal’s governor and a friend of Sora and Captain Jack Sparrow’s, walked up behind Norrington, grabbed the bottle out of his hand, and smashed it on his head, knocking him out. The patrons looked at her, dumbfounded, as they were hoping to get a piece of the former naval officer themselves.

Elizabeth shrugged lightly. “I just wanted the pleasure of doing that myself!” she admitted, not bothering to disguise her feminine voice.

The crowd cheered and raised their mugs for a toast. Four men marched over to Norrington and grabbed him by the arms and legs. They carried him out through the doors and threw him into a muddy pig pen. Laughing amongst themselves, the majority of the crowd dispersed. Elizabeth remained, and walked over to Norrington. She rolled him onto his back and stared sadly into his face.

“James Norrington, what has the world done to you?” she asked sorrowfully.

Sora, Kairi and Mickey walked up behind her. “Elizabeth?” Sora called out.

The young woman gasped and looked over her shoulder to see who had recognized her. She let out a sigh of relief when she recognized the spiky-haired boy. “Oh. Sora. And are these your friends?”

Sora nodded. Kairi and Mickey introduced themselves. “So, what are you doing here, Elizabeth? How’s Will?” Sora asked.

Elizabeth sighed. “Will and I were supposed to be married,” she lamented. “But on the day when we were to have our wedding, we were arrested by Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company for helping Jack escape from the authorities.”

“That’s awful,” Kairi gasped.

Elizabeth nodded in agreement. “Beckett cut a deal with Will,” she continued. “If he found Jack and brought back his compass, our crimes would be forgiven.”

Sora raised his eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t see him in there with Jack,” he said.

Elizabeth shook her head. “Regardless, I intend to find him. My father risked himself so I could escape, and I will reunite with Will.”

Sora nodded. “Agreed. So, what’s with that guy?” he asked, looking past Elizabeth and at Norrington.

Elizabeth turned to look back at the man sadly. “Commodore James Norrington was dedicated to putting an end to pirates, and made it his mission to arrest Captain Jack Sparrow,” she explained. “He was also my fiancée.”

“Arranged marriage?” Kairi asked. Elizabeth nodded. “I can see that didn’t work out. So what happened?”

“Shortly after we worked to defeat the cursed pirates and those Nobody creatures, Jack was arrested and sentenced to hang. James was the arresting officer. But Will and I helped him escape. James set off to chase him down shortly thereafter. The next time I heard from him, I learned that he had resigned from his commission.”

“And I guess we know why,” Mickey added solemnly. “Poor guy. He did what he thought was right and it - it cost him everything.”

Kairi frowned as she heard Mickey choke up for a moment, knowing full well what he was thinking.

“Urgh… Take that… you no-good… pirates…” Norrington grumbled groggily, starting to come to. He opened his eyes and saw the face of the woman he loved. “Elizabeth?”

“Come on. Let’s help him up,” Sora said. “Then we’ll ask Jack about what happened to Will.”

* * *

They found Jack near the _Black Pearl_ , walking down the pier with his first mate as they saw the new crew members aboard. Elizabeth took a step ahead of Sora.

“Captain Sparrow!” she called.

“Come to join my crew, lad?” he asked. “Welcome aboard. And you three can climb on too.” He wagged his fingers above his head as he addressed Sora, Kairi and Mickey without turning around.

“I’m here to find the man I love,” Elizabeth corrected. Sora raised his eyebrow, surprised that he did not recognize Elizabeth’s voice.

Jack stopped and shifted his gaze from side to side. This was unexpected. “I’m deeply flattered, son, but my first and only love is the sea.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes, as did Sora. They heard Norrington vomiting over the side of the pier. “Meaning William Turner, Captain Sparrow,” Elizabeth clarified.

Jack stopped and turned around. “Elizabeth?”

The first mate took note of Sora and traded uncertain and bewildered glances with Jack. “He the lad with the…” he whispered, making gestures with his hand to mimic using a key to unlock a door. Jack gave him a quick and slight nod. The first mate looked at Sora again, aghast, though he appeared reflective. Sora could only wonder what he was thinking.

“Jack, I know Will came to find you. Where is he?” Elizabeth insisted.

“Darling, I am truly unhappy to have to tell you this, but…” Jack began, “through an unfortunate and entirely unforeseeable series of circumstances that have nothing whatsoever to do with me”― Sora rolled his eyes, figuring that everything that came out of the brigand’s mouth was a blatant falsehood ―“poor William has been press-ganged into Davy Jones’ crew.”

“Davy Jones?” Elizabeth repeated, incredulous.

“Who’s Davy Jones?” Sora asked.

Norrington spat in disbelief. “Oh, please. The captain of the _Flying Dutchman_?”

Jack turned his attention to Norrington. “You look bloody awful. What are you doing here?” he asked.

“You hired me,” Norrington shot back. “I can’t help it if your standards are lax.”

“You smell funny,” was apparently the best comeback Jack could come up with.

“Guys! Your BAC is too great for barroom banter,” Sora interjected. “And I’ll ask again. Who is Davy Jones?”

Norrington rolled his eyes. “They say that Davy Jones sails the dark seas, delivering the souls of those who died at sea into the afterlife,” he explained, a snide tone in his voice. “But when his girl left him, he abandoned his mission and started cutting bargains with doomed sailors to stay their ends and make them part of his monstrous crew. Not like that old wives’ tale is any more than that.”

“If you were a bit more wary at sea, you’d still have a crew,” Jack spat.

“Well, that’s twisted,” Sora commented, disturbed.

“Jack. All I want is to find Will,” Elizabeth pleaded.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Are you certain? Is that what you really want the most?” he asked her. Sora and Mickey could see the wheels turning in his head, though neither of them knew what he was thinking.

Elizabeth nodded. “'Course,” she replied.

“Because I would think you would want to find a way to _save_ Will the most,” Jack suggested.

“And you have a way of doing that?”

“Well, there’s a chest,” Jack began.

Norrington groaned. Sora, Kairi and Mickey looked at him in confusion.

“A chest of unknown size and origin,” Jack continued.

Two pirates, a fat, balding man with his shirt open and a tall, skinny man with dirty blond hair as well as a moustache and goatee, walked by carrying a crate of bottles. They overheard the conversation and stopped on their way to the _Black Pearl_ ’s gangplank so they could pitch in. “What contains the still-beating heart of Davy Jones,” the fat one, Pintel, said. His companion, Ragetti, vocally imitated the sound of a beating heart. Kairi leaned back, somewhat disturbed.

“He doesn’t have his heart? So he’s like a Nobody? Or is he a Heartless?” Sora asked.

The first mate shook his head. “It ain’t like that, my boy. It’s not like those kinds of hearts. It’s his actual, living, beating heart. As in the vital organ,” he explained. Sora and Kairi winced. Mickey gagged.

“And whoever possesses that chest possesses the leverage to command Jones to do whatever it is he or she wants,” Jack continued, “including saving brave William from his grim fate.”

“Okay, someone’s going to have to explain this guy to me,” Sora moaned.

Norrington scoffed. “You don’t actually believe him, do you?” he asked mockingly.

“Seen weirder,” Mickey retorted.

“How do we find it?” Elizabeth asked, actually believing him.

“With this.” Jack held up his compass, which had been hanging from his belt by a length of twine. “You see, my compass is… unique.”

“‘Unique’ here having the meaning of broken,” Norrington retorted.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Sora countered. “It certainly seemed special enough to react to my Keyblade.” Norrington gave him a double take, having no idea what he was talking about.

“True enough,” Jack conceded the point. He could not blame Norrington for his presumption. “This compass does not point north.”

“Where does it point?” Elizabeth asked.

“It points to the thing you want most in this world,” Jack answered.

“That sounds cool,” Kairi said.

“Aye,” Jack agreed. He turned his attention back to Elizabeth. “And what you want most in the world is to find the chest of Davy Jones, is it not?”

“To save Will,” Elizabeth corrected.

“By finding the chest of Davy Jones,” Jack clarified. He handed the compass to Elizabeth, then took a giant step back so that he would not influence it.

“Wait. Why can’t you use it?” Mickey asked.

“And why do you want the chest, anyway?” Sora added.

Jack ignored their questions, keeping his gaze focused on the compass in Elizabeth’s hands. The needle spun around. The first mate stepped up to Sora and leaned into his ear.

“Captain Sparrow made a deal with Davy Jones, to raise the _Black Pearl_ from the bottom of the ocean and make him captain for thirteen years, after which Jack would join his crew on the _Flying Dutchman_ ,” he explained.

“But Barbossa mutinied and threw him off a decade ago,” Sora pointed out.

Don’t matter to Jones. Now he’s coming to collect, and Jack aims to get out of his end of the bargain.” Sora nodded, understanding the situation. The first mate took a step back and then smiled jovially. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Joshamee Gibbs, first mate of the _Black Pearl_.” He stuck his hand out. Sora shook it.

“Sora,” the boy returned.

Jack’s eyes widened when the needle of the compass settled on a direction. He looked up at Gibbs. “Mr. Gibbs!” he called.

“Cap’n!” Gibbs returned.

“We have our heading!” Jack announced, excited.

Gibbs sighed in relief. “Finally. Cast off those lines, weigh anchor, and prow that canvas!” he barked orders around.

Jack beamed at Elizabeth, Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Norrington, the latter of whom could hardly believe what was happening. “Welcome aboard, men!” He turned and sauntered up the gangplank, keeping pace with Gibbs.

“So, Cap’n,” Gibbs whispered to Jack, “in the possibility that this endeavor goes south, though I would rather it not, how many souls do you suppose that boy would equal to in Jones’ eye?”

“I’d give him a modest forty to fifty, though I’m not sure how Jones counts it. However petty he decides to be, he’d have to count”― Jack shrugged ―“at least four.”

Gibbs frowned. “Well, we’d better find this chest.”

* * *

While Sora, Kairi and Mickey were joining the crew of the _Black Pearl_ , Riku, Donald and Goofy pushed their way through foliage of palm fronds.

“I smell fire,” Riku said. “I think we’ll be coming across some form of civilization in a second.”

They pushed out of the line of trees and found themselves standing next to a hut made of wooden sticks. They walked further and found a couple dozen tribesmen standing and dancing around a fire pit. From what Riku could see, illuminated by the glow of the fire, they all had very dark skin and were covered in painted tattoos, and they were dressed in clothing made from leaves, feathers, and bones.

The tribesmen stopped chanting and turned around to identify the newcomers. Their gaze was intent and curious, though there was something else to it. Some of them picked up spears and knives, while others still held plates filled with leaves and nuts.

Goofy gulped, and Riku and Donald glanced past the closest natives to examine the fire. Mounted on a spit over the flames, they saw a large length of meat that did not look like it was pork or steak.

“Well, that’s the last time Donald picks our coordinates,” Riku muttered. Donald grumbled.


	64. Chapter 63: Pelegostos

Riku, Donald and Goofy stood absolutely still, shifting their gaze between each of the tribesmen. The tribe did not move, studying the newcomers as well until they could figure out what to do about them. There was only a single torch behind Riku, Donald and Goofy, so the tribesmen could not make them out in the dim light at this time of night as the trio could them in the light of the blaze. However, the cannibals did not need to seek as many details as their quarry.

The villager in front started shouting to his companions, who started speaking back. Donald and Goofy looked at each other in confusion, unable to understand the language.

“Uh, did you get that?” Goofy asked.

“No,” Donald answered curtly.

Riku tried to hide the worry that was welling up from showing in his eyes. “They’re planning to capture us and hold us prisoner until their next convenient meal,” he told Donald and Goofy, translating the grunts. “Then, they’re going to kill us, cook us, spread some rich seasonings over our meat, and… eat us.”

Donald and Goofy were taken aback. “How did you understand that when we didn’t?” Donald asked.

“No idea,” Riku replied.

“Maybe they’re so disconnected from other human civilization that it’s not so easy for the Keyblade to translate their language, so it’s only putting the work in for the one wielding it,” Goofy guessed. “Or just for the human of the group, or something.”

“However it works, we need to get out of here before any of that happens,” Riku cut him off.

“But how do we get away from them without any trouble?” Goofy asked, fear and worry clearly visible even in the darkness.

“We could go back to the Gummi Ship and go somewhere else,” Donald suggested.

Riku nodded, and they started to slowly back away from the villagers. The tribesmen watched them go, seemingly not bothering to pursue. Riku kept eye contact with the man closest to him, deciding that he would only turn away once they were hidden in the trees again. He heard Goofy stumble and turned to see that he had bumped into one of two child villagers standing behind the adjacent hut. The one child fell while his friend helped him to his feet.

Riku heard the villagers’ muscles tense. He breathed a curse. Goofy gasped. The tribesman in front shouted a war cry.

“So much for that idea,” Riku groaned. He, Donald and Goofy broke into a sprint. The cannibals entered pursuit, screaming all the way. Riku led his companions onto the main path, figuring that it would be wiser to flee in a direction that they could see rather than attempt to escape through the trees and underbrush from an entire tribe of man-eating warriors who knew the terrain far better than them.

Fortunately, most of the tribesmen were dancing around the dinner flame, so there were only a few in any position to get the jump on them. They ran through the village, keeping at a great enough distance from their pursuers. The crowd ran into each other, so only the ones in front could run at their full speed freely while the rest had to avoid tripping over each other. On his own, Riku could easily lose them, but he had to keep pace with Donald and Goofy, who were not nearly as fast. Some of the tribesmen stepped to the side and fired blow darts at them, but Goofy brought his shield out to block it and Donald cast Reflect to bounce them away. One of the villagers was hit by the rebound and fell unconscious, and was trampled by his oblivious neighbors.

Riku, Donald and Goofy came upon a long, narrow rope bridge crossing over a ravine hovering over a river. It was only wide enough for one person to cross at a time, which might not have been the most prudent decision when the hungry cannibals might need to chase down a quarry to capture and roast. Riku decided to stop thinking about the consumption of human flesh and simply count his blessings. They would have to cross carefully, one after the other, but so would the tribesmen, who would be at a greater disadvantage because they could not all go at once, lest the added weight cause the ropes to break and everyone to fall to a likely end.

Riku and Goofy slowed down as they tread across cautiously, though Donald kept going without slowing down. The tribesmen did not reach the bridge until Donald was already halfway across and Donald and Goofy were a third of the way across. Most of the villagers came to a dead stop, watching the rope bridge sway and strain as three of their own started walking across. Three tribesmen pulled out their bows and nocked an arrow each, aiming at their quarry. Goofy turned to look back and yelped. Riku turned his head so that he could see one of the archers even in near-total darkness. On the plus side, it was unlikely that any of the arrows would come close, but they had to stay on their guard.

Goofy heard the whistle as the first arrow was launched. He watched it sail over his head and land in the rock wall ahead. The second one was launched, but it was not set to miss. He summoned his shield and blocked the arrow, which shattered against the metal. He threw the shield at the third archer before he could release the bow, breaking the weapon and knocking him down. He caught the shield and continued crossing the bridge.

By the time the three of them had stepped off of the bridge, eight villagers were walking across the bridge. Donald waited for Riku and Goofy to catch up before they all broke into a fierce sprint yet again. As they ran, they heard the tribesmen start hollering in frustration. Goofy started to slow his pace when he detected a change in their tone.

“Hey, uh, guys?” Goofy called. Riku slowed to a stop while Donald kept running for a few more seconds before stopping himself. They turned around and looked back at the tribesmen, though they would not expect to see much in the darkness. Unfortunately, the problem became apparent in that there was more light that they could make note of. Dozens of yellow dots floated around the throng on the opposite side of the ravine. The tribesmen started screaming in terror and shuffling around in a panic. The eight villagers who had crossed the bridge in pursuit stopped in confusion when they noticed their prey’s expressions of worry. They slowly and uncertainly turned to see what they were looking at. Their eyes widened when they saw the pinpoints. They did not know what was going on, but they could tell that their people were in danger.

“We have to help them,” Riku asserted.

“What? Are you crazy?” Donald asked in disbelief. “They want to eat us!”

“True, and I can’t really condone how their society developed that idea, which is disturbing,” Riku conceded, “but we can’t let them get consumed by the Heartless. I’m not the kind of guy for that kind of irony, when they’re flat-out terrified like this.”

Goofy nodded and ran past the eight villagers and crossed the bridge without a word. Riku followed him while Donald stared after them, jaw agape. He sighed and summoned his staff, then followed them.

“Everyone back!” Riku shouted, addressing the tribesmen specifically, hoping that they would hear his words in their language. When the villagers had backed up enough to give him room, he summoned his Keyblade and spun around slashing through the Shadows on all sides. Goofy shoved a Neoshadow off of the cliff. When Donald caught up with them, he cast Thundaga, bringing bolts of lightning down on the remaining Heartless.

The tribesmen stood still, staring silently at the three strangers who had just slain the shadowy monsters. They had been fleeing from them and yet came back to destroy the fiends that were attacking them; they had saved all of their lives.

Riku, Donald and Goofy held their weapons warily, waiting for the cannibals to make the next move. Donald was skeptical, expecting the man-eaters to still come after them for a meal, but Goofy wondered if they would show a little more gratitude, and Riku was just not sure. They got their answer when the closest villager set his spear down and dropped to one knee. Half a dozen others followed suit, and soon the entire tribe was kneeling before them, even the eight that stood across the bridge. The trio looked around at all of them, surprised and amused.

“Well, it looks like we have some fans,” Riku muttered.

The nearest villager said something in the tribe’s language. Donald and Goofy raised their eyebrows in confusion, but Riku did the same with intrigue.

“He asked how they can serve us,” Riku translated.

Donald gulped. “Tell them we’re not interested in what they have to give,” he said.

Goofy shook his head. “Maybe they can help us find a way off this island,” he suggested.

“Good idea,” Riku agreed. He turned back to the tribesmen and addressed them. “Take us to the sea, so we can hail for transport.”

The villagers shot to their feet, taking Riku by surprise, but they did not reclaim their weapons. The nearest villager chattered something, then walked past Riku and across the bridge.

“Follow him,” Riku translated. He and Goofy started following their guide. Donald groaned, but followed.

Riku began to develop question about the tribe. They were an organized community that held campfire feasts, but they did not seem to have a designated leader amongst their numbers. Recalling the scene at the fire, he noticed that there was a large chair fit for a chief, but no man sat upon it. Focusing on the image in his mind, he realized that there was a hairy bulk on the chair. Was that a dog?

The other question nagging at him was where they got their meat. They were certainly able to sustain themselves on cannibalism, but the tribe was rather large, with several dozen members. Did they actually decide who would be killed and cooked? Or did a portion of their meals come from unsuspecting visitors. Were there other tribes on the island that they did battle with?

He repressed a shudder. There was a good reason why he never contemplated even the topic of cannibalism, aside from the fact that it was intrinsically sick and wrong. As a result, he decided to stop thinking about it and direct his thoughts to other matters, such as what they would do once they reached the beach.

Perhaps they would gather wood to start a signal fire and hope that a ship would come by. Assuming that the island’s population was not so notorious that all ships would cut as wide a berth around it as possible. Or, with extreme luck, they would find a Safe Point on the beach and they would go with their original plan to just return to the Gummi Ship and find another place to land. He was still getting used to taking Corridors of Darkness again, and he was not eager to try jumping to new locations on a world that he knew nothing about, particularly one that, from Sora’s description, was in large parts covered in water.

As the trees opened up and a sandy beach came into view, Riku decided he just had to hope for the best.

Dawn started to break as they walked across the beach. The waves crashed roughly and receded quickly, as if even the sea itself was not happy to be anywhere near the island of cannibals. Riku scanned the area and saw some dying trees lining the jungle. He had a feeling that he could cut them down and they could pile them up so they could light a fire large enough to draw any ship near. Turning around, he saw that a number of villagers were already carrying logs and long pieces of straw. He had to admit, they were good at what they did.

They marched around the beach until they could no longer see where they came in. Riku noticed a rut in the sand where a ship appeared to have run aground some time ago, possibly by only a few days at the longest. Determining this to be a good place to set up, the tribesmen set the logs down and put them up together. Riku used his Keyblade to cut down a few dying trees, and he and Goofy carried them one at a time over to the site, shearing off the bark and clipping the leaves. Some of the villagers spread the straw around the base of the structure to make for good kindling, and Donald climbed the logs to set more straw around the height of the structure.

With the tower complete, Riku and Donald cast Fira around the base to ignite the straw and wood. Flames spread around the structure, burning the kindling and lighting parts of the dry wood. Within minutes, the whole structure was ablaze, creating a towering fire whose light and smoke could be seen from far away.

“So now what?” Donald asked.

Riku sat down and crossed his legs. “Now, we wait for a ship to come,” he replied.

* * *

A few hours passed. Whenever the flames started to wear down and the burnt wood crumbled, Riku would cut down some more trees and add them to the fire to keep it blazing. Soon, it was nearing midday.

Riku and Goofy waited patiently, Donald less so. Goofy listened to the villagers’ curious chattering, though he could not understand what they were saying. He heard their tone shift from curiosity to nervousness, until he could almost make out a sense of paranoia.

Finally, Riku spied a silhouette in the distance. After a few minutes, he saw that it was a large boat, and it was sailing in their direction.

“We’ve got incoming!” he announced.

Goofy peered over the horizon and smiled when he saw the ship. “Great!” he exclaimed. He glanced back over at the tribesmen. “Say, uh, Riku, these guys seem to be talking about something worriedly.”

“Really?” Riku listened in on their conversation. While Goofy could only hear their unique language, Riku heard their words in English. His eyes widened in horror as he heard the full extent of their discussion.

“What did they say?” Donald asked, afraid to hear the answer.

Riku sighed. “Well, it seems as though they watched us use magic and, through some logic, have determined that we are dark spirits,” he paraphrased. “So, it looks like they’re thinking of killing us anyway.”

“Oh. That’s not good,” Donald replied.

“Don’t worry. We should have plenty of time for the ship to come in so we can climb aboard before they start doing anything rash,” Riku assured him.

“Uh, the ship’s turning away,” Goofy said.

“Probably because they saw the entire tribe of cannibals here,” Donald deadpanned.

“Oh.” Riku closed his eyes and considered what he should do. In hindsight, he probably should have thought the matter of getting the tribe to help him build the signal fire and then stay with them through a bit more. He scanned the surface of the water, measuring the distance between the beach and the ship.

_Hopefully, they will be a bit more understanding of what I will be doing,_ he thought to himself.

“I have an idea,” he told his companions. “When I break the signal, run to the ship.”

“Uh, okay,” Donald replied.

“Wait, did you say ‘make the signal’, or ‘ _break_ …’” Goofy began to ask.

Riku summoned his Keyblade and struck one of the logs forming the external frame. The burning log broke to pieces and fell, startling the nearest tribesmen, and the entire structure collapsed a few seconds later, lurching in their direction. The villagers backed away and ran as the flaming wood crashed to the ground.

After staring in shock for a few seconds, Donald and Goofy remembered Riku’s instructions and started running toward the surf. Riku ran just behind them. He jumped high into the air and shouted “Blizzaga!” Cold magic shot toward the water and began to freeze an extended section on the surface. He landed alongside Donald and Goofy, who had jumped onto the newly-formed ice platform, and continued running. He and Donald took turns casting Blizzaga to extend the block of ice. Soon, they drew near to the ship, and were nearly able to make out the shapes of the crewmen who watched their dash from aboard.

They became worried when they saw the sailors shift around fearfully, until they heard a voice which Donald and Goofy recognized.

“Throw them a rope! Come on, men! Throw them a rope!”

After a moment of uncertainty, three members of the crew scrambled to retrieve a rope, then two of them threw one end over the side, reaching down to a foot above the water.

When the ice platform stopped twenty feet from the hull of the ship, Riku and Donald stopped casting Blizzaga and, along with Goofy, jumped off into the water. They swam the rest of the way. Donald grabbed onto the rope and started climbing first, followed by Riku and then Goofy. Far behind them, the ice platform started to melt and crack apart. Soon, it would be no more.

When the trio had climbed to the deck, they tumbled to the floor and took time to catch their breath. They noticed that the sailors were staring at them in bewilderment. Only one man had a different expression, one that mixed bemusement with relief. Donald and Goofy realized that he was exactly who they thought they had heard moments before.

The man had brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. He had a moustache and a goatee. He wore a white button-down shirt with an unbuttoned black jacket over it, black pants, and black boots. He wore a scabbard that wrapped over his right shoulder and under his left arm, in which sat a cutlass. A knife was sheathed and attached to his belt over his left leg.

“Donald, Goofy,” the man greeted. He set his eyes on Riku, and his expression betrayed his surprise. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe we’ve met. Honestly, I saw these two first, and I expected that Sora would be with them.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint,” Riku quipped. “He went with our other group. I’m Riku.”

The man smiled and nodded, then held his hand out. Riku took it, and the man helped him to his feet. “My name is Will Turner,” he introduced himself.

“Pleased to meet you,” Riku replied.

“So, you’re friends with this man?” one of the sailors, who appeared to be the captain, asked.

“Uh-huh,” Goofy answered.

The captain laughed. “Well, then. Welcome aboard the _Edinburgh Trader_ ,” he greeted.

One of the nervous crewmen raised his hand. “Say, we didn’t see no ship 'round here. How did ye end up on the island of the Pelegostos?” he asked.

Riku raised his eyebrow. “That’s what the cannibal tribe is called?” he asked. The sailors nodded. He shrugged. “Bad luck, I guess. Donald picked the wrong spot for us to land.”

Another sailor raised his hand fearfully. “Um, what was that you was doing? You turned the water to ice like that. Like magic.”

Riku sighed. He was not going to get around this one. Then again, if they encountered Heartless, the cat was going to have to come out of the bag in front of the sailors regardless. “Yeah. That was magic,” he answered, cutting off Donald’s protests. The crewmen back away fearfully. “But we use it to help people and fight monsters.” The crewmen started to relax.

“Well, this is indeed a strange turn of events,” the captain groaned. “First, a haunted wedding dress leads us to making a stop at the pirate port of Tortuga, where a feminine-looking stowaway jumped ship, then this man comes aboard, claiming to have evaded the reaper, and now strangers throwing magic about seek escape from the Pelegostos aboard my ship.”

This comment got Donald and Will’s attention. “Haunted wedding dress?” Donald asked.

“Aye!” one of the crewmen said. He ran across the deck, then returned a moment later, carrying a gold-and-white lace dress.

Will’s eyes widened. “That dress! Where did you get that?”

“It was found aboard the ship,” the captain explained. “The crew thought it was a spirit bringing some omen of ill fate.”

“Was that Elizabeth’s?” Donald asked.

“Indeed,” Will replied.

Goofy turned to face Will. “So, uh, what are you doing out here?” he asked.

Will sighed. “Elizabeth and I were arrested on our wedding day for helping Jack Sparrow escape custody,” he explained. “Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company roped me into his schemes, offering freedom in exchange for retrieving Jack’s compass. I’m not quite sure what he intends to use it for, but I had to do something. I found Jack and the _Pearl_ on this very island, then I got pulled along in Jack’s schemes to get out of his debt with Davy Jones.”

The crew stopped dead. The wedding dress dropped out of the sailor’s hands.

“I heard about him during my time aboard Hook’s ship,” Riku said bitterly. “What happened then?”

“Suffice to say, Jack set me up, and I was press-ganged aboard the _Flying Dutchman_ ,” Will answered.


	65. Chapter 64: Turbulent Seas

Sora walked around the _Black Pearl_ , helping out wherever he was needed. He also showed Kairi the different roles to fill on the ship. They were introduced to the rest of the pirate crew. Mr. Gibbs had been a sailor in the Royal Navy before deserting and turning to piracy, and he was a longtime friend of Jack Sparrow and had known Elizabeth since she was a child. Pintel and Ragetti were among Jack’s original crew who had been cursed along with Barbossa. They had snuck away from prison and avoided the gallows amidst the chaos of the curse’s resurgence. Ragetti’s right eye was replaced with a wooden eye that would sometimes fall out of its socket, much to Kairi’s disgust. There was an older, bearded sailor, named Cotton, who had a parrot on his shoulder. Apparently, his tongue had been cut out, so the parrot would speak for him. The last member of the main crew was a short, bald man named Marty, whose weapon of choice was a large gun. Kairi wondered why he used such a bulky and powerful weapon when he did not have the mass to hold up against the recoil.

Mickey set to work maintaining the rigging and checking the stock. Gibbs watched him get into gear enthusiastically.

“Lad seems pretty comfortable on a ship,” the first mate commented.

“Well, he did work as a boathand a long time ago,” Sora explained. “I guess he’s getting back into the groove.”

“Interesting. What about you? You have any experience on the sea before you met Jack?” Gibbs asked.

“Not really,” Sora admitted. “Me and Kairi, and our friend Riku, too, built a raft that we wanted to use to sail to new worlds. But we never got to use it, since a storm hit and our islands were swallowed by Heartless.”

“Well, Jack seemed to think of you and your friends as a good crew. Shame I couldn’t meet them.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll catch up soon.”

Sora broke off from Gibbs and walked across the deck. He found Jack standing at the prow. The captain alternated between staring at the horizon and studying his shifting compass. He walked over to join him and leaned against the railing.

“So, that compass leads you to what your heart desires most, huh?” Sora asked.

Jack nodded. “Aye. I’ve been using it as a guide to find the _Pearl_ since I got off of that godforsaken island,” he replied. “But now, when I need it most, it refuses to help me.”

Sora shrugged. “Hearts can be tricky things. Maybe what you think you want isn’t quite what you really want the most, deep down.”

Jack chuckled. “When did you become so wise, lad? I remember it taking you a while for you to realize that pirates aren’t to be trusted.”

“Says the guy who sold his soul to an evil immortal Nobody,” Sora retorted.

“Davy Jones ain’t one of those white monsters. His heart that he has in that chest of his is the beating variety, not the kind you lot preach about.”

“How does that even work?” Sora asked, disgusted. “How do you even live without an ‘actual’ heart?”

“They say it still beats for him even when outside. But if you stab the heart, Jones will die.”

“So that’s why you want the chest? To kill Davy Jones and weasel your way out of your deal by default?”

“No, lad. I want the chest because I want Jones to not want me to do that. You see, I’m not afraid of Jones or his _Flying Dutchman_. But Jones has a beastie, which he sends after those who get on his bad side.”

“A ‘beastie’?” Sora repeated questioningly.

“The fearsome Kraken!” Pintel answered, approaching from behind. He pronounced it as “ _Kray-ken_ ”.

“It’s pronounced ‘ _Krah-ken_ ’,” Ragetti corrected.

“Eh, shut up,” Pintel shot back.

“Now, you see, Jones might not want his heart, but he also doesn’t want any harm to come to it,” Jack continued, ignoring the interruption. “If we can get our hands on that chest, his heart would be at a risk that would force Jones to do whatever we asked. Such as, say, sinking that dread beastie. Savvy?”

Sora nodded. “Or make him free someone from his service,” he added. “You could order him to completely forget your contract with him, and also free Will.”

“Exactly.”

“So, wait. Why did he cut his heart out, anyway?” Sora asked, afraid to hear the story.

Kairi walked up beside Sora, wanting to hear the story as well.

Jack sighed. “The legends tell that Davy Jones loved a woman as fierce as the sea. He sailed in duty to her, even taking up the job of ferrying the souls of those who perished at sea, in which he would spend ten years at sea, only able to set foot on land for a single day after that time. But when he returned, his lover was nowhere to be found. The betrayal caused him more pain than he could bear, so he carved his own heart out and locked it away from the world.”

“That’s so sad,” Kairi said sorrowfully.

Sora raised his eyebrow and opened his mouth to say something, but he remained silent for several seconds as he attempted to process the tale. “So, he cut out his physical heart… to cut himself off from his emotions? It sounds to me like he confused the spiritual and organic hearts too.”

Jack chuckled, realizing that he was right. “I suppose. One can hardly understand the logic of a heart in turmoil, especially one that belonged to a monstrous tyrant.” He turned around and leaned his back against the railing. He glanced over at Sora, studying his expression. “Speaking of which, something tells me that your crew is not so ship-shape.”

“Huh?” Sora turned to face Jack. “What gave you that idea?”

Jack shrugged. “For starters, it seemed to me as though you and your friends, Donald and Goofy, were an inseparable team, and I’m sure the same fit for the other guy you said had been with you. But when you land in this corner of the world where you need as much loyalty as you can get, you split up. Second—” he turned his gaze over to Mickey “—it looks as though he’s trying to keep himself distracted. So, mind telling me what’s wrong?”

Sora allowed himself a soft smile. “Keen-eyed as always, Captain.” He sighed. “It’s kind of complicated. We found out that he knew things that he could have used to prevent a lot of bad things from happening in the first place, but he didn’t because he felt guilty for not being able to stop some previous suffering and made himself believe that all the earlier trouble wasn’t in vain.”

“I see,” Jack replied. “And what do you think of the matter?”

Sora shrugged. “Honestly, I’m not too sure. Riku was hit hardest, since the guy responsible for everything bad that happened took over his body. But really, I don’t know what to think. I mean, I know Mickey shouldn’t have kept all that to himself, and he should have done something before things went wrong, but… I don’t know…”

Jack contemplated his indecisive compass. “But, I would surmise, deep down you wonder, if the bad things hadn’t happened, would you be who you are today?” he finished for him.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right,” he said.

“And I guess that if none of that had happened, I might never have met Sora and Riku,” Kairi added.

Jack snapped his compass shut and tied it around his belt. “Let me tell you something, lad. So much has happened to all of us. Even if we wanted it, we can’t take it back. All we can do is learn from our pasts, for better or worse, and sail onward. But you can’t do that with a divided crew. Savvy?” Sora and Kairi nodded. “Now, you can tear yourselves and each other up over it, or…” Jack shook his head. “Actually, I don’t know. I suppose that’s all up to you lot.”

Sora and Kairi contemplated the captain’s words for a moment. They turned to look back out across the sea. The corner of Sora’s mouth curled into a slight smile.

“You’re right,” he said. “Thanks, Captain.”

* * *

“So, you all went to that Tia Dalma lady to find out how to find the key, and she told you where to find the _Flying Dutchman_ ,” Goofy paraphrased the story that Will had recounted to the trio. “Then Jack told you to go on board, and you were put on the crew in his stead?”

Will shrugged. “That’s not quite it. Jones said that Jack’s soul was worth one hundred others, and he only counted me as one,” he corrected. “But the old pirate’s a sly dog. He didn’t really leave me to take the fall for him; he just wanted me to get the key!”

“The key to the Dead Man’s Chest?!” the ship’s captain asked in bewilderment.

“Aye,” Will replied.

Riku laughed. He held his hand up and summoned his Keyblade. “Kinda redundant now, huh?” he joked.

Will let out a chuckle. “I suppose. But it was worth it,” he admitted. “I got to meet my father.”

Riku raised an eyebrow. Goofy stroked his chin, remembering something that had been mentioned during a previous visit to this world.

“Your father? You mean Bootstrap Bill Turner? The one guy from the _Black Pearl_ whose blood Barbossa needed to lift the curse?” the dog knight asked.

“Yes. Thing is, after Barbossa and the crew dropped him to the bottom of the ocean, where the curse kept him alive but he was unable to free himself, Davy Jones found him and offered to get him out of his prison in exchange for a century of servitude,” Will explained. “While I was on the _Dutchman_ , I got to know him a bit. When I challenged Davy Jones to a game of Liar’s Dice to trick him into showing me where he keeps the key, I wagered against myself an eternity of servitude. But my father joined the game and let himself lose, so that I would be free at his own eternal expense.”

The crew of the _Edinburgh Trader_ frowned, sympathizing with the blacksmith. One even sniffled, and another started weeping.

Riku put his hand on Will’s shoulder reassuringly. Donald’s face fell. “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” the duck told him.

Will nodded toward him appreciatively. “Not to worry,” he said. “We’ll catch up with Jack, and we’ll find the chest. And when we open it, I will sink my knife into Davy Jones’ heart. Then, my father will be freed.”

The crew traded confused and uneasy glances. Riku took notice and wondered what they were concerned about. “Ahem, 'scuse me…” the captain began. However, he would not get to finish his thought.

“Captain! A ship’s been spotted!” a sailor shouted from the crow’s nest.

“Colors?” the captain asked.

“She isn’t flying any,” the observant sailor answered.

A look of fear crossed Will’s face. Riku, Donald and Goofy turned to follow the sailor’s gaze. Silhouetted in the distance, they saw an ominous ship. They noticed that the ship was not coming any closer; rather, it stayed in place, as if watching them menacingly.

“Pirates!” the captain gasped.

“Or worse,” Will muttered.

* * *

On the other ship, the fearsome captain glared at the trading ship. A blurry eye would notice a humanoid form, but his features were actually a mix of human and various forms of sea life. His head resembled a yellow-green octopus, with forty-six tentacles making up a “beard”, and he lacked a nose. His right hand was covered in scales, and his index finger extended into a long tentacle. His left hand was replaced by a large crab claw. His right leg was distorted to resemble a crab’s leg, making it evoke the imagery of a peg leg. His tricorn hat split at the larger front corn into two points.

Davy Jones, monstrous captain of the _Flying Dutchman_ , crumpled a parchment depicting the key that he had always kept close at hand, or rather, tentacle. He turned to face his treacherous slave, Bootstrap Bill Turner. Turner appeared pale and sunken, as if he had been drowned, and his face was covered in barnacles, with a starfish attached to his right temple. The previous night, Turner had helped his son off of the ship, and Will Turner took with him the key to the Dead Man’s Chest. Two members of the _Dutchman’s_ crew, who, like everyone else, had been mutated to resemble fusions of man and sea creatures, flanked Turner. One of them held a sawfish rostrum bone against Turner like a sword.

Jones clamped his claw around the bottom half of Bootstrap’s head and pressed his face close to Turner’s. “You will watch this!” Jones croaked viciously. He let go and turned away, directing his attention to eight barnacle-encrusted mutant crew members who were turning a large wheel while being whipped by another monstrous sailor. The turning of the wheel raised an enormous pin from the center of the wheel.

“Let no joyful voice be heard!” Jones shouted. “Let no man look up at the sky with hope! And let this day be cursed by we who ready to wake…” The hammer reached its apex. “… _the Kraken!_ ”

“No!” Bootstrap yelled, knowing that his son was doomed and there was nothing he could do about it. He struggled to break free, but his captors held him fast.

The hammer dropped, striking the bottom of the ship with a resounding boom.

* * *

The crew of the _Edinburgh Trader_ heard the noise, and they all rushed to the side of the ship to get a look at the strange ship. The captain took a telescope and peeked through it, making out a barnacle-encrusted ship with tattered, mildew-covered sails.

A sailor screamed “Demons!” Riku, Donald and Goofy turned to see what he was referring to and saw half a dozen Shadows forming from the deck. Three Pirates materialized from thin air around them.

“Heartless!” Riku corrected, summoning his Keyblade. “Leave them to us!” The sailors wisely backed away, allowing the three world travelers to do their job.

Riku locked blades with a Pirate and pushed back against it. As it walked back to evade Riku’s onslaught, the Heartless tripped and lost its balance. Riku cut straight through it before it hit the ground. Donald cast Fire to blaze through the Shadows surrounding him. Goofy blocked against a Pirate’s strikes, causing it to reel back. He then spun around and brought the side of his shield into the Heartless’ neck, knocking it down. He then pounded into its chest until it dissipated. He whirled around and shield-punched a Shadow in the face, destroying it in a single blow. Riku jumped up and drove his Keyblade into the final Pirate’s head, blasting it to bits in a fiery burst.

Donald looked up at Will, who had climbed up to the top of the mast and was staring at the strange ship. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’ve doomed us all,” Will muttered. “It’s the _Flying Dutchman_!” he shouted down to everyone.

Suddenly, the ship lurched, causing everyone to stumble. Will fell from his perch but caught himself on a rope.

“Mother Cary’s chickens!” one of the crewmen cursed. “What happened?”

“Must’ve hit a reef,” another sailor guessed.

Riku sniffed the air. He smelled a new kind of darkness, a scent mixed with what he thought smelled like raw sushi and dried blood (the sushi smell he had picked up during his time aboard the _Jolly Roger_ , the dried blood being from his year as a spy when he had visited some places that had not been all sunshine and forest critters). Something told him that this was not a reef.

The captain got to his feet and ran to the rail, taking a look overboard to assess the situation. He did not see anything other than water. “Free the rudder! Hard to port, then hard to starboard!” he barked orders. The sailors next to him repeated his message. They did not notice a tentacle rise up above the water and grab the captain around the waist, pulling him overboard.

Goofy gulped, having seen this occur. “Everyone away from the rail!” he shouted. The sailors looked at him in confusion, but turned around when they heard something break the surface of the water in confusion, accompanied by a high-pitched scream. They only had a second to take the sight in before it retreated underwater, but it was enough to identify an enormous tentacle which held onto their captain.

“Kraken!” one of the sailors screamed. The crew broke into a panic. One man rang a bell to rally everyone, and they all gathered whatever weapons were available, such as spears, axes, swords, and guns.

In the meantime, tentacles slithered up the sides of the hull. Soon, they rose up high into view. Some of the crewmen swung their weapons, while others threw their spears. A particularly superstitious sailor raised Elizabeth’s wedding dress, pleading for the Kraken to take it, thinking that it would leave them alone. However, the tentacles lashed around, grabbing multiple crew members and dragging them to their doom. One man brought his ax down onto a tentacle and grinned triumphantly before the tentacle whipped back and grabbed him.

Riku slashed at the tentacles and launched balls of Dark Fire. A tentacle wrapped itself around Donald, but the duck cast Reflega at the last second. The tentacle failed to squeeze through the force field and was blasted back by the kinetic recoil. Goofy ran to the sailors’ defense, but he was unable to do anything against the lightning-fast appendages. He was quickly grabbed himself and pulled overboard.

“Goofy!” Riku shouted, horrified. Donald screamed in rage and unleashed multiple Thundaga and Firaga spells in quick succession, singing and burning the tentacles as they hit.

One tentacle wrapped itself around the center mast and snapped it with ease. The mast tilted and began to fall. Will jumped off and fell into the sail of the next mast, but slid down. He pulled his knife out and stabbed the sail, hoping to slow his descent, but things did not work that way in any sense of reality. He passed the bottom of the sail but caught a rope beneath that. Another tentacle crushed the lower part of that mast. Will put his knife between his teeth to free his right hand and pulled himself onto the frame of the sail. As he stood up, a tentacle rose up to his level. He pulled his sword out and slashed at it before it eventually grabbed the blade and pulled it out of his hand.

While everyone on the deck dealt with the smaller tentacles, larger appendages rose up over the deck, only this time they rose much higher until the tips were level with the top of the remaining mast. They then curled over the ship and came down. They crashed into the deck and crushed the ship in one fell swoop, breaking the hull in two. Most of the remaining sailors lost their footing and fell into the water, followed by much of the cargo.

Donald stumbled and fell overboard, screaming. Riku reached out to grab him, but he was too far away. The Keyblade wielder whirled around, watching the carnage unfurl around him. He couldn’t save everyone. He couldn’t save anyone.

Actually, there was one person he just might be able to get to.

He looked up and saw Will, still standing on the mast frame. He heard a crunch and turned to see Will’s mast snapping in the coils of a tentacle. Will held on for dear life as the mast began to fall.

Riku knew what he had to do. He had to try. He ran over to the mast and jumped. He set his feet against the wooden pillar and began to run up its height. As he drew near to the horizontal frame, he jumped and squeezed the sail between his fingers. He dropped down and landed on the frame, then ran straight for Will. The instant he reached him, without breaking pace, he looped his arm around his back and under his arm. Then, he jumped, carrying Will a great distance away from the destroyed ship.

They hit the water and went under, but fortunately, they were out of the Kraken’s reach. After swimming frantically for a few seconds, they swam up and broke the surface. They saw a piece of flotsam floating nearby and swam over to it, then grabbed onto it. They took a minute to catch their breath and process the ordeal.

“You okay?” Riku asked, panting.

Will shrugged as best as he could. “Been better,” he replied flatly.

Riku nodded. “Same.”

They saw a pair of shadows in the water drawing near them. Will tensed up, but Riku remained calm. A small purple tentacle broke the water’s surface, causing Riku to breathe a sigh of relief. An orange shell appeared, followed by Goofy’s head attached. Donald stuck the top half of his body out of the water and grabbed onto the flotsam.

“What on Earth?!” Will gasped, surprised to see Donald and Goofy in these forms.

Riku chuckled. “Should’ve figured,” he said. “Goofy’s handled worse, and try as you might, you can’t get rid of Donald so easily.”

Donald glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Goofy shushed them. “Look! It’s the _Flying Dutchman_!” he warned them. The group turned and saw that the cursed ship was indeed close by. Hovering just off from the deck, muscular Heartless dressed in blue clothes with blue and white striped bandannas and purple glider wings sprouting from their backs flew around. They saw some surviving crewmen treading water nearby before being pulled up by the Air Pirates, which had swooped down to grab them.

Goofy heard a splash near him. He looked back at the flotsam and noticed someone was missing. “Uh, Riku?”

“Wak!” Donald pointed in the direction of the ship, alerting Will and Goofy to Riku swimming toward the _Dutchman_. They watched Riku grab onto the side of the ship and begin climbing.

“After him!” Will said. He let go of the piece of wood and swam over to the ship. Goofy followed, changing back to normal the instant he launched himself out of the water. Donald sighed and reluctantly went after them.

They scaled the side of the cursed vessel and reached the deck, peering through the railing to get a good look at what was going on. The _Dutchman’s_ crewmen held the survivors of the wreck prisoner as Davy Jones studied them individually. Chills went down Riku’s spine, as the mutated captain was even more monstrous than he ever imagined. Will’s expression made it clear that he had no desire to lay his eyes upon the terrible figure again.

The boatswain, Maccus, a muscular figure with a head contorted into that of a hammerhead shark, glared up at the Air Pirates for a moment. He turned his attention to the captive sailors, then turned to address Jones.

“The boy’s not here,” he reported. “He must’ve been claimed by the sea.”

Davy Jones scowled. “ _I_ am the sea,” he scoffed. He marched over to Bootstrap, who was still being restrained even though he had stopped resisting. “You need time alone with your thoughts,” he said matter-of-factly, his tone lacking any genuine sympathy.

Goofy studied Bootstrap’s heartbroken expression and felt sorry for him. The man had only just gotten reacquainted with his son and he now believed him to be dead.

“What of the survivors?” Maccus asked.

“There are no survivors,” Jones replied. Riku tensed up, sensing the need for an immediate rescue, but there was no time to do anything. The cursed crewmen drew hatchets and raised them above the heads of the captive sailors who apparently were not meant to have survived the wreck.

Donald and Goofy turned away and lowered themselves down, not willing to bear the sight, whereas Riku and Will could only look on in horror. They quickly ducked out of sight as Jones turned around.

Jones turned and marched off. “The chest is no longer safe,” he announced. “Chart a course for Isla Cruces. Get me there first, or there’ll be the devil to pay.”

“First?” an accompanying crewman asked.

“Who sent that thieving charlatan onto my ship? Who told him of the key?” he asked rhetorically. “Jack Sparrow,” he spat.

As the mutated crew set to work, Riku, Will, Donald, and Goofy climbed along the barnacle-laced hull until they found a section at the prow resembling an elongated jaw full of sharp teeth. They climbed into that opening and decided it was a good place to stand and rest.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Will told Riku sympathetically.

Riku nodded, appreciating the gesture. “What is he?” he asked. “What kind of monster kills so many innocent people for just one man? And those men on the deck… he had them killed just because he could…”

Donald shook his head. “I don’t know, Riku. I don’t know…” he muttered.

Will decided to try to get their minds off of what had just happened, and he figured that a good way of doing that would be to address a task that they could complete. “They’ll be sailing for Isla Cruces. That must be where the chest is buried,” he said. “Let’s hitch a ride until we get there. With luck, Jack will already be there, and maybe Sora will be with him too, and we can put an end to this.”

Riku nodded, his hand clenched into a fist, and turned to stare at the horizon, waiting for the island to come into view.

* * *

Kairi found Elizabeth sitting on the stairs to the right of the door to the captain’s quarters, staring off into the distance sadly. Kairi frowned, recalling her recounted circumstances, and decided that she could use a shoulder to lean on. She walked up and sat down next to her.

“You doing okay?” she asked sympathetically.

“I just thought I’d be married by now,” Elizabeth replied solemnly. “I’m so ready to be married.”

“Chin up. Sure, things haven’t been smooth sailing. But we’ll save Will, and you two can get married as soon as you like,” Kairi asserted encouragingly.

Jack Sparrow heard the conversation and sauntered up to them. “You know, Lizzy, I am captain of a ship,” he said. “And, being captain of a ship, I could in fact perform a marriage. Right here.” He started to lean closer. Kairi raised an eyebrow. “Right on this deck. Right… _now_.”

Elizabeth recoiled from his breath. Kairi stood up and took a step away, crossing her arms as she turned to glare at Jack. “No thank you,” Elizabeth retorted. She stood up and started to walk away.

“Why not? We are very much alike, you and I,” Jack claimed.

“Oh, except for a sense of honor, and decency, and-and a moral center,” Elizabeth shot back. “And personal hygiene.”

Jack sniffed his armpit and shrugged. He strutted quickly until he was in front of her again. “Trifles. You will come over to my side. I know it,” he said with a smile.

Kairi, meanwhile, was starting to regret declining Lulu’s offer to let her take her mace while she was packing for the journey.

Elizabeth matched his gaze, as if daring him. “You seem very certain,” she said.

“One word, love: curiosity,” Jack replied. “You long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on selfish impulse. You want to see what it’s like. One day you won’t be able to resist.”

“Why doesn’t your compass work?” Elizabeth asked.

Jack recoiled, offended. “Oh, my compass works fine.”

“Because you and I _are_ alike,” she shot back, turning his speech back onto him, “and there will come a moment when you have a chance to show it. To do the right thing.”

“I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.”

“You’ll have the chance to do something… something courageous. And when you do, you’ll discover something: that you’re a good man.”

“All evidence to the contrary.”

Elizabeth let out a soft laugh. “I have faith in you. Want to know why?”

“Do tell me, dearie.”

Elizabeth turned so that this time she was drawing close to his face. “Curiosity. You’re going to want it. A chance to be admired. And gain the rewards that follow. You won’t be able to resist. You’re going to want to know what it tastes like.”

Jack leaned closer. “I do want to know what it tastes like,” he said, caressing her face.

“But, seeing as you’re a good man, I know you will never put me in a position that would compromise my honor,” Elizabeth teased. She waited for him to make his move, testing him.

Jack leaned in to kiss her, but noticed something on his left hand. He leaned back slightly to get a better view of it. To his horror, a gnarly black scar formed on his palm.

_The Black Spot,_ he thought. _The hunt is back on…_

He closed his hand to hide the Black Spot, which marked him as prey for the Kraken, and leaned back, working to conceal his horrified expression.

Elizabeth noticed that he was backing away, and smiled, not noticing his fear. “I’m proud of you, Jack,” she said.

“Land ho!” Gibbs shouted. Elizabeth walked away, getting ready to get to work.

Kairi noticed the terror plastered on Jack’s face. She walked up to him, accompanied by Mickey, concerned for him.

“What’s wrong, Captain?” Mickey asked.

“I want my jar of dirt,” Jack said before dashing off.

Mickey and Kairi traded confused looks. Jar of dirt?

The crew readied longboats, which Jack, Elizabeth, Sora, Kairi, Mickey, Norrington, Pintel, and Ragetti piled into, and which the rest of the crew lowered into the water. With the _Pearl_ waiting in the shallows, the landing party rowed off to reach the beach.


	66. Chapter 65: Isla Cruces

Aboard the _Flying Dutchman_ , Davy Jones spied the longboats hitting the beach through his telescope. He lowered the telescope and handed it off to a crewman next to him.

“They’re here,” he announced, “and I cannot set foot on land again for near of a decade.

“Do you trust us to act in your stead?” Maccus asked.

“I’ll trust you to know what awaits you should you fail!” Jones spat back angrily. “Down, then!”

The monstrous sailors surrounding him relayed the message. The ship pitched forward and lowered bow-first into the water.

Riku cursed as he saw the water approaching fast. His obscenity was drowned out by Donald shouting “Oxyale”. As the _Dutchman_ submerged beneath the waves, Riku, Will, and the transformed Donald and Goofy swam out of the maw structure and away from the ship.

* * *

Pintel and Ragetti, who had agreed to remain behind to guard the longboats, stared in shock as they witnessed the _Flying Dutchman_ disappear under the water. After a moment of bewilderment, they clambered up and ran to warn the others that the _Dutchman_ had arrived.

* * *

Mickey and Norrington carried shovels as the party walked across the beach. The occasional Pirate and Emerald Blues appeared to try to attack them, but they were quickly vanquished. Elizabeth held the compass and led the group in the direction it pointed. After crossing a certain point, the needle suddenly turned backwards. Confused, she turned around and walked in the other direction, only for the needle to point the opposite way again.

“This doesn’t work,” she said, annoyed. “And it certainly doesn’t show you what you want most.” She dropped the compass into the sand and sat on the ground in a huff.

Sora crossed his arms, confused. “It’s buried, right? What would happen if you hold the compass vertically?” he asked, curious as to how the compass worked.

Mickey frowned and regarded the compass, taking care not to touch it and throw it off. Jack did the same, and they both noticed that the needle was pointing directly at Elizabeth.

“Yes it does,” Jack said, arguing against Elizabeth’s complaint. “You’re sitting on it!”

“Beg your pardon?” Elizabeth asked.

“Move,” Jack ordered, waving his hands. Elizabeth stood up and stepped away. Mickey and Norrington took their shovels and began to scoop sand from the spot where Elizabeth had been sitting. Jack sat down nearby and waited patiently for the act to yield results.

Jack’s eyes shot open when they all heard Norrington’s shovel striking metal. The group dove in and brushed the sand away, revealing a black iron surface. Sora and Jack reached around and found a handle on either side. They closed their hands around the handles and hoisted the object out of the hole, revealing a large chest, then dropped it onto the ground near the others.

Sora summoned his Keyblade. He swung it around with a flourish and threw it slightly, letting it spin in the air before catching it again, then brought the rounded side down on the box’s lid, shouting “Okay!” A thin white light illuminated from the slit where the box would be opened, and the lid tilted backward on a hinge.

The first things they saw when the chest had opened were a pearl necklace, some old documents, and other miscellaneous items. Kairi took one of the documents and examined it curiously. She recognized it as a love letter and squinted to read the name of the addressee.

“Who’s Calypso?” she asked. This prompted a raised eyebrow from Jack and a bemused look of contemplation from Mickey, but no one else had the slightest recognition of the name.

Sora and Jack pushed the extra items aside and found a smaller chest hidden within. They lifted it up and put it down a short distance away. They all leaned in close until they could hear a distinct _thump-thump_ of a regular, relaxed heartbeat.

“It’s real!” Elizabeth exclaimed, amazed.

“You actually were telling the truth,” Norrington conceded, impressed.

“I do that quite a lot, yet people are always surprised,” Jack admitted.

It was then that they heard a familiar voice (well, familiar to all save for Kairi and Mickey) call out from a distance. “With good reason!”

They all turned around to see Will Turner marching across the sand, accompanied by Riku, Donald and Goofy.

“Will!” Elizabeth shouted in delight. She ran up to him and embraced him. “You’re alright! I came to find you!”

The star-crossed lovers kissed. It warmed Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Goofy’s hearts to see them together, particularly Sora and Goofy, who had already gotten to know them both previously.

Sora, Kairi and Mickey met up with Riku, Donald and Goofy. “Where’d you guys end up?” Sora asked.

“An island populated by a tribe of cannibals,” Riku answered. Sora and Kairi grimaced. “Fortunately, we were able to hold off on danger after saving them from some Heartless before we were picked up by a trading ship.”

Jack chuckled. “Would you believe those Pelegostos thought I was a god in human form and made me their chief?” he asked mirthfully. His grin quickly faded as he recalled the events that had transpired on that island. “Then they tried to cook me for dinner.”

Kairi stuck her tongue out in disgust. “So glad I wasn’t there,” she remarked. She turned back to Riku. “We got into a bar fight.”

Will broke off from kissing Elizabeth and turned to look at Jack. “I owe you thanks, Jack,” he said sincerely.

“You do?” the captain asked, surprised.

“After you tricked me onto that ship to square your debt with Jones…”

“What?!” Elizabeth gasped.

“What?” Jack asked, doing a poor job of feigning ignorance in front of the others. Norrington snickered.

“…I was reunited with my father,” Will finished.

“Oh! Well, you’re welcome, then,” Jack replied.

Elizabeth turned to face Jack, her mouth agape in shock. “Everything you said to me, every word, was a lie!” she accused.

“What?!” Sora blurted in mock surprise, putting his hands on his cheeks and affecting a slack-jawed stare. “What a twist! I can’t believe I never saw that coming!”

“Pretty much,” Jack admitted. “Time and tide, love.”

Will approached the Dead Man’s Chest, taking a unique iron key, which had two shafts attached to the same head with teeth on either side, from of his pocket as he did so. He stopped mid-stride, realizing that Sora was with them. He looked down at the key and grinned in amusement.

“Yeah, that job Jack gave you must be getting more redundant by the minute,” Riku quipped. He shrugged. “But, since you went to all that trouble, you might as well do the honors.”

Will nodded toward him, then completed his march to the chest and crouched down to one knee. “Now, to kill Jones,” he resolved.

Jack drew his sword and held it so that the tip was pointed at Will’s neck. “Can’t let you do that, William,” he said. “’Cause if Jones is dead, who’s to call his terrible beastie off the hunt?” Will sighed, apparently conceding, and stood up. Jack held his free hand out. “Now, if you please, the key.”

Will suddenly took Elizabeth’s sword and pointed it at Jack, much to the woman’s surprise. “I keep the promises I make, Jack. I intend to free my father. I hope you’re here to see it.”

Norrington drew his own sword and pointed it at Will’s neck as well. “I can’t let you do that either. So sorry,” he said. Sora and Riku tensed up, ready to intervene, though Riku could only wonder who this man was.

Jack smiled at him. “I knew you’d warm up to me eventually.”

Norrington rolled his eyes and turned his sword toward Jack, catching him by surprise. Will turned his sword at Norrington and Jack uncertainly pointed his sword back toward Will. “From what I have been able to ascertain, Lord Beckett desires the contents of that chest. I deliver it, and I get my life back,” he asserted.

Riku glared at him. “The dark side of ambition, I see,” he said in a deadpan tone, recognizing his motives all too well.

“I prefer to see it as the promise of redemption,” Norrington clarified. He swung his sword at Will, who parried the blow. Jack desperately thrust his sword in to get an edge, and the three started clashing swords together. Will ducked under Jack and Norrington’s blades and made a break for it. The others pursued him.

“Stop it!” Elizabeth yelled, but to no avail. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy could only watch as the fighting continued, trying to process what was going on.

Norrington went after Will, but the younger blacksmith pushed him to the ground. Jack grabbed the key out of Will’s hand and ran away. Norrington ran after him, but then noticed that Will was behind him and swung at him. Will ducked, but Norrington kicked him in the stomach, knocking him down.

“Will!” Elizabeth called, running to see if he was alright.

“Guard the chest!” Will ordered, before picking himself up and giving chase again.

Elizabeth could not believe how childish he was acting. “No!” she shouted defiantly. As she watched the three men fight over the key, she groaned, stood up, and walked over to join the others who had abstained from the ludicrous battle.

“This is barbaric!” she complained. “This is no way for grown men to settle…” She threw her hands up in exasperation, shooting a glare at Jack, Will and Norrington. She ran out into the open and continued shouting her gripes.

Sora shrugged and turned to Riku, a thought coming to mind. “So, how did you guys get here, anyway?” he asked.

“We hitched a ride on the _Flying Dutchman_ ,” Riku answered. Sora, Kairi and Mickey’s eyes widened. “Yeah, we should probably get ready for a fight.”

Donald nodded. “Right. We need to hold down the fort until those nincompoops finish with their slap-fight,” he asserted.

As the sword fight continued and the sensible heroes set up their defense, Pintel and Ragetti ran up along the beach, meaning to warn everyone about the arrival of the _Flying Dutchman_. However, they stopped and noticed the silly squabble, with Elizabeth throwing rock-shaped tantrums in the foreground, which flew about as far as they would have when she was six.

“How’d this go all screwy?” Pintel asked, utterly baffled.

“Well, each wants the chest for hisself, don’t 'e?” Ragetti guessed. “Mister Norrington, I think he’s tryna regain a bit of honor. Old Jack’s lookin' to trade it, save his own skin. And Turner there, I figure he’s tryna settle some unresolved business 'twist him and his twice-cursed pirate father.”

“Sad,” Pintel lamented. Even he could tell how silly the situation had become. Then, an idea came to his head. “That chest must be worth more than a shiny penny.”

“Oh! Tsk-tsk-tsk. Terrible temptation,” Ragetti agreed.

“If we were any kind of ‘decent’, we’d remove the temptation from their path.”

The two scoundrels giggled and ran over to the chest. Each grabbing a handle, they lifted it up and began running up the beach, heading into a wooded area rife with trees and shrubbery.

Elizabeth sat down and crossed her arms and legs, pouting irritably. She heard Pintel and Ragetti run by with the chest and turned to see what was going on. She stood back up and ran after them.

Mickey watched this occur. “We should keep an eye on them,” he suggested. He ran off after them, followed by Kairi and Donald. Sora, Riku and Goofy remained, waiting for their enemies to arrive.

An Air Pirate and two Heartless resembling small blue cannons materialized to keep them busy. One of the Cannon Guns leaned forward and fired a projectile at Goofy, but the knight blocked it. The force of the blow pushed him back a few feet in the sand, but he remained standing. Sora swung his Keyblade at the Air Pirate, but it soared over his head. It turned around and flew right at him, its feet pointing in his direction. Sora failed to recover in time and was kicked across the sand. Riku hit one of the Cannon Guns, destroying it in a combo, and Goofy defeated the other one with several hits. Sora retaliated against the Air Pirate, dealing a combo that sent it flying. Riku went after it, but the burly flier punched him in the chest, knocking him down. It hovered in the air, preparing to deliver a flying punch at Sora, but Goofy threw his shield, hitting it in the wing and throwing its balance off. Before it could regain its bearings, it was hit in the face with a Blizzara spell, slammed into the ground with a Gravira spell, and then carved through with a Sonic Blade thrust.

In the meantime, the swordfight continued. Jack and Norrington tripped over each other and fell to the ground, giving Will an opening to retake the key and run. They clashed swords in circles. Jack ducked and sliced at Will’s leg, stunning him long enough to steal the key again. Will parried a few blows from Norrington before running after Jack, but Norrington grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him to the ground, then kicked sand into his face for good measure.

“By your leave, Mister Turner,” Norrington taunted with a mock bow before running through the shrubbery and pursuing Jack to an old abandoned church with a defunct waterwheel. Will quickly regained his footing and followed after them.

* * *

Returning to sanity and seriousness, Sora, Riku and Goofy watched as the coral- and barnacle-covered crew of the _Flying Dutchman_ marched out from under the surf and up the beach. One of the cursed sailors growled when he took notice of the beach’s defenders and drew his sword, prompting the others to do the same.

“Here’s hoping that there’s no gimmick like needing to fight only under the light of a full moon,” Sora griped. Goofy groaned, remembering their struggles with the skeleton pirates that had served under Barbossa.

The crewmen charged. Sora, Riku and Goofy stood their ground. The first few swung their swords and whatever weapons they had on hand at their foes, but the heroes expertly parried each blow and retaliated swiftly. Recalling how magic affected the skeletal pirates and how lightning reacted to the Turquoise March, Sora beckoned for Riku and Goofy to step back. Once they were far enough away from the attackers, Sora cast Thundaga. The electricity struck all of the mutant sailors, sending some of them into a shock, but the rest shook the pain off and continued charging.

A green-skinned man with a conch shell on his head noticed the hole that had been dug up and saw the footprints leading up to the trees. “Forget this lot! Find the chest!” he barked. He broke off from the group and ran up the beach.

“You heard Hadras!” another crewman shouted. As an effect, most of the mutant sailors separated from the fight to charge up the beach. Enough of them remained, however, to keep Sora, Riku and Goofy occupied.

Sora, Riku and Goofy proved to be more than a match for their enemies, who largely lacked the combat experience necessary to go up against regular pirates and soldiers, let alone Keyblade wielders and a shield-bearing knight. Sora cast Stopga on one of them and delivered an Ars Arcanum onslaught, then moved onto the next guy while he waited for the spell to wear off and the damage to pile onto him all at once. Riku sliced his opponent’s stomach open, not expecting it to cut so easily, and gagged as dozens of fish poured out. The opponent blurted a complaint and turned his attention away from the fight so that he could collect the fish back up. Riku took a step back, seeing no need to continue fighting this man while also withholding the urge to puke his guts out. Goofy blocked a punch from his opponent with his shield, wincing as he heard a sickening crunch from the guy’s wrist, then pushed him into his compatriots.

With those foes defeated, Sora, Riku and Goofy turned and looked in the direction that the others had gone. “Come on!” Riku said sharply. Sora and Goofy nodded, and the three of them charged up the beach to join the fight further up.

* * *

Elizabeth continued her chase of Pintel and Ragetti through the trees. Since they were weighed down by the chest, she was able to gain ground. She ran around some trees until she had gone past them, then jumped in front of them, blocking their path.

Pintel and Ragetti dropped the chest and drew their swords. Elizabeth reached for hers only to remember that it was not in its scabbard. Her confident smirk faded, then turned into a nervous smile.

“’Ello, Poppet,” Pintel greeted maliciously.

Mickey, Donald and Kairi stepped out from behind some trees and surrounded the scoundrels, raising their weapons at them. Pintel and Ragetti’s grins faded.

They heard a rumbling noise and turned to locate the source. They watched an old waterwheel roll across their view. Will and Norrington stood on top, clashing swords and adjusting their footing so that they remained on top. Jack followed behind on foot. Kairi and Donald tilted their heads in bemusement. Just what in the world had those three gotten themselves into?

Pintel shrugged. All present turned their attention back to the confrontation at hand. Ragetti was quick to notice that he and Pintel were sorely outnumbered and outmatched, though he also realized that Mickey, Kairi, and the funny-looking short one seemed to only be positioned in defense of Elizabeth. He reasoned that the best option would to avoid threatening anyone and simply try to find a way out of conflict.

Before any resolution could come to the confrontation, however, an ax flew by and embedded itself in a tree. Everyone turned around and saw Jones’ crew charging through the shrubbery and barreling toward them, screaming angrily. Mickey, Donald and Kairi took up defensive positions while Pintel and Ragetti turned and ran, passing their swords off to Elizabeth and grabbing the chest. After looking back and forth from the swords to the mob in shock and confusion, Elizabeth turned and ran as well. Mickey, Donald and Kairi traded glances, shrugged, then followed their example.

As they ran, a tree appeared directly in their path, and the two scoundrels did not have time to consider maneuvering around it to compensate for the chest and proceeded to run past it, dropping the chest when it hit the tree. They, Elizabeth, Mickey, Donald, and Kairi stopped when they realized that the chest had fallen. The mutant crewmen ignored the chest and charged at them, and an inevitable fight broke out. This time, the heroes did not hold their own as deftly as Sora, Riku and Goofy had; Mickey was the only powerhouse, Donald had to keep a distance so that he could use his magic without getting lopped to pieces, Kairi resorted to dodging brute strikes and delivering quick blows in an unsuccessful effort to disable the attackers, and Elizabeth, Pintel and Ragetti had to trade two swords between the three of them in order to fend for themselves. Sorely overwhelmed, they deemed that the best course of action was to make their way back to the beach while fighting off the onslaught.

Only one crew member avoided the battle and remembered his goal. Hadras found the chest, picked it up, and started to run off with it.

In the meantime, Jack had managed to take the key for himself and hopped off of the waterwheel, leaving it to roll through the landscape with Will and Norrington still trading blows inside. As he sheathed his sword, he saw Hadras running off with the chest. He looked down and saw a coconut on the ground. He picked it up and threw it at the crewman, knocking him down. The chest fell out of Hadras’ grip and his head rolled across the ground, spitting out complaints. The head shouted orders, giving directions for his body to follow, but the still-moving body walked around aimlessly, unable to locate the head or, of course, hear its instructions.

Jack crouched down in front of the chest and put the key into the two keyholes in the center, then turned. The mechanisms spun and block-shaped knobs shot out around the base of the lid. He opened the lid and peered inside. However, he frowned when what he saw did not at all match what he had expected: the chest was empty!

“Ahem!” Jack turned around to find where the voice had come from. Sora stood over him with his arms crossed, flanked by Riku and Goofy. Sora and Riku were glaring at him disapprovingly.

“You morons do remember that there are four Keyblades between us, right?” Sora asked rhetorically in a deadpan tone.

Jack’s gaze shifted from side to side, betraying his embarrassment. He made eye contact with Sora and held his hand out. “So, what’d you do with it?” he asked.

Sora reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather pouch that was slightly larger than a fist. The leather rippled, indicating that the beating heart of Davy Jones was inside.

“To be honest, we think you have the best idea,” Sora admitted. “But don’t you think we can take Davy Jones and his crew? And Donald, Goofy and I can probably beat that Kraken head-on.”

Jack shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on it, mate.”

“No you can’t,” Riku agreed sternly. Goofy shook his head, agreeing with Riku’s assessment.

“So while we’re at it, it might be better if that were in my hands,” Jack suggested, gesturing for Sora to give him the pouch. Sora shrugged and complied. Jack stuffed the pouch into his jacket.

They heard a commotion and realized that the cursed crew was charging back. Jack quickly closed the lid down and ran. Sora, Riku and Goofy followed.

Mickey, Kairi and Elizabeth fought back any fiend that drew too close. Elizabeth, who was now in possession of both swords once again, blocked an ax with both weapons and kicked the attacker to the ground. She quickly turned around and positioned the swords so that they were pointing backward under her arms. Two crewmen charged after her and found themselves impaled. She pulled the blades out and let them fall. Kairi slashed at one sailor’s leg and cast Blizzard at the wound. The sailor screamed in pain, and Mickey pushed him, sending him tumbling into the mob. Pintel and Ragetti grabbed the chest and continued to run off with it.

Jack, Sora, Riku, and Goofy bolted back to the beach. Jack made a beeline for his longboat and searched it for something. The only clue that he gave the others as he searched was a muttered “Jar of dirt,” which only left them confused. A moment later, he found what he was looking for. He popped the lid off of the jar and poured some dirt out. He took the pouch out of his jacket and stuffed it into the jar, then put some dirt back in to cover it.

A crew member charged at Jack, screaming, ready to bring his sword down on him, but Jack dodged to the right. He grabbed an oar and held off the crew member’s attacks until Sora and Riku joined the fight, overwhelming the attacker and knocking him down. Sora cast Graviga, causing the crew member to sink halfway into the sand.

Goofy turned and saw that Mickey, Kairi, Donald, Elizabeth, Pintel, and Ragetti were also making their way back to the beach, with the sailors in hot pursuit. The fight spilled out to where the sand met the surf. It became apparent that whatever injuries had been sustained did nothing to put the crewmen down for good or even for long. Pintel and Ragetti ran off with the chest, leaving Elizabeth, Mickey, Kairi, and Donald to face the increasingly-temperamental mob.

As the good guys were about to be overwhelmed, the waterwheel came barreling down the beach and ran over almost all of the crewmen, much to everyone else’s bewilderment. Will and Norrington were still inside, but now they could only hold on for dear life. Everyone watched in bewilderment as the wheel rolled through the water until it finally stopped and fell over on its side. Donald took a moment to remember that one of the crewmen was still standing next to them and cast Zero Gravira to lift him into the air where he could not try to attack them.

Kairi realized that her muscles were aching and that she had a bruise on her left arm. She also noticed that Mickey’s ear was bent slightly, Donald had a few feathers ruffled, and Elizabeth had cuts on her hands and face. She raised her Keyblade and shouted “Heal!” A shower of green light dust fell over them and all injuries were repaired.

Will and Norrington climbed out of the wheel. Will slumped over the side, exhausted, but Norrington made a break for the longboat. He ran past Sora, Riku, Jack, and Goofy, who had gotten into a fight with more of Jones’ crew. As he leaned over the side of the longboat, panting heavily, he noticed the jar filled with dirt. He remembered Jack being meticulous about stocking the jar in the longboat, not that he understood why, but he was quite certain that it did not get spilled on the way to the island. And the lid was still secured…

Will saw Pintel and Ragetti put the chest in their longboat and confronted them. The scoundrels reached for their swords only to realize that they were gone once again. They chuckled and dodged aside. Will looked at the chest and realized that the key was still in it. He reached over to turn it, his other hand reaching for his dagger, when he felt something hit him from behind and lost consciousness.

Jack dropped his oar into the longboat and shoved Will inside, making sure nobody noticed what he had done.

The party finally had a chance to reunite at the longboats, giving them an opportunity to assess their situation.

“We’re not getting out of this,” Elizabeth observed.

“If we even get the chance to set off, they’ll just come after us and capsize us,” Mickey agreed, worried.

“We won’t make it with the chest,” Norrington advised. “Into the boats.”

“What?” Sora asked. However, after a stern glare from Norrington, they all piled into the boats.

Norrington grabbed the chest. “Don’t wait for me,” he ordered before he turned and ran.

“I say we respect his final wish,” Jack said. Pintel nodded in agreement.

“Whoa! Hold it! I won’t let anyone get left behind!” Sora protested.

“Suit yourself then, mate,” Jack said sarcastically.

“I’m sorry, Sora, but I’m afraid we don’t have a choice,” Riku retorted.

Sora held one last stare as he watched the _Dutchman’s_ crew chase Norrington back into the jungle. He sighed and turned his gaze away. Resignedly, he pushed the longboat, now cramped by the added presence of Riku and Donald, out to sea, then climbed in and helped Mickey row back to the _Black Pearl_.

* * *

Norrington ran through the trees but stopped when he found himself confronted by Hadras, who held his still-dislodged head under his arm.

“Your bravery is wasted,” the head taunted. “I shall pry that chest from your cold dead hands!”

Norrington looked around, noticing that he was surrounded. He wagged his head to the side, conceding that he was outmatched, and shoved the chest into Hadras’ chest, causing the crewman to drop his head and catch the chest with both arms. “Here you go,” he said. He bolted before the crew members had time to realize what had happened.

The crew members cheered, seeing that the chest was in their possession again. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the key was in the keyhole and ignored how easily their enemies had given up the object of their hunt. They marched off to return to the _Flying Dutchman_ , victorious, forgetting about Hadras’ head which laid on the ground, shouting pleas for assistance. Eventually, the head sighed and turned around in its shell. The head and legs of a hermit crab crawled out of the back of the head and began scurrying after its body and companions. Hopefully, it could catch up before they went into the water.

While both crews returned to their respective ships, Norrington ran through the jungle, satisfied that he had gotten what he had wanted, with no one the wiser. All he needed now was an appointment with Lord Beckett, and his honor will be restored.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all heard the criticisms that this movie had. Honestly, on rewatching it for these chapters, I didn't think it was too bad, albeit overly reliant on slapstick in certain parts, such as the cannibal island scene. However, there is nothing that I can say or think that can forgive the stupidity that permeates through the entire Isla Cruces scene. So, rather than copy it straight, I left the main party to serve as a surrogate for my opinion on the matter, and relegated most of the three-way fight to the background


	67. Chapter 66: The Kraken

Aboard the _Black Pearl_ , the party explained what had occurred on Isla Cruces to the rest of the crew, and everyone began to set sail. Elizabeth, Kairi and Donald knelt by Will, waiting for him to regain consciousness. Sora leaned against the railing on the back of the ship, staring regretfully at the fated island. Riku joined him, as did Mickey, who pulled himself up so that he was also leaning over the railing. They could tell what Sora was thinking.

“Gosh, I really wish we coulda done something about Mr. Norrington,” Mickey lamented.

Riku nodded. “But there wasn’t anything we could have done,” he said shamefully. “We couldn’t have lasted out there against all of those mutant unkillable fish people.”

Sora sighed. “I know. It’s just, I don’t want to see people die on my watch. In the last few days, I was helpless as I watched two friends die right in front of me. Now, even though I never really got to know Norrington, and I didn’t really like him much, I just couldn’t bear to watch him go off to die for our sake.”

“But Eugene and Adam came back,” Riku reminded him.

“By a miracle that none of us could control,” Sora shot back. “What happens when we run out of miracles? What happens when there aren’t any lucky breaks?” He sighed. “How can I be called a hero if I can’t keep the people close to me from dying?”

Mickey’s face fell. “And it all turned out to be for nothing, anyway,” he lamented.

“Huh?” Sora wondered what he meant.

“We went to all that trouble to get Jones’ heart, and we failed,” the mouse elaborated. “Now what’s going to happen?”

Sora raised his eyebrow as he realized that there was still a glimmer of hope. “Mickey, we didn’t fail.” Mickey turned to look at him in confusion. “We got the heart out of the chest. Jack put it in a jar of dirt for safekeeping.”

Mickey chuckled as he realized that they might just win this fight yet. Sora laughed along, but Riku was deep in thought. “Hold on, guys,” he interrupted. “Norrington wasn’t with us when we opened the chest, or when we gave the heart to Jack. Does anyone else find it weird how quickly he decided to abandon the chest?”

In the meantime, Will woke up. Elizabeth helped him into a sitting position. Seeing him hold the back of his head, which still hurt from when he was knocked out, Donald cast Cure, easing the pain. Will looked around to find that he was back on the _Black Pearl_.

“Where’s the chest?” Will asked.

“Norrington took it to draw them off,” Elizabeth explained.

“At least we got away safely,” Donald said, looking on the bright side.

They heard an enormous splash. Everyone got up and looked over the side to find the _Flying Dutchman_ right beside the _Pearl_.

“Really, Donald?” Kairi asked in exasperation. Donald shrugged in embarrassment.

Davy Jones, flanked by the majority of his monstrous crew, glared at Jack. Jack seemed unperturbed. “I’ll handle this, mate,” he said confidently to Gibbs. “Hey! Fishface! Lose something?” he taunted, flaunting the jar of dirt. He marched across the deck, his eyes locked on Jones, a mischievous smile on his face. “Come to negotiate, eh, have you, you slimy git?”

Riku sniffed the air, realizing that while he smelled something fishy (figuratively and literally) from across the water, he smelled nothing out of the ordinary from Jack’s direction. He gave Sora a worried look, letting him know that something was not right.

Jack continued his taunt. “Look what I got! I got a jar of dirt! I got a jar of dirt! And guess what’s inside it!” he yelled, to the utter confusion of everyone on board, even those who were aware that he was in possession of a jar of dirt for more than a few hours. The _Dutchman’s_ crew was similarly perplexed. A few of them silently wondered if Jack was taking a jab at how Davy Jones could only set foot on land for one day every ten years, but others saw it only as mindless teasing.

“Enough!” Jones barked back at his crew. As if acting on their own, the cannon covers on the _Dutchman_ , which resembled sullen faces, slid down and cannons stuck out.

Realizing that he probably should have gotten to the point rather than dawdle on silly buildup, Jack muttered an order. “Hard to starboard!”

“Hard to starboard!” Sora relayed the message. He, Riku and Mickey summoned their Keyblades. Things were about to heat up.

“Brace up the foreyard!” Will added. Gibbs took the wheel from Cotton and spun it hard to the left. The _Pearl_ banked right setting to sail away from the _Dutchman_.

“Hard to starboard! Send his beloved _Pearl_ back to the depths!” Jones ordered. “Fire!”

The cannons fired, blasting holes into the _Black Pearl’s_ hull. One cannonball carved through the captain’s cabin. The _Flying Dutchman_ turned and gave chase to the _Pearl_. The majority of the _Pearl’s_ crew dedicated their efforts to steering the ship away from the _Flying Dutchman_. However, they found their efforts impeded by the appearance of Heartless. Pirate, Air Pirate, and Cannon Gun enemies did everything in their power to disrupt the crew’s escape attempt. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Donald turned their attention to clearing the deck of the creatures of darkness. Mickey ran down below deck and used his magic to try to destroy the cannonballs in midair before they hit the ship.

“Let them taste the triple guns,” Jones commanded. At his word, a triple-barrel cannon stuck out of the front of the cursed ship and started firing at the _Pearl_ , doing quite a bit of damage. Mickey jumped into the air and cast Reflega, blocking and blasting a few shots away.

By the time the deck had been cleared of the Heartless, the _Black Pearl_ had gotten out of range of the _Flying Dutchman’s_ cannons. The cannonballs now fell harmlessly into the water.

“Ay! We’ve got her!” Gibbs cried triumphantly.

“We’re faster?” Goofy asked, surprised.

“Against the wind, the _Dutchman_ beats us. That’s how she takes her prey,” Gibbs explained. “But _with_ the wind…”

“We take away its advantage,” Donald finished, impressed.

“Ay,” Gibbs confirmed. Elizabeth smiled, realizing the victory. Will, however, continued to stare back at the ship on which his father had been enslaved.

* * *

One of the _Dutchman’s_ crew members saw that the cannonballs were falling far behind their quarry. “We’re out of range!” he announced.

“Break our pursuit!” Davy Jones ordered.

“We’re giving up?” Maccus asked. Jones simply shot him a knowing smirk. Maccus grinned, knowing full well what his captain intended.

Encouraged by a strong lashing, the cursed crew began turning the wheel and raising the hammer once again.

* * *

The crew of the _Black Pearl_ watched as the _Flying Dutchman_ fell behind. They noticed that the cannons ceased firing and the evil vessel had stopped moving.

“They’re giving up!” Marty cheered. The rest of the crew burst out in victorious celebration. Will walked up beside Jack, not satisfied with the outcome.

“My father is on that ship. If we can outrun her, we can take her. We should turn and fight!” he insisted.

Jack shot him a confident smile. “Why fight when you can negotiate? All one needs is the proper leverage,” he said, setting the jar of dirt onto the railing in front of the wheel.

Sora and Riku ran up beside Jack. “Captain, I think we need a change of plan,” Riku said in a concerned tone.

“How so?” Jack asked.

Before Riku could answer, the ship suddenly lurched roughly. Jack stumbled and dropped the jar over the railing. It hit the deck and shattered, spilling sand and glass shards everywhere. Jack looked down at it in shock, worried that the contents had been damaged. But after a second of staring, he noticed that something was wrong. He ran down the stairs and ran his hands through the spilled dirt, searching frantically for the heart. But it was nowhere to be found.

“Where is it? Where’s the thump-thump?” he asked worriedly.

“The thump-thump?” Will parroted in confusion.

“Jack put the heart in the jar,” Sora explained.

“Then where is it?” Jack asked, still terrified that he had lost his leverage against Jones.

“James…” Elizabeth whispered, having come upon the scene and realizing what was happening.

“What happened?” Goofy asked, picking himself and Donald up after the jarring lurch caused them to fall on their faces.

“We must’ve hit a reef,” one of the sailors from Tortuga guessed, peering over the railing.

Will’s eyes widened as he heard the sailor’s assumption. Riku tensed up while Donald’s jaw dropped, as they as well as Goofy understood what was going to happen. Those near the railing heard a low rumbling from beneath the waves.

“No. It’s not a reef. Get away from the rails!” Will warned, pulling Elizabeth away from the side.

“What is it?” Elizabeth asked.

“The Kraken. To arms!” Will called.

It quickly hit everyone just what sort of danger they were all in. Gibbs relayed orders. “All guns, defend the masts!”

“It’ll attack the starboard! We’ve seen it before! Run out the cannons and hold for my signal!” Will continued, drawing a sword.

The dozens of sailors complied, running around the ship and finding some way to assist. Donald, Goofy, Pintel, and Ragetti ran below deck and opened up the cannon covers, then pushed the cannons so that the barrels stuck out of the windows.

As they worked, enormous tentacles crawled up the hull of the ship, slowly wrapping their way up the side. Pintel and Ragetti gulped when they saw the suckers on one tentacle push their way around their cannon. Donald groaned fearfully.

Will dropped down from above to give orders. “Easy boys,” he advised.

The rest of the crew leveled spears at the tentacles, which proceeded to rise above the deck. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey held their Keyblades. Elizabeth looked down at Will, waiting for him to give the word as each second seemed to draw itself out.

“Steady! Steady. Hold… Hold…”

“I think we’ve held fire long enough,” Pintel complained. Donald nodded in agreement.

Finally, when the suspense seemed to reach its boiling point, Will gave the order. “Fire!”

Everyone below decks lit the fuses on the cannons, which promptly launched their projectiles at the tentacles directly in front of them. The tentacles were blasted back, recoiling in pain. A bloodcurdling shriek was audible each time a limb was struck. The tentacles, burning at the points of impact, curled up and retracted into the water. The crew cheered at the successful attack, for a moment thinking that it was over already.

However, Will, who watched the tentacles recede from over the railing, was less confident. “It’ll be back,” he warned. “We have to get off the ship.”

“There are no boats,” Elizabeth told him. She pointed to the remains of the longboats that had been wrecked by the cannon attack.

Sora approached them, followed by Riku, Donald and Goofy. “No need for that. We can go under and bring that thing down head-on,” he said confidently.

“No, we can’t!” Riku, Donald and Goofy argued, pretty clear about their perception of the odds of victory.

Will’s gaze fell on a barrel rolling across the deck. An idea came to his mind. “Pull the grates! Get all the gunpowder onto the net in the cargo hold!” he ordered. The crew immediately set to work. He grabbed a rifle and held it out to Elizabeth. “Whatever you do, don’t miss.”

Elizabeth nodded, understanding his plan. “As soon as you’re clear,” she replied. She took the rifle and marched off.

Will patted Sora and Riku on the shoulders. “You men, keep the crew safe. Don’t let us all go down to Davy Jones’ Locker.”

Sora nodded. “Aye-aye.” His Keyblade rematerialized in his hand. Donald and Goofy dropped back down into the cargo hold to help gather the gunpowder. A large grate in the middle of the deck was pulled away, offering a large opening into the hold.

The crew threw barrels into a large net which Will and Mickey set to work securing. However, they soon approached a conundrum.

“There’s only half a dozen kegs of powder!” Gibbs announced, realizing that there was not enough for what Will had planned.

“Then load the rum!” Will responded.

The pirates in the hold looked at them in surprise and confusion. Load the rum? Was he crazy?

Riku rolled his eyes. “Come on, men! You can drink when we’re safe! And you won’t need it when you’re dead!” he shouted down to them.

Hearing the advice, Gibbs turned back to the others. “Ay! The rum too!”

Groaning in annoyance, the crew did as they were told. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Elizabeth kept an eye out in case the Kraken came back.

“Wait a minute. Something’s not right,” Sora observed. He looked around a bit before he figured out what was wrong. “Where’s Jack?”

Elizabeth ran to the railing and peered across the water. She squinted her eyes when she saw something on the surface in the distance. Her stare turned into an angry glare as she realized that Jack was rowing away in a small boat.

“Oh, that coward!” she spat.

Sora’s face fell when he heard this. He glared out across the water in disappointment. “You old pirate,” he muttered.

“It’s coming back!” Kairi shouted. They all looked down and saw that the tentacles were rising back up around the ship. They stepped away from the railing. Sora regarded his Keyblade, thinking of something that he could do to fight this threat.

The tentacles stopped ascending and curled themselves so that they pointed at the ship. One-by-one, they crashed through the cannon windows, taking huge chunks out of the hull and destroying the cannons. Some tentacles wrapped themselves around crew members and pulled them out, while others crushed pillars.

Fortunately, the net had been loaded and secured by then. “Haul away!” Will shouted.

Gibbs turned to relay the message. “Heave! Heave like you’re being paid for it!” he ordered.

“Put your backs into it!” Marty added, standing on top of a horizontal wheel that other crew members turned, causing a winch to raise the net up through the layers of the ship and out through the deck. As this happened, the tentacles lashed around inside the ship, grabbing numerous crewmen and dragging them to their doom. Donald and Goofy did everything they could to save them, but their endeavors were fruitless. Only a few made it back up to the deck. All they could do was make sure the net and payload was not compromised while Will held onto it.

* * *

As this took place, Jack rowed away. He was heartbroken as he watched the beastie attack his beloved _Pearl_. He turned around and saw an endless ocean. Uncertainly, he pulled his compass out and popped it open. He raised an eyebrow as the tool which he used as a guide for heading finally settled on a direction.

He made his decision, and as he set about rowing, something appeared in the boat in front of him, piquing his fancy.

* * *

Chaos raged on the deck as the Kraken’s tentacles lashed around. Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey fought the appendages off as best they could. Sora tripped and fell down. As he started to pick himself up, he regarded the deck of the ship, then looked at his Keyblade curiously. An idea coming to mind, he grabbed the handle and picked himself up.

Holding the Keyblade up, he concentrated on a shape. As he concentrated, his hand began to glow with a blue-white light. The Keyblade’s handle guard expanded and wrapped around and under Sora, forming the hull of a boat. The handle expanded into a mast, complete with sails. The shaft exploded and reshaped itself into four cannons, which dropped onto the sides of the deck. A helicopter rotor appeared at the top of the mast and a steering wheel appeared in front of Sora. A battle-ready grin plastered on his face, Sora flew his mini-ship up and around the _Black Pearl_.

As he flew beside the full-size ship, Sora pointed to his left, causing the two cannons on the port side of his Keyblade-Pirate-Ship to fire explosive energy orbs at the tentacles. The limbs shook from the pain and dropped the crew members they had latched onto, including Goofy and Cotton. He sailed around to do the same to the other tentacles.

Just then, a large tentacle wrapped around the mast to which the large wheel mechanism was attached. Realizing what was about to happen, everyone ran clear just as the tentacle dropped down, smashing the wheel. The destruction of the mechanism caused the net to drop down a few feet. Despite the unexpected jolt, Will held on tight.

Will swung his sword around, shouting taunts and trying to get the Kraken’s attention. Riku watched this and wondered if the monster could actually hear him.

It apparently did, as a new tentacle launched up over the side and grabbed the net. Will lost his grip, but his foot became stuck. He pulled his dagger out and began sawing at the rope, working to cut himself free.

The tentacles continued to lash. Sora blasted them with his Ion Cannons, but for as many people as he was able to save, just as many were dragged away. He gritted his teeth and hoped Will’s plan worked. He could not wait to go down and finish the monster off while it was incapacitated.

Elizabeth raised her rifle and pointed it at the net. However, she hesitated, unwilling to let Will get caught in the blast.

“Shoot! Elizabeth, shoot!” Will yelled.

Elizabeth still hesitated, following the net’s movements as she aimed the gun. While she waited for him to get free, a small tentacle wrapped itself around her ankle and dragged her away, causing her to drop the rifle. She screamed as the tentacle dragged her into the cabin, until Ragetti chopped the tentacle off with an ax, saving her.

Kairi watched this transpire and turned to Mickey. “We need to cover Elizabeth,” she told him. He nodded in agreement.

Elizabeth ran to the gun, but another crew member picked it up, seeking to do the job quickly. However, a tentacle grabbed him and pulled him around, causing him to drop the gun onto the upper part of the deck. Sora blasted the tentacle with his cannon, causing it to drop the sailor, who avoided falling into the water by having his leg snared in the railing.

As Elizabeth made to run up the stairs, she stumbled as the ship lurched again and fell. A tentacle moved to grab her, but Kairi blasted it away with Aerora while Mickey shot it with Pearl. Elizabeth crawled up the stairs and grabbed the handle of the rifle, but someone stepped on it. She pulled violently and tried to push the foot off, but stopped when she saw whom the foot belonged to.

Elizabeth, as well as Kairi and Mickey, stared in awe as they realized that Captain Jack Sparrow had returned. He raised his weapon, eliciting a quick gasp from Elizabeth, and pointed it at the gunpowder barrels.

Will cut the rope until it snapped. His foot free, he dropped from the net and landed on the deck. More tentacles wrapped around the payload as a few barrels started to fall out.

Jack took aim and fired his weapon. It was a direct hit. One of the falling barrels exploded, igniting the other barrels right under the tentacles. Will braced himself as pieces of burning wood hit the deck, but none of them hit him. He looked up and saw that the tentacles were badly burnt, with sections around the center frame having been blasted off. They sank weakly back into the water.

After a moment of stunned silence, Marty raised an important question. “Did we kill it?”

Gibbs shook his head. “No. We just made it angry,” he answered. “We’re not out of this yet.”

Sora landed on the deck, his Keyblade taking its normal shape again. “Nice going, Captain!” he congratulated. He turned to his main companions. “Okay. Donald, Goofy, let’s go under and hit this thing head-on,” he insisted. “We can put an end to this fight!”

Gibbs and Marty groaned. Mickey shook his head sadly. Riku, Donald and Goofy took the direct approach. “No. We. CAN’T!” they shouted. “Trust us on this. We’re not going to be able to kill this thing on our own,” Riku added.

Sora sighed. “Fine,” he caved in. He turned to Jack. “Captain. Orders?”

“Abandon ship. Into the longboat,” Jack answered.

“Jack! The _Pearl_!” Gibbs cried, aghast that his friend was proposing to abandon his cherished vessel.

“She’s only a ship, mate,” Jack consoled.

“He’s right,” Elizabeth agreed. “We have to head for land.”

“That’s a lot o' open water,” Pintel complained worriedly. Ragetti nodded in agreement.

Sora’s eyes widened as he realized that there was a better option. He remembered that there was a Safe Point in the captain’s quarters. If they could get everyone into the Gummi Ship, they could all get to safety.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Everyone into the cabin!” As he took the first step, he heard a creaking noise and the arch over the opening to the cabin collapsed. They would not be able to move the debris in time. He sighed, abandoning the idea. “Longboats it is.”

“That’s a lot o’ water,” Ragetti reiterated.

“We have to try,” Will said. “We can get away as it takes down the _Pearl_.”

Gibbs nodded. “Abandon ship,” he ordered. “Abandon ship or abandon hope.”

The remaining crew solemnly set about loading the barest essentials into the last longboat. In order to make room for as many people as possible, Sora, Donald and Goofy opted to enter their Atlantica forms and swim alongside the boat. While everyone else climbed into and started lowering the boat, Elizabeth approached Jack, who was walking around the deck, taking one last look at his beloved ship.

“Thank you, Jack,” she said.

Jack turned to Elizabeth, not bothering to conceal his sorrow. “We’re not free yet, love.”

“You came back.” She took a step toward him. “I always knew you were a good man.” She leaned in and kissed him.

Gibbs handed the rifle to Will, who passed it to Marty, as they were climbing down into the longboat. Will caught a glimpse of Elizabeth kissing Jack and stopped in bewilderment. Sora, hanging onto the railing next to him, saw his shock and followed his gaze. He raised an eyebrow in confusion at how Elizabeth, who only an hour ago had been overjoyed to be reunited with Will, her fiancée, and took time to kiss _him_ passionately, was now kissing Jack.

Both were interrupted from their thoughts by Gibbs. “Prepare to cast off! There’s no time to lose!” he barked, not noticing the display by the mast. “Come on, Will, Sora, step to!” Conceding the point, they continued climbing down. Will and Gibbs dropped into the boat while Sora sank into the water, popping back up with a dolphin tail and treading beside the transformed Donald and Goofy.

Elizabeth continued to kiss Jack and walked him back against the central mast. Jack enjoyed the gratitude, seemingly not taken aback by it. He stopped reciprocating when he heard a metal sound. Elizabeth pulled back and, with an expression that made it quite clear what she was really doing, closed a shackle around Jack’s wrist. He smiled with amusement, realizing that he had been played. He tugged on the chain, confirming that he had been bound to the mast.

“It’s after you, not the ship. It’s not us,” Elizabeth explained. “This is the only way, don’t you see? I’m not sorry.”

Jack grinned, proud of her pragmatism and trickery. “Pirate,” he spat back.

Elizabeth turned and marched away, leaving Jack alone to his fate. She climbed down into the boat. Marty set to untying the rope holding the boat to the ship.

“Where’s Jack?” Will asked, a neutral expression concealing his jealousy.

“He elected to stay behind to give us a chance,” Elizabeth lied.

Sora, Gibbs, and Mickey frowned, understanding that there were no good options. They had lost the fight. Now, all they could do was survive the day.

Elizabeth turned to the rest of the crew, who looked up as if still waiting for Jack, and in particular Marty, who still held the rope. “Go!” she ordered. Marty let go of the rope. Pintel and Ragetti started rowing.

* * *

Jack struggled with his manacle, trying to at the very least get free. He attempted to push himself away with his foot to see if he could break the chain off of the mast, but stopped as he remembered something. He picked his weapon up with his left hand and batted it against the manacle. After a few good tries, the shackle popped open. He smiled at his small victory, but soon noticed something rising up behind him. He turned around and saw the enormous pink, fleshy maw of the Kraken, its mouth filled with rows of long, sharp teeth encircling its maw.

The Kraken roared at him, spraying huge amounts of monstrous, disgusting saliva all over Jack. At the end of its roar, a tricorn hat fell out of its mouth. Jack recognized his prized hat, from which he had been separated both prior to the attack of his cursed former crew and the Heartless and shortly after he had first gained the Black Spot and learned that the Kraken was coming for him, when it had been accidentally lost at sea. He wiped the saliva off of his face and leaned down to pick his hat off. He shook off as much goo as he could before putting it on his head where it belonged.

He stared into the ferocious maw of the monster that had been pursuing him for days and smiled mischievously. “Hello, beastie,” he greeted. He raised his weapon and charged in, swinging his weapon in an effort to make the meal as painful for the wretched beast as possible.

* * *

The crew watched the Kraken entangle the _Black Pearl_ and drag it below the depths of the ocean. Sora and his friends gaped in horror as they took in the sheer enormity of the monstrous cephalopod. Sora now understood that his friends were right to warn him that they would not stand a chance in fighting it. All the while, they could do nothing else but lament how everything had gone wrong.


	68. Chapter 67: Calming Tides

Davy Jones watched the _Pearl_ sink through his telescope. He knew now that Jack was gone; he and his ship were bound for Davy Jones’ Locker. He stood flanked by some of his crew, including his first mate Maccus. The Dead Man’s Chest sat on a table, its key still in the lock, secured from any who would try to claim its contents.

“Jack Sparrow, our debt is settled,” he declared.

“The captain goes down with his ship,” a crew member lamented.

“Turns out not even Jack Sparrow can best the devil,” Maccus proclaimed.

Jones stopped dead as Maccus’ comment made him realize something. He whirled around and faced his crew. “Open the chest,” he ordered. His crew looked around, surprised by the demand. “Open the chest. I need to see it!”

Maccus quickly ran over and unlocked the chest. Jones shoved past and lifted the lid. The surrounding crewmen gasped as they looked inside and realized it was empty. Jones promptly looked up, horrified, looking as though he was about to spit up.

“Curse you, Jack SPARRROOOOOWW!” the captain screamed. It looked as though the greatest pirate who ever lived had gotten one last laugh against his foe.

* * *

For hours, the crew rowed (and swam, in Sora, Donald and Goofy’s case) across the sea. The silence persisted amongst the fourteen sailors in the crowded longboat and the three who swam beside as everyone mourned the captain.

Finally, the silence was broken, though the mood did not change. “So, now what?” Sora asked.

Gibbs sighed. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to hail a ship to pick us up. Then, we’ll go to Tia Dalma’s and break the bad news,” he replied.

“Tia Dalma?” Kairi asked, curious as to who this woman was.

“Ay. A voodoo lady who had a complicated history with Captain Sparrow,” Gibbs explained. “She told us how to locate Jones, and even explained to those of us who were less informed of how he came to be.”

“So, she knows her way around the sea’s supernatural elements,” Riku deduced. “I guess she could give us an idea what to do next.”

“And maybe help us out with our other mission,” Donald added. Gibbs raised an eyebrow, but decided not to pursue the subject.

“Gawrsh, I suppose we shouldn’t just assume that the heart’s lost,” Goofy said.

“It’s not,” Elizabeth affirmed. “James Norrington must have taken it.”

“And awfully soon, he’ll be bringing it to that Beckett chap,” Ragetti added.

“Great. Not only did we fail to save Jack from his fate, but we let that guy get his hands on the leverage he needs to get Jones to do what he tells him to,” Sora lamented bitterly.

“We made it out alive,” Mickey said. “Let’s just say that and… and figure out what we can do from here on out.”

Riku nodded, agreeing with Mickey’s assessment.

* * *

In his office in Port Royal, a high-ranking uniformed man sat at his desk in front of a map of the world. A harsh-faced man in a brown coat walked into the office, bearing news.

“The last of our ships has returned,” the officer, Ian Mercer, informed him.

“Is there any news on the chest?” Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company asked.

“None. But, one of our ships picked up a man adrift at sea. He had these.” Mercer placed a set of Letters of Marque on Beckett’s desk. Beckett recognized these letters. He had prepared them for granting William Turner, Elizabeth Swann, and Jack Sparrow amnesty as part of his bargain with William for Jack’s compass. After escaping from prison, Elizabeth forced him to sign them for her and William, but the third remained blank. A new name had been signed on this letter.

“I took the liberty of filling in my name.” James Norrington entered the office, his arm held by a soldier in a blue uniform.

Beckett beckoned Norrington to come closer. “If you intend to claim these, then you must have something to trade. Do you have the compass?” he asked.

Norrington shook his head. “Better.” He dropped a fist-sized pouch onto the desk. “The heart of Davy Jones.”

Beckett leaned in to examine the pouch. He saw the leather rise and fall with the regular heartbeat. “It’s remarkable,” he admitted.

“It take it I’ve won the commission as a privateer?” Norrington quipped.

Beckett smiled. “Oh, I think _better_.” He opened a case revealing Norrington’s old sword which he had used when he was in the Royal Navy. He walked over to look out the window while Norrington admired the blade. “Reinstatement to your former rank and status, all rights and privileges attended.” He turned back around to address Norrington directly. “And I think a promotion is due as well. Do you agree, _Admiral_ Norrington?”

Norrington took his sword up and stared at it, hardly believing that this was real. His position restored? Admiral? It was almost too good to be true.

He tilted the blade over his left wrist, pointing the tip at the wrapped-up heart. “Give the order, sir,” he requested.

“Oh, no, no, no. That would be terribly imprudent,” Beckett argued. Norrington looked at him in surprise. “Where’s the profit in killing Jones when instead we can add another ship to your fleet?” He opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony as a spooky, mildew-covered ship rose out of the water in the harbor. Norrington and Mercer stepped out and joined Beckett. “The _Flying Dutchman_. Whoever controls the heart of Davy Jones controls the sea between worlds.”

* * *

They already knew.

As the crew rowed through the swamp, they saw, sitting outside of numerous huts, dark-skinned men, women and children holding candles and watching the company pass through. Some even stood waist-deep in the stream water only a few feet away from the entourage. They seemed to have been mourning someone’s death since before they arrived.

The sailors recruited from Tortuga who survived the Kraken attack had decided to leave the crew after they had found a vessel to carry them the rest of the way. With the extra spots opened, Sora, Donald and Goofy decided to finish the journey in the boat.

They reached their destination and exited the boat, entering a large but humble shack. The shack was filled with an assortment of odd items, some of which seemed to be used for voodoo rituals. Riku noticed that some of them reminded him of the witch doctor they had fought in Beast’s Castle and wondered if what this woman did was anything like what his powers come from.

Tia Dalma was a slender woman with dark skin, black dreadlocked hair. She wore a tribal dress and cloak with a crab-shaped pendant on a silver chain, illustrating her spiritual occupation. She wore makeup which gave her black lips and dots arcing under her eyes.

The crew sat around the shack wherever they could find a chair. Tia Dalma carried a tray holding mugs, which contained rum for the grown-ups and, at their request, tea for Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald. Will absently tossed his dagger into the table over and over.

Tia Dalma walked over to Will and offered him a mug. “It’s a shame,” she said sympathetically. “I know you’re t’inking that wid the _Pearl_ , you coulda captured the devil and set free your fadder’s soul.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Will lamented. “The _Pearl’s_ gone, along with its captain.”

Sora held his hand over his heart and bowed his head, his eyes closed in prayer for the old pirate, who knew of honor though he would not say it. Mickey did the same, and Riku and Kairi were inspired to follow suit.

“Aye,” Gibbs agreed, standing against the frame of the door. “And already the world seems a bit less bright.” He took a step back into the shack, addressing the crew. “He fooled us all right to the end. But I guess that honest streak finally won out.” He raised his mug in a toast. “To Jack Sparrow.”

Ragetti gulped, holding in his tears. “Never another like Captain Jack,” he replied, holding his mug up as well.

“He was a gentleman of fortune, he was,” Pintel said.

“His heart knew what he wanted, even when he didn’t,” Donald saluted.

“He cheated and lied, and labeled himself a crook,” Sora said sadly but with a hint of pride, “but he couldn’t hide the kind of man he was.”

“He was a good man,” Elizabeth finished, avoiding everyone’s gaze.

Everyone drank to that. Will felt uncertain, as hearing Elizabeth’s comment reminded him of the incident the last time he saw Jack. He was having trouble figuring out what to make of that moment. He turned to look at her and saw that she seemed distraught.

“If there was anything could be done to bring him back… Elizabeth…” he began his question, for the moment deciding to put his feelings for Elizabeth and his complicated respect for Jack above any jealousy and uncertainty.

“Would you do it?” Tia Dalma finished, catching him by surprise as she directed the question back to him. She turned to address Elizabeth. “What, would you?” She took a few steps around, sending the question to the rest of the crew. “What would any of you be willing to do? Hmm? Would you sail to the ends of the earth, through the darkest and most ferocious of seas, and beyond, to fetch back witty Jack and 'im precious _Pearl_?”

There was a brief moment of stunned silence as they processed what she was suggesting. Would it really be possible to bring Jack back from the dead? Did such a miracle truly exist?

Gibbs came to a decision and took a step forward. “Aye,” he replied.

Pintel stood up. “Aye.”

Ragetti did the same. “Aye.”

Cotton silently raised his mug. “Aye,” his parrot squawked.

Sora, Mickey, Riku, and Kairi each raised their Keyblades. “Aye,” they said in turn.

Donald and Goofy stood up and stood at attention. “Aye,” they said simultaneously.

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes,” she said quietly.

Tia Dalma turned to Will, her eyebrow raised inquisitively. He nodded. “Aye.”

Tia Dalma smiled. “Alright. But if you’re goin’ brave the weird and haunted shores at world’s end, den you will need a captain who knows dose waters,” she explained. She turned to face a set of stairs, drawing their attention as well.

They heard the sound of heavy footsteps as they glimpsed a pair of black boots appear on the top visible step. As the figure descended the stairway and came further into view, a look of surprise came over everyone. Half of them recognized the thick, wiry brown beard and distinctive wide-brimmed black hat, while Mickey, Cotton and Marty knew the face from sketches (via Jiminy’s Journal and wanted posters, respectively), whereas Riku and Kairi never knew him but could easily infer his identity based on Sora, Donald and Goofy’s reactions.

“So, tell me,” Hector Barbossa, former first mate and captain of the _Black Pearl_ began, “what’s become of my ship?” He took a bite of a green apple, letting the juice run down his chin.

The crew before him stood in shocked silence.


	69. Chapter 68: Back to the Sandlot

“Oh, no! No, no, no! I am not working with _him_!” Sora yelled in protest.

“But, boy, it is de only way—” Tia Dalma tried to calm him down, but was interrupted.

“He used the Heartless to terrorize the town and tried to blow us to bits!” Sora ranted.

“Yet I get a pass when I decide to help you?” Riku quipped, pointing out a notion of irony.

“You saw the error of your ways and did what you could to fix it,” Sora countered. He pointed an accusing finger at Barbossa while directing his gaze partly toward Tia Dalma. “He was cruel and brutal up to his death! And you expect us to believe he’s on our side just like that and zip-a-dee-doo-da, it’s all well and good like nothing happened?!”

“He is here on a bargain,” Tia Dalma explained. “It is not needed that you forget him past actions. Give him time to prove himself…”

“Listen, Tia,” Sora pinched his fingers to cut her off, “we’ll root for you to find the way to get Jack back. Let us know when you’re ready to do it, and we’ll fly right on over. But we have other things to take care of, and better things than sailing for who-knows-how-long with _him_ as our captain!”

Tia Dalma was unbothered by the outrage. “Ah, yes. Of course,” she said with a chuckle. “I do wish I could help you out, tell you more den you already know, but I fear it is not my place. Good luck, children, on your quest.”

Sora tugged his friends on the arms, signaling for them to get moving. As he began to march out, he stopped next to Elizabeth and leaned in to talk to her. “By the way, Will saw you kissing Jack. Just so you know. Now, please don’t spend the next few weeks not talking about your issues and letting him pout silently thinking the worst of you,” he whispered. “Thanks. Bye.” With that, he stormed out, leading Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, and used the Safe Point on the deck outside of the shack to beam up to the Gummi Ship.

* * *

The following flight through the Lanes Between was filled with a palpable silence. Sora piloted the ship in an only slightly imperfect beeline, not really regarding the direction as he continued to quietly fume. Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy simply sat in shock, still taken aback by Sora’s outburst.

Aside from a few enemy ships and asteroids, the flight was uneventful.

The first world that appeared in their direct path sat at a tangent so that the landscape was bathed in the constantly-parallel glow emanating from the adjacent star to the direct west of it. Just by looking at it, they could see that it was a small hamlet filled with houses and other establishments. The most prominent feature was a large clock tower which was connected to a railway that wrapped around the town.

“Twilight Town, huh,” Kairi identified wistfully. “Brings back memories.”

“Weren’t you only in the hangout for a little while before Axel nabbed you?” Goofy asked, remembering the story Hayner told them of how he and his friends knew Kairi.

“Well, yeah,” Kairi admitted. “I wish I’d gotten to see more of the town. But Hayner, Pence and Olette, they seemed nice.”

“You know, they were pretty worried about you after you were kidnapped,” Donald told her.

“Yeah. They helped us find the way into the World That Never Was because they were looking for a way to find you,” Mickey added.

“Oh. Then I guess we should head on down and let them know everything turned out alright,” Kairi said.

“It’ll be great to see how everyone’s doing,” Goofy said.

“What do you say, Sora?” Riku asked.

By that point, Sora had calmed down, and his heart filled with warmth at the sight of the tranquil town. He smiled at the idea that his friends were suggesting. “Alright. Let’s go say hi,” he said. He punched in commands to disembark in the Central Station and the six of them stepped into the white circle behind the three main chairs.

* * *

When they stepped out from the glass double door that served as the front entrance to the train station, Kairi’s jaw dropped when she saw the view of the landscape beyond the town. Beyond the ledge on the cliff upon which the station plaza was built, a dense forest spread as far as the eye could see. A large, stone, arch-set bridge looped around in the middle of the forest, carrying an elevated railway on which an orange single-car train rode. The view was made even more beautiful by the orange glow of Twilight Town’s perpetual sunset.

“Pretty nice, huh?” Kairi turned around to find Sora standing right beside her, smiling nostalgically as he admired the sunset.

Kairi giggled. “Yeah. It’s so warm and peaceful,” she replied.

“According to the clock on the wall in the station, everyone should be done with school,” Riku surmised. “And if they’re anything like you, Kairi, they might be done with homework, too.”

“I’d say so, too,” Sora agreed. “Something tells me that Olette is the kind of person to make sure the others get their homework done.”

“A-hyuck. Well, then let’s head down and say hi,” Goofy said.

With that, Sora, Donald and Goofy led Riku, Kairi and Mickey down the slope leading away from the plaza and into town.

* * *

As they passed a garage door, the party came upon Market Street. The Station Heights proceeded down a hill, flanked by multi-storied residential buildings and shops, its streets lined with brown tiles. The street split off into three directions: a path to the right halfway down leading into a back alley, and two exits on the lowest level, one leading to the more open section of Market Street known as the Tram Common to the left and the other to the Sandlot. At the bottom of the Heights, two shops were in business, an armor shop run by a middle-aged heavyset man with a beard, and an item shop that seemed to be run by a twelve-year-old boy.

Sora saw a white skateboard, which had fin shapes toward the back and blue markings painted on the top, on the ground in front of him and looked back at his friends with a confident smirk. “Watch this,” he told them. He put his right foot on the skateboard and pushed off with his left foot. He swerved from side to side as he rolled down the hill, performing a heel flip a quarter of the way down. When he was at the halfway landing, he jumped on a ramp ledge, still riding the skateboard, and grinded down, before kicking off at the bottom and leaping into the air. His friends ran down the hill to follow his progress, amused and impressed. While in the air, he bent down and grabbed the skateboard, tilting it up at an angle. When he landed, he quickly looped around and pushed himself in the direction of the Sandlot.

He realized too late that there was someone in his path, and his friends did not have time to warn him before he crashed into that person.

“Ouch. Sorry about that,” Sora said as he picked himself off of the person he had unwittingly knocked over. Before he could get a good look at the person, he felt something grab his arm and throw him into a nearby wall.

His attacker stood in front of him, an angry scowl on his face. He was a muscular young man, most likely either at the tail end of his teenage years or having already aged out, and he was about Riku’s height. He had tan skin, brown eyes, short black hair with long sideburns, and a stubble on his chin. He wore an orange tank top, baggy black sweatpants with a pair of red stripes on the sides of his legs and the number 8 printed at the top of the left leg, wide yellow-and-white shoes, a pair of blue wristbands, and a thunderbolt necklace.

“Watch it, y’know?” the young man shouted.

Sora stifled a groan. He remembered Rai, though admittedly he did not know that much about him aside from his choice of companions and his tendency to end his sentences with “y’know”.

Looking past Rai, Sora recognized a skinny girl who was about as tall as Kairi. She had short silver hair that covered her left eye, but her red eye and the stoic gaze that it carried was piercing enough for the pair. She wore a sleeveless blue turtleneck jacket, light-beige Capri pants, and a pair of Crocs. The girl, Fuu, took “taciturn” to a whole new level, speaking only in very brief, two- to three-word sentences.

As he identified these two individuals, Sora realized who he had run into. A young man who wore a blue crop-top vest, a long white sleeveless jacket, baggy aubergine-colored pants, a pair of black combat boots with blue shoelaces, and a black tuque hat designed with a white “Ore” kanji, pushed himself to his feet, brushing off Fuu’s offer of assistance. He glared at Sora, giving him a good look at the diagonal scar cut between his blue-green eyes.

“You want to watch where you’re going?” the thuggish young man asked angrily.

Sora rubbed the back of his head, making sure that the pain would go away. “I’m sorry, Seifer. It was an accident,” he said. Of course, he did not expect to be let off so easily. The highly-confrontation Seifer was a member and the self-proclaimed leader of the local disciplinary committee, who has decided to carry his “authority” out to the rest of the town. Despite holding himself as a keeper of order, most of the younger generation can tell that he is just a thug bullying others into doing what he says. And, of course, that tends to mean that he would pick a fight with anyone who gets on his bad side, even inadvertently. Sora had almost gotten into a fight with him on their first meeting before they were interrupted. In a later encounter, they had developed a sort of grudging respect for each other, but that was not likely to save the moment this time.

“Well, then I guess you should have been a little more careful, huh?” Seifer scoffed. “Now you’ve run into a bit of trouble, and I’m not letting you off easy.”

Sora was surprised by his bravado. He was honestly curious if he was actually planning to start a fight. Not only was it likely that someone would come and see it, but he should seriously know better than to pick a fight with him. But Sora supposed that his pride would not let him let this go so simply.

“Hey!” Sora and Seifer turned to see where the voice had come from. They saw an overweight teenager who was about Sora’s age. The boy had brown eyes and messy black hair. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt underneath a sleeveless red jersey with a cartoonish black silhouette of a dog with three bones above it designed on it and the words “Dog Street” printed vertically in large white letters to the right of the design, as well as blue jeans, blue and white shoes with gray soles and a raised tongue, a black headband with white edges, and a small purple bandanna around his neck. Seifer scowled but Sora, for his part, was glad to see him.

“He said it was an accident,” the boy continued defiantly. “And he said sorry.”

Seifer grunted. “Well, who asked you?” he retorted disdainfully.

“Yeah! Get lost, y’know?” Rai added.

“Excuse me?” Hearing this new voice, Seifer looked up and glared at the five individuals standing over the scene of the confrontation. Riku, the one who had spoken, glared back. He started to walk down the ramp, followed by Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi. “I suggest you accept his apology and go find something better to do. He and the others stood alongside Pence and proceeded to stare Seifer and his posse down, making it clear that they did not intend to take “no” for an answer.

After a moment of staring back at his challenger, Seifer scowled and started to turn away. “Whatever,” he snarled, clearly annoyed.

Rai was taken aback. “What? We’ve gotta show these punks that we’re in charge, y’know?” he protested.

“You try,” Fuu snarked. Rai took a step back in surprise and waved his hands in front of him, indicating that he would rather not face the newcomers on his own.

Seifer gave Sora and his friends an aside glance. “I’ll let you off with a warning. But be sure that you know the rules around here,” he scolded. With that, he walked off to the sandlot, trailed by Rai and Fuu.

After they were gone, Sora turned to his friends and gave them a cheeky smile. “Thanks for backing me up, guys,” he said. He turned to the boy who had taken the first step in defying Seifer. “You too, Pence. How have things been?”

Pence grinned. “Not too bad,” he replied. “What about you? Did you find your friends?”

“See for yourself.” Sora pointed to the group standing around Pence. Pence turned around and nearly jumped in surprise. Since they had been on the level above him when he arrived on the scene and he had been focused on the altercation between Sora and Seifer the whole time, he had not really noticed them as they came down around his peripheral. For a moment, he had simply assumed that they were random passerby, possibly just one or two, who had come upon the conflict. But now that he had gotten a good look at them, he recognized four of the five. The tall guy with the silver hair was a complete stranger, but he knew Donald, Goofy, King Mickey, and…

“Kairi?!” Pence gasped. “You’re alright! What happened?”

Kairi giggled. “I’m fine, Pence. I was told that you and the others helped Sora, Donald and Goofy find a way to the Organization’s stronghold all to rescue me?” Pence nodded. “Thanks.”

Riku held his hand out. “I’m Riku. Nice to meet you, Pence,” he greeted.

Pence’s eyes widened. He took Riku’s hand and shook it. “So, you’re Riku,” he mumbled. “Nice to meet you, too.” He turned to look at Sora. “I’m glad to see that you were able to find your friends.”

“Thanks,” Sora replied. “So, are Hayner and Olette at the Usual Spot?”

“Oh, yeah,” Pence answered. “C’mon! They’ll be glad to see you.” He then led the party up the ramp and through the back alley, stopping at a metal gate whose door hung wide open. Past this gate was a skinny path between two houses, forcing the party to pass by in a single-file line rather than a bunched-up throng.

Once they reached the end of the path, they came out into an alcove that sat beneath the train tracks. The alcove had been set up into a makeshift hangout, with an old sofa set up against the right wall, a dartboard on the left wall, and a worn-out poster advertising Twilight Town hanging above the sofa. Three large ventilation grates were lined up on the rear wall, a yellow radiator was installed beneath the central grate, and a rusted metal pipe connected from the left wall into the floor. Boxes, thin shafts of wood, and traffic cones had been tucked away in the corners and against the walls. An empty oil drum sat to the left of the entrance, and a stepladder stood near the back left corner.

There were two teenagers in the so-called “Usual Spot” already. Both of them were the same age as Sora, Kairi and Pence. A boy with moderately spiky blond hair and brown eyes, wearing baggy camouflage pants, a black muscle shirt decorated with a crudely-drawn skull-and-crossbones, a sleeveless grey vest, camouflage-patterned shoes with white tips and a pair of intersecting black belts in place of laces, a white necklace with a yellow “X” charm, and a brown bracelet on his left arm with several silver pins in it, stood close to the entrance, throwing darts. A girl with green eyes and short brown hair with two strands draping over her shoulder, wearing an orange tank top with a white floral pattern at the bottom, khaki-colored Capri pants, orange socks with white hems, cream, black and yellow-colored shoes, a beaded, sky-blue bracelet on her right wrist, and a black necklace with a sky-blue charm, sat on the couch watching her friend.

The girl, Olette, saw the group arrive. “Hayner!” she called her friend. Hayner stopped just after throwing another dart and turned to face Olette. He saw that she was looking past him and turned around to see what it was. His eyes widened when he saw the party.

“What’s up?” he greeted. He then did a double take when he saw Kairi. “Wait, Kairi?!” He pumped his fist in excitement. “You’re alright! That redheaded punk didn’t hurt you, did he?” A hint of anger crept into his voice as he remembered the incident where Axel had arrived to kidnap Kairi and he had been helpless to stop him.

Kairi smiled and shook her head. “I’m fine, Hayner. Thanks.”

Olette ran over and hugged Kairi. “We were so worried about you,” she said.

“So? What happened?” Hayner asked insistently.

Sora, Kairi and Riku, with some input from Mickey and a few comments from Donald and Goofy, told them how they had reached Organization XIII’s castle, reunited, defeated the last members of the Organization, and returned home.

“Wow. That is so cool!” Pence squeed.

“Glad you showed those creeps what’s what,” Hayner commended.

“Wait, wait,” Kairi interrupted the praise, as she found herself unable to restrain her curiosity and confusion regarding a particular detail of the story. “‘Other Twilight Town’?”

Sora shrugged. “Yeah, I didn’t really understand that, either,” he admitted. “What was that about, Riku?”

Riku scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. I guess I never did explain that. After I captured Roxas, DiZ, ahem, Ansem the Wise put him in a simulated copy of the town, both in an effort to hide him from the Organization and to keep him docile until your memories had been put back together,” he explained. “But when Axel got in, I guess he created a breach in the code leading right to the Dark City.”

“Oh, gotcha. I think.” As he thought about the topic of the Simulated Twilight Town, a thought occurred to him. He turned to face Hayner, Pence and Olette. “Say, did you guys ever meet Roxas?”

The three teens were perplexed. “Should we have?” Pence asked.

Goofy tapped Sora on the shoulder to get his attention. “Do you still have the photo?” he asked. Sora took a moment to consider what he was talking about, then understood. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph.

“I was just wondering, because in the ‘other’ Twilight Town, you were his friends,” he said, showing off the picture. Pence took the photo and studied it, with Hayner and Olette looking over his shoulders. The photo depicted four teens grouped together in front of an old mansion: Hayner, Pence, Olette, and a boy whom Sora and Riku knew full well as Roxas.

“Weird,” Hayner commented. “We have a photo just like this, but with just the three of us.”

“That Ansem guy must have doctored the other kid in,” Pence guessed. “You said his name was… Roxas?” Sora nodded. Pence studied Roxas’ face and gasped. “Wait a minute! I think we did meet him before!”

Hayner raised an eyebrow. “You sure?” he asked, skeptical.

Pence nodded and showed him the photo again. “He showed up when you were trying to beat your Grandstander record.”

Olette examined the face in the photo again. “You’re right! I think he was wearing a black hooded coat,” she added.

Hayner crossed his arms in contemplation. “Oh, yeah. Weird kid. He just showed up then. Didn’t really look like he knew what to do.”

“I also ran into him a few weeks before,” Pence continued. “And there was a tall guy with him.” His eyes widened as he realized something. “Wait, I thought that creep who grabbed Kairi looked familiar.”

“What do you mean?” Olette asked.

“He was the guy with Roxas when I first met him,” Pence explained.

“What?!” Hayner and Olette gasped.

“Roxas and Axel were best friends, once upon a time,” Sora said sorrowfully. “But they had a bit of a falling-out, around the same time he left the Organization.”

“Axel said something about wanting to use me as bait for Sora so he could get Roxas back, or something like that,” Kairi added.

“I still don’t get it,” Hayner complained. “What’s the big deal about Roxas? Who was he?”

Sora could understand his confusion. The same questions had been bothering him for most of his second journey, starting when Demyx appeared and called him Roxas. His bewilderment was only exacerbated when Xigbar, Luxord, and Saïx insisted on referring to him by the same name, much to his escalating annoyance. He decided that he should tell Hayner, Pence and Olette the full story.

“You remember those creatures that attacked you outside of the mansion? The Nobodies?” he asked. The three teens nodded. “You see, when a person loses his heart and forms a Heartless, sometimes his body and soul gain a life of their own and become Nobodies. Axel was a Nobody strong enough to retain a human form. He and twelve others were brought together as the Organization XIII.”

“Yeah, so what does that have to do with this Roxas guy?” Hayner asked impatiently.

Sora nodded, indicating that he was getting to that. “The same thing happened to me, well over a year ago,” he continued. “Roxas was a result of that transformation.” He noticed the teens’ eyes widen as they put two and two together. “Roxas is my Nobody.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it'll be a while before Sora and the gang return to Port Royal and the Caribbean Sea. It seems as though Sora isn't too eager to work with someone who tried to murder him and his friends, for some reason. Now, we're taking a little breather from the heavy action set pieces. Be sure to leave constructive feedback.


	70. Chapter 69: Lazy Afternoons

Sora and his friends stood patiently, waiting for Hayner, Pence and Olette to pick their jaws up off of the floor. They were not all too surprised that the three teens had been so taken aback by the revelation. Donald snickered, amused by the reaction.

Pence was the first to regain his bearings. “So, he’s your Nobody? Does that mean he can do what you can do?” he asked.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. He can use the Keyblade,” he answered.

Hayner gathered himself up and took on a posture as if acting as though he had not lost his composure. “If he was part of you, and he also had that power, that explains what made him so important to everything going on,” he surmised.

He sighed. “You know, he didn’t seem like too bad a guy. I kind of wish we could have gotten to know him.”

Sora smiled, touched by that statement. “I’m sure he’d be glad to hear you say that,” he told the blond.

Hayner raised his eyebrow in confusion. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.

“It’d be hard to explain, but you could say that he and I have a sort of connection,” Sora replied.

Hayner smirked in amusement. “Whatever.”

“Say, while you’re all here,” Olette began, “how about we give you guys a tour of the town? I know Kairi didn’t really get the chance to see Market Street when she was first here, and I don’t think you guys ever crossed over to the other side of town. So? How about it? We have plenty of time.”

The guests traded glances with one another, wordlessly gauging each other’s opinions of the offer. After seeing that they were like-minded on the idea, Sora and Kairi turned back to Olette. “Alright. Let’s do it,” Sora said.

“Sounds fun,” Kairi agreed.

“Cool. You up, Hayner?” Pence asked.

Hayner chuckled. “Of course,” he replied. “Let’s take the six o’clock train to Sunset Station. Don’t worry. Train rides within the town border are free.”

Donald looked surprised. “That sounds like a curious business model,” he commented.

Pence shrugged. “It seems to work for them, particularly with the other lines leading elsewhere. Like that funky ghost train.”

Hayner, Pence and Olette led Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy out of the alleyway and back up to Central Station. They picked up their tickets, which of course were completely free, and boarded the first train. The only other passengers were a woman and her young son. The boy watched the six strangers in wonder as they boarded the train and sat down on the seats lining the walls, until his mother advised him not to stare.

The party of nine sat patiently as the train continued along its path. The visiting six turned to look out the windows and watch the scenery go by.

Kairi decided to make small talk. “So, what’s on the other side of town?” she asked.

“Sunset Terrace is mostly a residential district,” Pence explained. “Aside from the rail system, it’s connected to the market and event areas by an underground concourse. Some people tend to use that to cross from one side to another if they want to get their exercise. After all, not even Hayner can challenge you to a race if you’re both sitting on a train.” He let out a laugh to accompany the joke. Kairi giggled as well.

“A few months ago, the concourse was closed off for maintenance,” Olette added. “But now they’re back open.”

Pence leaned in and affected a spooky campfire voice. “You know, some say that it was being haunted by phantoms that appear out of the shadows to target their prey,” he said hauntingly.

Hayner rolled his eyes. “Please! Not another one of those bogus rumors,” he complained.

Sora raised his eyebrow. “Rumors?” he parroted, curious. Next to him, Riku sighed in apparent exasperation. He seemed to know a thing or two about what Hayner was talking about.

Before the discussion could continue, the train slowed down and the driver announced that they were pulling into Sunset Station. Moments later, the train came to a stop and the doors opened. The passengers stepped out of the train and allowed a new group of people to board.

They stood on a platform that led down to the street via a few flights of stone steps wrapping around the platform; the platform was raised up so that the train would ride along a track that went over and around the town. To their left was a large yellow clock with brown hands. Down a short set of steps, a ticket booth not unlike the one at Central Station sat on the right. A waist-high railing secured the platform ahead of them.

As they began to walk down the flight of stairs, Sora noticed some graffiti on the wall next to him. It said “SPOOKY STAIRS”.

“Hey, Pence,” Sora called. Pence stopped in his tracks at the bottom of the stairs and turned around. “What’s this?” Sora pointed at the graffiti.

Hayner scowled. “One of Pence’s dumb rumors,” he griped. Clearly, he was tired of the so-called rumors and Pence’s apparent fascination with them.

Pence smiled in mild embarrassment. “Well, he’s not wrong,” he admitted under his breath. “You see, there were these surreal stories going around town. Some of my classmates and I called them ‘The Seven Wonders of Twilight Town’. Since people pass through here every day, this has become the most famous one.”

“What makes them so spooky?” Goofy asked.

Hayner groaned, knowing that he could do nothing to stop this discussion.

“Well, the story is that they count differently every time you go up and down,” Pence explained. “But here’s the kicker: Rai was the one who counted them.”

Sora, Kairi and Mickey were unimpressed. Riku was simply unfazed, apparently having heard about the so-called rumor. Goofy tapped his noggin curiously, trying to wrap his head around the whole thing. Donald crossed his arms and tapped his foot. “Every time?” the duck asked.

Pence sighed. “Yeah. Every time,” he answered lamely. “He was like, ‘every time I count, it’s different, y’know’. No one else really bothered counting more than once.”

“Rai,” Sora reiterated, disappointed. “Seifer’s lackey? Not too bright? Apparently made it to high school without knowing how to count?”

Hayner waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t get your hopes up with the other six,” he said in a harsh tone. “They’re all dumb tabloid tales told by people who don’t have the motivation or common sense to figure out what’s really going on. The Friend from Beyond the Wall? Someone throwing balls from a bricked-off alley. The Moans from the Tunnel? Wind blowing through a vent in the underground tunnel. The Doppelganger? A reflection in the waterfall. The Animated Bag? A dog somehow got stuck in that sack. The Ghost Train?” He paused as he remembered the purple and yellow train that Sora, Donald and Goofy boarded. “Okay, I guess there was something fishy about that. But the last one? The Lonely Girl? That was just a curtain blowing from a draft. You even started going behind our backs to look into that so-called ‘Eighth Wonder’ way back when and then everyone shut up about it. Let’s just forget about your mysteries and fantasies!”

Pence appeared hurt by Hayner’s tirade. Olette put a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.

“Now look what you did,” Sora scolded Hayner. “That’s no way to talk to your friend.”

Hayner jumped in surprise. He turned back around and saw Pence’s sad expression. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously, ashamed of himself. “Sorry, Pence,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be so harsh.”

“Don’t feel bad, Pence,” Olette said soothingly. “Some of your research turned out to be interesting. Your parallel dimension theory helped Sora find Kairi. And Mrs. Tweigel liked your ideas on emotional feedback in relation to it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a healthy curiosity,” Mickey assured him. “At least, so long as it doesn’t get out of hand.”

After a moment, Pence smiled back at his friends. “Thanks, guys.”

“A dog got stuck in a bag?” Goofy asked, horrified by Hayner’s explanation of the fifth rumor.

Hayner shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how that happened. I don’t even know the actual details,” he admitted.

“How long had that been going around before Pence figured it out?” Donald asked.

“Reports had been going around for a few weeks, on and off, before I figured out what was going on,” Pence explained. “I told the dog’s owners after I found out, and they had no idea how she kept getting stuck in there.”

“Gawrsh,” was all Goofy could say in response.

“So, yeah, other than that, the ‘Seven Wonders’ are pretty mundane misconceptions,” Hayner concluded. “Let’s not worry about them. Come on!” He beckoned the others to follow as he started descending the remaining stairs. Deciding to end the discussion right there, the rest of the group followed after him, though Sora and Kairi wondered where the other rumors came from. Riku, however, seemed to be stuck on a specific rumor that Hayner had complained about and debunked.

* * *

The Sunset Terrace was just as lively as Market Street. Friends talked on street corners and grown-ups took walks around the district. Some families spent the hour eating dinner together. A single-car tram, the same color as the train, drove back and forth along a straight line from one end of the terrace to the other. Sora noticed that it did not seem to be the most practical mode of transportation, nor the most convenient use of a tram system, but Olette explained that the more athletic youths liked to climb onto it and hop across rooftops. She also told him that the tram, on both sides of town, moved slowly enough so that the driver could stop it whenever someone stepped in front of its path.

Sora decided to try it out. One second after he stepped on the path, the tram stopped. He grabbed onto the lip above the windshield and vaulted himself up onto the roof. With him no longer in the way, the tram continued along. Sora looked around, considering where to go from there. When the tram reached the end of its track, he saw a house to the right and jumped over the gap, landing on its roof. From the perspective of his friends on the ground, the house’s residents did not seem bothered by the thump audible from the roof; they seemed used to people jumping across roofs.

Sora beckoned his friends to follow along before jumping to the next roof. With the exceptions of Pence and Olette, who politely refused based on personal fitness and preference, respectively, and Donald, who had no chance of keeping up, the gang jumped on top of the tram car one-by-one and started crossing roofs after Sora. Kairi, Goofy and Hayner landed on different roofs at their first jumps, as the tram had started going back in the other direction.

Sora jumped across roofs until he came near a large entrance to a tunnel built into the hill. He stopped and listened when he heard what seemed to be an eerie moaning sound. After a short moment, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Hayner, and Goofy had joined him on the roof. Pence, Olette and Donald, meanwhile, had followed their path on the ground.

“So, I take it these are the fabled ‘Moans from the Tunnel’?” Sora asked.

Hayner nodded. “Yep. Of course, that’s just the noise the ventilation makes just inside. I guess it reverberates enough to come out as that creepy echo.”

“Huh.” For some reason, Sora could only imagine a kid with a funny-looking witch’s hat carrying a Struggle bat. He did not know what that had to do with the rumor, and he did not know who the kid was, so he put the thought to the side.

He walked over to the ledge and hopped off of the roof, landing in the street near Pence, Olette and Donald. The others followed suit.

“Come on,” Pence said. “You’ve got to see the view from Sunset Hill.” He beckoned for the others to follow and led them down to the end of the tram track. The party walked up the nearby path leading up and around the northern hill at the edge of the terrace. When they reached the top, they could see the dusk sun in the distance. The summit was fenced around by guardrails made from pieces of wood. To the right of the center was a construct reminiscent of the Central Station clock tower.

None of them could help but smile at the view. The sight of the perpetual sunset over a serene landscape captured the feel of the entire town for the visiting party: peaceful and wholesome. Even though it lacked the sound of seawater lapping on sand and the feeling of an ocean breeze, it reminded Sora, Riku and Kairi of home.

“Hard to beat this view, huh?” Olette said. Sora, Kairi, and Goofy shook their heads, smiling. They all sat down and stared into the distance, enjoying the sight.

Every few minutes, they saw a train go by on an elevated track in the distance. The third train to go by was different from the others; it was purple and yellow rather than orange, and it had what appeared to be a conical hat with star-and-moon designs above the windshield.

“That’s the train you got on after we first met, right?” Pence asked. Sora nodded. “Remember the Seven Wonders we were talking about earlier? Well, we call this one ‘The Ghost Train’. What can you tell us about it?”

Sora chuckled, remembering the strange train ride. He recalled that, while he, Donald and Goofy did ride it, there was no one behind the controls. It also passed through the sea between worlds in seconds and vanished as soon as they had disembarked. He could tell that it would be fun to see how Pence, Hayner and Olette react to what he says.

“Well, it didn’t take us anywhere in town, or on this world, even. A few minutes after leaving the station, it jumped through dimensions and brought us to this land mass that was just floating in the middle of nowhere. And there was this tower where an old wizard lived, and he briefed us on our mission to stop the threat of Organization XIII,” he explained.

As he had expected, Pence, Hayner and Olette’s eyes had widened as much as humanly possible. Donald snickered at this.

“Then fairies made me new clothes and we flew off in a rocket,” Sora added.

This broke the ice and caused the three teens to burst into laughter. The rest of the group soon joined in, and they laughed together until they got tired of doing so.

“Well, I can say I’m glad that our town sticks to the simple life,” Hayner said. “I don’t know how I would take it if creatures from other dimensions just started running around willy-nilly.”

“Uh, yeah…” Olette seemed to agree, all while images of a green two-legged dragon flying around Market Street played in her mind.

Riku was deep in thought. The topic of the sixth Wonder brought a resurgence in his earlier curiosity, and since the topic was still fresh in everyone’s minds he decided to ask about it. “Hey, Hayner, about the other ‘Wonders’…” Hayner raised an eyebrow at what Riku was saying. “Can you tell me about the last one you mentioned? The Lonely Girl?”

“Oh? Sure.” By that point, Hayner had calmed down from his prior outburst at the discussion of the Seven Wonders, so he was willing to talk about it in a calm fashion. “There’s this old mansion deep in the woods. It’s supposed to be abandoned, though a few months ago Pence, Olette and I, with Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey coming along, found working computers in the basement. But before we did that investigation, everyone thought that it had been long since abandoned. However, starting a little over a year ago, whenever people went out to the woods and got a look at the mansion, they would come back and say that they saw a girl standing in the second floor window. I think they said that she looked like she was blonde and wore a white dress, making her almost look like a ghost or something.”

Kairi raised an eyebrow quizzically, a sense of recognition slowly creeping in on hearing the description of the girl. “So, Pence, didn’t you say that you investigated the Wonders?” she asked.

Pence nodded. “Yeah. Though, I didn’t actually go inside. Even if I wanted to, the gate had a huge lock on it. Olette maybe could have fit between the bars, but I definitely couldn’t. So I just looked into the window from outside. And, on first glance, it definitely looked like there was a girl standing at the side. But it was so far away that I couldn’t really be sure that it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me. So I pulled out my binoculars to get an enlarged and clearer view.” Kairi and Olette traded glances and both looked befuddled by the last thing he had said. “Turns out, it was just the curtain shifting. I guess there was a draft in there, or something.”

Riku, Kairi and Sora traded curious glances. The description of the girl in the mansion seemed familiar.

“A blonde girl in a white dress? Does that sound like anyone we know?” Sora asked his friends.

Riku nodded. “Sounds a lot like her,” he replied.

Hayner was taken aback. “Wait. You _know_ that girl?” he asked in surprise.

Sora nodded. “We figured out that the computers in the basement belonged to Ansem the Wise, right? Well, he and Riku were working together to investigate the Organization for a year, and to make sure that Donald, Goofy and I were able to regain our memories properly and wake up,” he explained. “There was also a girl with them, doing most of the work in putting my memories back together. Her name was Naminé.”

Hayner and Pence raised their eyebrows, intrigued. “Well, two points to the Wonders, I guess,” Hayner commented. “So, what was Naminé’s deal? Let me guess: long-lost childhood friend with magic powers? No, wait. Kairi’s Nobody?”

Kairi smiled. “The second one,” she answered.

This simply drew a chuckle out of Hayner. This revelation had not shocked him as much as the one about Roxas.

Olette, meanwhile, was only more curious about both Nobodies. “Maybe one day you can bring them so we can all meet,” she suggested.

Sora smiled. “I’m sure they’d like that,” he said.

* * *

They spent a few more minutes watching the sunset before they decided to return to the other side of town and finish the tour at the Tram Common. They elected to take a walk through the Underground Concourse. In the tunnel system, they heard the hum of ventilation and the slosh of water running through the sewage system beneath the floor. They could also faintly hear the rumbling of one or two of the trains driving around aboveground. Each footstep echoed through the winding pathways. At first, there was only a long hallway with a few short branches leading to exits or maintenance points. Eventually, the paths opened up in multiple directions, the paths turning and intersecting. There were multiple points that lead out and up a flight of stairs to the surface. Each exit was numbered so it would be easy to tell which paths led where.

Despite what Pence said about supposed monsters roaming the tunnels, nothing rose up to attack them, though Goofy stopped and turned around a few times when he thought he detected something out of the ordinary.

They stepped through the archway labeled “4” and climbed the steps up to the Tram Common. Everyone climbed into the tram as it came by and stared out the windows as it drove around the town, taking in the sights. After the first loop, they stepped off and passed the Moogle Shop, which was in a cylindrical building not far from the tunnel entrance, and made their way to a stall selling ice cream.

“Okay, Kairi, you’ve got to try the Sea-Salt Ice Cream,” Sora insisted.

“I can’t wait to try it,” Kairi replied.

“Say, did Scrooge ever recreate that recipe?” Mickey asked.

“Yeah! It took him a while, but he got it,” Donald answered.

Hayner flashed the cashier a smile. “Nine Sea-Salts,” he told her.

“Sea-Salt Ice Creams coming right up,” the cashier replied.

“You sure you can pay for that?” Olette asked.

Hayner chuckled cockily. “Of course I…” He felt around in his pocket and realized that she had a point.

Sora noticed this and decided to step in. “Let me help you with that,” he said. He took a sum of Munny out of his pocket and showed it to Hayner.

Hayner nodded in thanks. “You sure come prepared,” he commented.

A few minutes later, the cashier returned and handed a stick of blue ice cream each to Sora and Hayner. They took the ice creams and the cashier went back to grab two more. She handed out ice cream until each customer had one.

“That’ll be 1,800 Munny,” the cashier said. Sora and Hayner handed the Munny over. The young woman noticed Sora and his friend. “Don’t believe I’ve met you all. You from out of town?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. I’m Sora.” The other five introduced themselves in turn.

“Well, nice to meet you all. I’m Xu,” the cashier introduced herself. “I take it this is also your first time having Sea-Salt Ice Cream?”

“Actually, Donald’s had one before,” Sora clarified. “And I’ve heard good things about it.”

“Well, then take a bite and let me know how you like it!”

Sora and Kairi took their first bites. “Mmmm…” they hummed as they savored the taste.

“Salty…” Sora began.

“Yet sweet,” Kairi finished.

Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy tasted their treats next, and practically melted in ice cream bliss.

Xu giggled. “I take it you like it,” she surmised. They nodded in confirmation. “That’s great. Well, enjoy!”

“Thanks!” Sora replied. The party began to take their leave, but Sora noticed something pinned up on the wall next to the shop window. At the top, it read “CUSTOMER OF THE MONTH”. Below that, in a list labeling months from the current and previous year, were a series of names. The name “Axel” seemed to be on the list for several months straight, up until November of the previous year. On a few lines, there were one or two other names beside his. One of them was “Roxas”, which made sense, since they would both eat ice cream together after each day’s missions. Since ice cream was practically part of their daily routine, it was only natural that they would win the “Customer of the Month” by a landslide.

But there was a third name that was unfamiliar to Sora. Written in katakana at a small distance away from Axel and Roxas’ scripted names, Sora tried to make out who this third person was.

_Shi…on…_

Sora tapped Riku on the shoulder. If anyone was going to know about what Roxas had been up to during his year in the Organization, it would be him.

Riku turned around. “Yeah, Sora?”

Sora pointed at the bulletin. “You see these names?” he asked.

Riku studied the list his friend was showing him. “Roxas and Axel, right? I guess they did eat a lot of ice cream,” he joked.

“But, see, on a few of these, there’s another name,” Sora clarified. “Does the name ‘Shion’ sound familiar to you?”

Riku thought hard about the question, recalling all of his time spying on Roxas. However, the name did not even raise a spark of recognition. He shook his head. “Sorry. I got nothing.”

Sora shrugged. “Oh, well. Could be a coincidence,” he said in resignation. He took another bite of his ice cream.

“But you don’t think so?” Riku asked, raising an eyebrow in his friend’s direction.

“Just curious,” Sora replied. He did not know what to make of it himself, so he decided to put the thought aside and maybe look into it later.

Sora and Riku rejoined the group, and they all returned to the Usual Spot, where they finished their ice cream and spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such as in this chapter, I've been scattering Final Fantasy shout-outs around the story, mostly to give names to minor characters. Be sure to keep an eye out for them, as well as the other Disney references I toss out.
> 
> And just to clarify in case anyone was confused by one of the last bits, the Keyblade does allow its wielders and those around them to understand conversation and written text in their own first languages, but I'm going to say that Sora, Riku and Kairi's first language is not exactly English. Kind of like Spanglish, they grew up learning a mix of different languages: English, Japanese, and, as you will understand later, Hawaiian. This explains why I modified Disney quotes where characters gratuitously throw in lines of Spanish and French dialogue, as characters such as Lumière always speak French and Flynn/Eugene actually speaks German but the main cast hears it as English (and we hear/read it as such). Going off of smaller details, I determined that Twilight Town is modeled after a Japanese town (the written characters on the posters in KH3 support this), so Sora, Riku and Kairi hear it in the natural Japanese while Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the readers understand it as English. Just wanted to get that bit out there.


	71. Chapter 70: Dive to the Cards

As the hours had gone by, the nine of them decided to call it a day. Hayner, Pence and Olette showed the others to a hotel, where the six visitors decided to check in for the night. They ended up renting out two separate suites next to each other, with Sora, Riku and Kairi in one room and Mickey, Donald and Goofy in the other. Soon, they had turned off the lights and gone to sleep.

* * *

Sora’s dream began with him standing on the surface of an ocean. Moments later, he dropped through and started sinking, soon tumbling until he was upside-down while still descending. Eventually, the water faded into a void and his fall began to slow. Something caused him to slowly turn back around until he was going in a feet-first direction. Looking down, he saw a circular platform embedded with stained-glass pieces. The main focus of the artwork depicted his own sleeping form, wearing the clothes that had granted him Drive power during his previous adventure. Seven circles sat in a larger circle toward the top of the image, though three of them were obscured by Sora’s body. The uncovered circles depicted Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy’s faces.

Sora landed softly on his feet, standing on the stained-glass image of his shoes. He saw another boy standing directly across from him. They boy, who appeared to be the same age as him, wore a black coat not unlike Lea and Isa’s. His face drew similarities to Sora’s own, though his spiky hair was different; the hairdo was tamer than Sora’s and it appeared to be more dirty blond than brown.

Sora and the other boy both walked toward the center. A table and two chairs appeared in the middle of the station. They pulled their respective chairs out and sat down. The other boy pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket and removed a rubber band holding them together. He began to shuffle the deck, rearranging the cards in a practiced manner.

“So, Sora, how’s your adventure going?” the boy asked as he began dealing the cards.

“We’re having fun. Aside from watching three of our friends die, though two of them came back,” Sora told his other half. Or was it ‘other two-thirds’? No one ever really explained how important the ‘soul’ was.

“I see. Any luck figuring out what the bad guys are looking for?” Roxas asked as he finished passing the cards around. They each had ten cards. Roxas put the remaining cards in the middle and flipped the first one over beside it.

Sora shook his head. He took a card from the pile and discarded one from his hand. “We have an idea on what to look for, but we have no idea how it’s all supposed to fit together. And, of course, nobody actually wants to tell us anything.”

Roxas snickered. “Welcome to my world,” he retorted. He drew Sora’s discarded card and laid down a run of 3, 4, and 5 hearts, then discarded a Jack of Clubs. “You know how I left the Organization because of all the secrets.”

“And the lack of trust, even from your best friend. And the manipulations. And because Saïx was a total jerkwad,” Sora added. “Did I miss anything?”

Roxas shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“You know, maybe you should come along to help us with our pitch: don’t tell us what we need to know to help you, and we’ll just give up on the universe,” Sora joked. He drew a new card, laid down a meld of three Kings, and discarded a card.

Roxas laughed. “That might get you somewhere.”

They fell silent and continued playing for a few turns, adding to and creating runs and melds.

“So, we met Hayner, Pence and Olette today,” Sora said.

Roxas nodded without answering. He drew a new card and slipped another one from his hand into Sora’s run.

Sora noticed that his Nobody was nervous. “You don’t want to talk to them?” he asked.

Roxas sighed. “They’re not the gang I know. They don’t know me.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t,” Sora countered. “Hayner even said he’d like to meet you.”

There was a brief silence before Roxas replied. “But I’m deep inside you. We joined back together. What will happen to you if… and how would we separate?”

“We can figure that part out. And you stepped out to talk to me and Naminé just fine.”

“But what if—”

“Roxas,” Sora interrupted.

“Huh?”

“You’re dodging the question.”

Roxas was taken aback. “What?”

“Don’t you _want_ to meet them?”

There was a brief moment of silence. Roxas sighed. “I don’t know. I guess I’m not sure I can really…” Roxas trailed off, not sure what to say.

“You’re afraid to try?”

Roxas was surprised. “What? You think I could?”

“Ansem seemed to think it could work. Or Naminé, maybe, considering how… standoffish Ansem was as DiZ. Maybe she saw you meet the real ‘them’ the first couple times and that gave her the idea to make them your friends in the virtual world. She probably figured that if you had a fully-developed heart then and you got to meet them a few more times, you’d be fast friends”

“Maybe that’s how she saw it then. But that was before… Now…”

Sora raised an eyebrow. “You’re afraid to try to make friends?” he surmised. “Since Axel kept secrets from you and drove you away, and since you thought you could be friends with Hayner, Pence and Olette only to find that it was all an illusion, you’re afraid that any attempt at friendship will fail.”

After a moment, Roxas nodded. “I guess so.”

Sora looked into his eyes solemnly, before giving him a smile. “I think you can manage,” he said. “After all, I’m your friend, right?”

Roxas was mildly surprised. He allowed himself a small smile and offered a soft nod. “Yeah, I guess.”

Sora drew a fresh card from the deck and analyzed his hand. “Or, maybe not anymore,” he joked as he showed Roxas his hand, added three cards to a run, and discarded his last card, thereby winning the game.

Roxas let his jaw drop in mock horror. “Wow, talk about heartless!” Roxas quipped. They both started laughing.

“Well, at least I never had mine sitting in a jar of dirt!” Sora retorted.

Roxas appeared confused. “Pardon?”

Sora caught himself. “Oh, right. Well, the last couple days, we helped Captain Jack try to get ahold of the heart of Davy Jones to get Jones and his Kraken to stop hunting Jack,” he recounted. “Jones had his actual heart locked away in a chest, and Jack was trying to get it as leverage, since killing the heart would kill Jones himself.

“How’d that go?” Roxas asked, curious.

Sora frowned and looked down. “It didn’t work out.”

“Sorry,” Roxas said sympathetically. After a sorrowful pause, Roxas started to wonder something. “So, is there a difference between losing your heart and whatever was going on with Davy Jones?”

Sora nodded. “It wasn’t like the glowing orb/spiritual heart. It was the blood-pumping organ. But he apparently thought there wasn’t a difference.”

“You mean that he thought removing his beating heart would leave him without having to deal with emotions?”

Sora nodded. “Of course, someone should have told him that it doesn’t actually work in the long-term, even if he got it right the first time.” He gathered up all of the cards and started re-shuffling them.

Roxas laughed. “You think Xemnas and Xigbar knew?” he asked.

Sora shrugged. “Xemnas probably figured it out at some point. And if anyone else was in on it, it would be Xigbar.” He dealt the cards out and flipped another card to create the discard pile.

“Yeah. He seemed to know way more about Xemnas’ plans than he was letting on.”

“He seemed to think Xemnas, or rather Xehanort, had something else planned after we beat them, at least as a backup.”

Roxas made his first turn. “You think Xehanort came back like the others?”

“One would assume. But you’d think we’d have caught wind of something. Hopefully, Leon and the others will have found something out by the time we see them again.”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

They played a few turns. While they played, Sora thought back to what he had seen while getting ice cream earlier that day.

“Say, Roxas?”

“Hmm?”

“Does the name ‘Shion’ mean anything to you?”

Roxas thought hard about the question. The name did not ring any bells, but something tugged at him when he thought of the strange name.

He shook his head. “I… can’t say that it does. Sorry,” he answered. “Why do you ask?”

Sora shrugged. “I just saw the name somewhere today. I was just curious,” he replied.

They let the topic drop, and continued to play for the rest of the night.


	72. Chapter 71: The Old Mansion

It took Goofy shaking him for Sora to know that it was a good time to get up. Since the sun was always in a twilight position, it proved unhelpful in providing an indicator for when morning had come. And since Sora had for a long time back home been known for taking naps on the beach, that meant Sora was the last one still asleep by the time Donald had gotten fed up with waiting for him. The duck had wanted to cast Thunder to jolt him awake, but Goofy managed to convince him to let him try a gentle nudge.

“Morning,” Kairi said when Sora finally opened his eyes. “This place has a cafeteria. Now that you’re awake, we can all go get breakfast.”

Sora got out of bed and stretched. “Sure thing,” he yawned.

After breakfast, they checked out of the hotel and took a walk around Market Street. They ran into Hayner, Pence and Olette as they were coming down from the train station. It was Sunday, so the three of them did not have school that day.

“Hey, guys,” Sora greeted. “What’s up?”

“Morning,” Hayner returned the greeting. “So, we were thinking about what you told us yesterday, about Roxas and Naminé, and we were thinking of going into the Old Mansion to check it out, figure out more about them and everything that had been going on.”

“You want to come?” Olette asked.

“Sure,” Sora replied. He looked to his friends for confirmation, and they all nodded in agreement.

“Great! Follow me, then!” Hayner said as he began marching past the group and walking toward Tram Common. The others began to follow him.

“Why are we going this way?” Kairi asked.

“Did you see the hole in the wall on the far end of Tram Common?” Sora asked. Kairi nodded. “Well, that leads out into the woods. Go through the woods, and you’ll find the mansion.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

The party of nine passed through the Common and, sure enough, came to a hole in the far wall large enough for a person to walk through. Kairi wondered what sort of force could have made a hole like that. They passed through one at a time and came into a thick wooded area. For the most part, the heavy canopy of the trees blotted out the sky, and the dense amount of trees prevented almost any sunlight from coming in horizontally, though some light was able to shine through the treetops, allowing the group to see in front of them.

They walked a short distance straight ahead, then gradually arced toward the left. Soon, they could see, through an open path free of trees, a clearing in which sat an old mansion. With their target in sight, they made their way toward the clearing.

A brown brick wall extended beyond the front doors on either side of the building and came together, meeting in the middle at an iron gate, creating an enclosed front yard. The gate hung wide open, having been left that way since some time before Sora, Donald and Goofy had woken up in the basement. Stone structures resembling archways sat between the gate and the mansion itself, but they had suffered extensive damage to the point that they were hardly recognizable beyond appearing as a few broken columns. A row of bushes sat against either side wall.

The mansion stood two stories, with gable roofing on the sides and a single-story-size tower in the center with flanking spires. There was a round stained-glass window in the center of that tower. A small turret with a tall conical roof stood on the roof on the right half of the building. There were windows on either side on the second floor; the window on the right offered a look into a brown-decorated room with brown curtains while the window on the left offered a look into a white room with white curtains.

Once the party and stepped past the gate, Pence pointed at the window to the white room. “So, that was Naminé’s room?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Riku answered.

“Must’ve been lonely,” Olette said sympathetically, “being up there all by herself.”

Riku nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“Alright. Let’s check it out,” Hayner said. “But watch out for those ‘Nobody’ things. Remember last time?”

Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey remembered finding Hayner, Pence and Olette injured in the yard, surrounded by a group of Dusks that had ambushed them when they had come to investigate the “Second Twilight Town”. Pence and Olette adjusted their positions so that they were safely enclosed between the Keyblade wielders, the wizard and the knight. Olette tried to pull Kairi into the safety circle, but the redhead gave her a confident look that let her know that she could handle herself against possible attackers.

Hayner, either in his confidence or bravado or due to simply missing the visual cue, remained in the lead. He led the group to the front doors and pulled them open. In the center of the foyer was a table with a metal-rimmed glass case, in which sat a bronze model of some sort of building. There was a set of stairs on either side leading up to a higher level which overlooked the lower section of the room. There was a door on either side wall, next to each set of stairs, though debris blocked access to the door on the right wall. In the back, between the staircases, a glass double door led out into a courtyard behind the main building. A chandelier hung from the ceiling above the glass case. On the front-most wall directly across from the upper landing, a golden coat of arms depicting two unicorns was mounted.

The group climbed the leftmost stairs and turned to approach the door leading to the room on the southern side of the building. Kairi stepped forward and opened the door, being the first to enter the room in which her Nobody had lived.

The entire room was white, even the table, the chairs, and a statue on the table resembling a potted flower. It was eerie how there was no color in the furniture.

“Jeez, I can see where the idea that she was a ghost girl came from,” Hayner remarked. “This place doesn’t have a spot of life in it.”

However, that was not entirely true. A few seconds after Hayner made that comment, Pence, Olette and Kairi noticed numerous pieces of paper strewn about the place, each one scrawled with crayon drawings. Most were taped to the walls while a few lay on the floor. Riku had already been in this room before, with and without a blindfold, so he already knew what he would find.

Pence walked to the wall opposite from the door and examined the pictured taped there. “Hey, take a look at this. This one looks like you three,” he said. Sora, Donald and Goofy stepped up, with Kairi and Mickey not far behind, and saw that Pence was right. The crayon sketch showed Sora, Donald and Goofy, with Sora wearing his original red jumpsuit, blue vest and yellow shoes.

“She really was quite the artist,” Kairi commented.

“Hey, take a look at this!” Olette called from the other side of the room. The others walked around to see what she was drawing their attention toward. “Aren’t these two Roxas and Axel?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. That would be them,” he answered.

“Then I wonder who these two are,” Olette mused.

The rest of the party examined the sketch closely. They realized that the drawings of Roxas and Axel were from a rear view, and they were facing two other characters who appeared to be wearing black hooded coats.

“Organization XIII?” Goofy guessed.

“Those guys weren’t the only ones to wear the coats,” Mickey reminded him. “And why would other Organization members keep their faces concealed around Roxas and Axel?”

Kairi noticed one character’s figure. “Did the Organization have women in their group?” she asked.

Mickey took a moment to ponder the question. “Well, I think there was one. I never met her, but Larxene was number twelve, the most recent member before Roxas.”

“Larxene?” Sora repeated, recognizing the name. “Wasn’t she at Castle Oblivion working with Marluxia?”

“Castle what?” Hayner asked, having no idea what he was talking about.

“Long story,” Riku waved the question off.

“From what I heard, she was an utter sadist with lightning powers who toyed with your jumbled memories and emotions. I also heard that you were the one to defeat her,” Mickey explained.

Sora imagined the scenario. “Huh. Almost makes me wish I remembered doing that,” he mused.

“If she came back as a Somebody, maybe one day you’ll get the chance to do it again,” Donald suggested.

“Thing is,” Kairi said, bringing the conversation back to its original topic, “Roxas wasn’t in the Organization that long before Larxene was eliminated. And Naminé didn’t really have a full sense of self then, either. So I can’t imagine it being her.”

“Say, Riku,” Mickey said, getting the silver-haired teen’s attention, “you think the other figure might have been you?”

Riku shrugged. “Maybe. I kind of remember running into the two of them together, and then fleeing. But the details are fuzzy. I’m not quite sure what they were looking for when they tried to chase after me.”

Sora raised an eyebrow, quite curious by this statement. He had noticed the previous night that Roxas had claimed to be unfamiliar with the name “Shion”, but he looked as though something inside him had resonated to the name, as if there should have been something there but any memory was inaccessible. He wondered if something similar had happened to Riku, much like how his own memories had been messed with previously.

Looking around at the rest of the drawings, Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized scenes from their first adventure. It made quite a bit of sense that Naminé would have drawn those scenes, as those had been Sora’s most recent memories prior to her coming into existence, and those would have been the among the most prominent scenes she would have seen. When Hayner, Pence, or Olette inquired about a page, Sora, Donald and Goofy would explain what had happened as best they could.

“Hard to believe that there are so many different worlds beyond our own,” Pence said.

“That was a story we had all been told back on our island,” Riku told him. “But it is pretty darn cool when you get to see your first new world.”

“It’s never _not_ cool,” Sora agreed wholeheartedly.

“So, Naminé had ‘visions’ of your memories, and she could rearrange your memories and your friends’ memories?” Hayner asked for clarification.

“She could also synthesize memories that weren’t already there,” Riku added.

“Freaky,” Hayner muttered. “I guess, even though she wasn’t a ghost, there sure was enough about her to make a Wonder.”

“I wonder what else they had in this place, putting together an entire copy of the town,” Pence mused.

Sora crossed his arms, slightly confused. “Didn’t you take a look at Ansem’s computer in the basement?” he asked.

“Well, I tried, but the rest of the data was heavily encrypted,” Pence explained. “I couldn’t get much farther than turning on the portal with the password you gave me and a medium-quality rendering of the town.”

Riku chuckled. “DiZ told me after the fact that ice cream was a stupid password, but I convinced him to keep it. I said: ‘Nobody would ever figure out that the secret code to your super-secure computer would be a snack that everyone loves!’ And he bought it.”

Everyone laughed. “I guess that explains the hole between dimensions in that simulation,” Sora joked. “I wonder what other kinds of bugs he let get into the system when he was in one of those moods.”

“Hey, you know, since Riku was working with Ansem during that time, he might be able to help you look further into the computer files,” Goofy suggested.

“That’s a good idea. Thanks, Goofy,” Pence said. “Come on!” He led the group out of the White Room. Kairi followed a few seconds after and was the last to leave her other half’s room.

When they took their first steps through the upper level of the foyer, they saw a swirl of grey thorns materialize in front of them. When the swirl faded, a trio gray humanoid figures with strange-looking heads and traditional-looking robes stood in front of them. These figures had a pair of sheathed swords slung over their backs.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey jumped in front of Hayner, Pence and Olette and summoned their Keyblades, with Donald and Goofy a step behind them in defensive positions and summoned their staff and shield.

“Great! More of these things!” Hayner complained. “What’s their quirk?”

“The Samurai Nobodies attack with both of their swords, and also the sheathes,” Riku explained.

“How does that work?” Hayner asked, baffled.

“How does anything work with these things?” Sora countered. “Some can swim halfway through the floor, and others get dragged around by giant living hammers. At some point, you learn that there are things that you just don’t question.” He raised his Keyblade to deflect a sword strike and retaliated with a strike that sent his opponent reeling.

Kairi parried each of her adversary’s strikes, which was not easy when it was slashing rapid-fire with both its swords and its sheathes. Riku’s enemy found itself on the defensive when he blocked it from striking with a Dark Shield and teleported behind it to strike. Mickey was left as the odd swordsman out, so he decided to help Kairi rebound after her Samurai broke past her defenses and slashed her across the leg. He attacked the Samurai from the side, catching it off guard as he struck it in the arm. The first attack knocked it off balance, and he dealt a vertical swing that knocked it over the railing. Kairi recovered and cast Zero Gravity on the Samurai, bringing it back up to her level. She delivered a series of slashes and stabs until the spell faded, at which point the greatly-wounded Nobody dropped to the floor and disintegrated into clouds of a paper-like substance when it crash-landed.

Sora’s Samurai took a duel stance, and Sora took a similar pose to meet its challenge. He waited for the right instant to clash with its strike. However, he was half a second too slow, and it attacked as he was beginning to raise his counter. The Samurai slid by him at lightning speed, dragging its blade through his gut. However, aside from some broken tissue and a bit of bleeding, Sora was not harmed too badly.

“The timing always gets me,” Sora grunted. He spun around and delivered three hits. As he moved in as if to finish the combo, he took a step forward as if breaking into a run, then vanished. Half a second later, he reappeared behind the Samurai, in a position indicating that he had just finished an attack. The Samurai exploded, the unseen attack having brought an instantaneous victory.

“Whoa!” Hayner gasped. “What was that?”

However, Sora was too busy fighting to answer. Just as Riku had vanquished his opponent, six more Nobodies appeared, each resembling a tiny mercury-colored humanoid with a teardrop for a head and shoes for hands. One of the Creepers shifted into a floating sword and swiped at Sora and Mickey. Mickey parried the blow, sending it off balance. Sora struck while it was trying to regain its wits and it fell back to its normal form. Mickey, Donald and Goofy began attacking some of the other Creepers. Two of the creatures collapsed into balls, pulsed like beating hearts for a second, and then vanished. They came down from above in the form of spears. Kairi screamed in pain as one impaled itself into her foot. She sliced through the transformed Creeper several times with her Keyblade until it faded to nothingness. Donald noticed the injuries being racked up and cast Curaga, healing all wounds.

Noticing the hole in her shoe, Kairi glared at the other Creepers. “I really liked that shoe!” she yelled in frustration. “Aerora!” A powerful gust of wind blew through the mansion lifting the lightweight Creepers into the air. As the Nobodies were unable to defend themselves in this condition, the party struck them in midair until they were no more.

Once everything had calmed down, the heroes dismissed their weapons. They turned around to find Hayner, Pence and Olette, whose jaws had dropped in amazement.

“That was so cool!” Pence shouted excitably.

“Seriously, what was that when you just disappeared and reappeared and that thing went kablooey?” Hayner asked.

It took Sora a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “Oh. That? Our friend Leon called it ‘Zantetsuken Slash’. I don’t really know how it works. Best I can tell, I warp into a different plane where my speed increases for a few feet. My physical form doesn’t connect with anything in front of me, but the Keyblade’s energy reaches back to this plane. Since I don’t actually touch the Nobody, or Heartless otherwise, so the Keyblade’s raw power still slices through it. So, I guess that does more damage, somehow,” Sora explained, with some difficulty.

“Huh. Well, that is a pretty neat trick,” Hayner said.

Kairi pouted at the stab hole in her shoe and looked at Sora enviously. “How come your clothes don’t get damaged?” she asked.

Sora shrugged. “I think I got a few cuts and holes over the last few months,” he admitted. But I guess the fairies’ magic made it so they repaired automatically.”

Kairi crossed her arms in annoyance. “How come you’re the only one who gets the magic clothes?” she muttered.

Sora shrugged. “Next time we see them, I’ll ask them to do something for you.”

“Either way, we should get to the computer room before any more of those Nobodies appear,” Pence reminded them. The others nodded in agreement and continued walking around to the door on the opposite side of the foyer from the White Room.

The walls of the library were lined with shelves upon shelves of books. An alcove set into the wall in which the door was built held a statue resembling a unicorn head with wings. A significant portion of the floor was gone, leaving a staircase leading down two floors into a room with dark blue metal walls and floor with glowing green lines and squares around the place.

The party of nine descended into the highly-advanced basement where Ansem the Wise, in his guise of DiZ, conducted his work on the Simulated Twilight Town, ensuring that Sora’s memories would be restored, and spying on Organization XIII via Riku. Riku knocked on a door beside the stairwell. The door slid open and they walked through one-at-a-time. They entered a room containing a large computer console with screens mounted above it and a small circular alcove to the right. None of the screens were active, as Pence had shut the computer down after he had finished using it months ago.

“Alright, let me turn this thing on,” Pence said as he sat down in the chair and started pressing buttons to activate the computer system. A few seconds after flipping the Master switch and pressing the power buttons, the console started to light up. The screen directly in front of Pence lit up and, after a moment of loading, brought up a text input box requesting a password. “Okay, ‘Sea-Salt Ice Cream’, and…” He typed the password in and hit ENTER. The box disappeared and the screen remained blank while the computer loaded. The other screens gradually came online. One depicted a silhouette of Sora, with a blank graph that looked as though it was supposed to monitor vitals. “We’re in!” Pence shouted triumphantly.

“Let’s start with the Other Twilight Town,” Hayner suggested.

Pence nodded. He double-clicked on a folder labeled “TT_Sim”. A text input window appeared, requesting a password. “Hey, Riku?” he called out, prompting him for something to type in.

“Grid-nine-five-D-greater-than-sign-zero,” Riku instructed. Pence nodded and typed it in: “Grid95D>0”. He hit ENTER.

A window opened up showing numerous .exe files, many of them sharing names with the town’s citizens. At the top of the list, Pence noticed a folder labeled “Footage”. He double-clicked on that and uncovered six files, “Day_1.mp4”, “Day_2.mp4”, “Day_3.mp4”, “Day_4.mp4”, “Day_5.mp4”, and “Day_6.mp4”, as well as a seventh, apparently AutoSaved, file, “Video1.mp4”.

“Freaky,” Hayner said. “He had a copy of everyone, right down to Mrs. Cole’s cat. And he used it to create a duplicate of our world.”

“Why is it still recording?” Olette asked, noticing that the file size for the “Video1” video file increased all on its own. The file seemed to be far larger than the other files.

“Let’s find out,” Pence said. He double-clicked on the video file and a window popped up. A video played, with the screen segmented into nine sections. Each section showed a different part of town. The audience at the computer could see shoppers milling about Tram Common, an older woman swatting at bees with a broom, Seifer and his partners sparring in the Sandlot, Hayner, Pence and Olette themselves chatting in the Usual Spot, business as usual in the train station, people walking around and talking amongst friends at Sunset Terrace, a kid skateboarding at the Station Heights of Market Street, and a kid with a funny-looking witch’s hat swatting trees with a foam bat in the Old Woods.

“They’re just going about their business…” Sora observed.

“One would have thought Ansem would have shut this thing down after Roxas was done in it,” Donald commented.

“Maybe he just left it alone when he left and it was just running on its own,” Goofy surmised.

“And they’re acting all on their own. Ansem did this at the end of the summer, right? He didn’t install any conditions for the rest of the year,” Pence mused. “And yet they’re acting as if they’ve been doing this stuff their entire lives.”

“Maybe from their experiences during the first week, acting out what they were programmed to do and how they were programmed to react, they developed a will to do those things on their own and have just been doing what to them is their everyday lifestyle,” Kairi suggested.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hayner asked.

“Kairi thinks they developed hearts of their own and are following their own will rather than what Ansem programmed into them,” Sora summarized.

“What do you mean by ‘developed hearts of their own’?” Olette asked.

“We’ve started to think that anything with a mind of its own, such as Nobodies or programs for example, can have a heart of its own, even if it didn’t start out with one,” Riku explained.

“Yeah, I’m just going to pretend I understand that,” Hayner remarked.

“Hold on. Pence, can you go back out of the video folder?” Sora asked. Pence nodded, closed the video window, and click the back arrow on the file explorer. Sora took the mouse from Pence’s hand and scrolled down past the names until he could see a list of locations. “Quick question, is there a beach around here?”

Pence nodded. “Yeah. It’s outside of the town line, and you take the second train to get there,” he explained. “Why do you ask?”

“Because it looks like there isn’t one in here,” Sora answered, pointing to the list of files named after locations.

“You’re right!” Pence said on closer examination. “Why isn’t there a beach?”

Riku chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Ansem said that it would only give the Dusks another access point to breach the system,” he explained. “So I had to go to the trouble of tripping Roxas and stealing his Munny on his second day when he and the digital versions of you guys wanted to go to the beach so that you wouldn’t fall into a void of a hanging hyperlink just because Ansem couldn’t invest in securing his system.”

Sora laughed. “He might as well have risked the extra access point since the Dusks breached the system on day one!” he quipped.

“What? Really?” Hayner gasped, amused.

“Play the video, Pence,” Sora requested.

Pence entered the footage folder and double-clicked on the first file. They watched footage from Roxas’ first day in the simulation. After it was over, everyone burst out laughing.

“It wasn’t even ten minutes before the Nobodies had started messing around!” Hayner teased between fits of laughter.

“And he couldn’t be bothered to make a beach!” Sora added.

“I called him out on it,” Riku claimed. “It was pretty ridiculous. And then he told me to get rid of the Munny pouch because it ‘didn’t belong in the real world’. I mean, come on!”

They continued laughing, until they grew tired of it.

“Hey, what else do you think is on here?” Hayner asked.

Pence closed the video window and the file explorer and scanned around the desktop, looking for interesting shortcuts. He hovered the cursor over a folder labeled “Secret Ansem Reports”. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

Sora waved it off. “Eh, we already found all of them,” he said in a disinterested tone.

“Okay…” Pence hovered over a folder labeled “Xehanort ORG”. “What about this?”

Mickey’s face lit up. “That might be helpful,” he said.

Pence double-clicked on the folder and a text input box appeared. “Password?” he requested.

“Revenge, all in capital letters, then the number thirteen,” Riku answered.

“This guy had issues,” Pence muttered. He typed the password in and hit ENTER. A file explorer opened up. “So, what’s a ‘Xehanort’?” he asked.

“Long story short, he was responsible for a lot of suffering in the past several years,” Riku explained. “His Nobody was the leader of Organization XIII.”

“When we defeat a Heartless and its corresponding Nobody, they reform as the original Somebody,” Donald added. “But we haven’t found anything about Xehanort coming back, even though a lot of the other Organization XIII members returned to normal. So, we’re hoping to get some answers.”

“Got it,” Pence said, sort of understanding. He scrolled through the list of files. “Say, you want a copy of these files?” he asked. “Might give you some clues.”

“That would be great,” Sora said.

“Use this,” Mickey said, taking a flash drive out of his pocket and handing it to Pence. Pence plugged it into a USB port and began dragging the files into the drive. When the progress bar filled up and the files were all copied, Pence ejected the drive and handed it back to Mickey, who pocketed the drive.

“I’m afraid that’s all I’ll be able to help you get into,” Riku said apologetically. “I didn’t really spend a lot of time in here, mostly providing updates and overseeing Roxas’ week in the simulation.”

“That’s alright,” Pence assured him. “I’m glad we got to see what we could.” He started to begin shutting the computer down, but Riku stopped him.

“Hold on a moment,” Riku said. “There’s one thing I’d like to do. You guys go on ahead. I’ll join you when I finish up.”

Pence nodded and made room for Riku. The party then exited the room and returned to the mansion’s foyer. They waited by the display until Riku rejoined them.

“You sure the stuff on that little stick will help you?” Hayner asked as they stepped out the front doors.

“Could give us a few leads,” Mickey said. “If Ansem had figured out any of Xehanort’s greater plans, this might help us understand what happened to him.”

Sora crossed his hands behind his head. “It was interesting taking another look through the old mansion.”

“Sure was,” Goofy agreed.

As the group exited through the woods to return to town, Kairi remained behind for a moment. He opened up her tablet pouch and pulled out a piece of paper. She held the paper in front of her and stared at the two hooded figures in the drawing with Roxas and Axel, wondering what it all meant.

“Naminé, why aren’t you answering me?” she asked in a mumble. “Who is this girl?”

When her questions were met with silence and a hesitation that she could clearly feel within her heart, Kairi sighed. She slipped the drawing back into her pouch and ran to rejoin her friends.


	73. Chapter 72: Let's Struggle!

As they entered town and began to make their way back to the Usual Spot, they took a shortcut through the sandlot. When they noticed that Seifer and his gang were still there, they stuck to the opposite corner, hoping to avoid an unnecessary confrontation.

However, Seifer noticed them and scowled. “Hey!” he barked, causing them to stop. He still seemed sour from the run-in the previous day. He sauntered up to them, a glare on his face. His cohorts followed right behind him. “You’ve all got a lot of nerve showing up here after what you pulled yesterday.”

“Pulled what?” Sora groaned.

“What? You want some more?” Seifer threatened.

Goofy shot a glare letting Seifer know that he was not amused. He was starting to sound like someone he knew.

“Uh, Seifer, I’m not too sure this is a good idea, y’know?” Rai warned.

“Overshooting,” Fuu agreed.

Sora glared back at Seifer, expecting the older teen to start something and preparing to act accordingly. However, Riku stepped forward and met Seifer’s gaze. He maintained eye contact, keeping a neutral but stern expression.

“What are you looking at?” Seifer growled.

“Oh, nothing,” Riku said calmly. “Just wondering where you got that beauty mark.” He pointed at Seifer’s scar.

“Hmph. Some troublemaker came to school with a knife. I showed him what’s what,” Seifer replied.

“Okay, not bad,” Riku conceded. “But the way you said that would imply that you actually know how you should treat your peers.”

“Well, don’t you think you’re so big and bad for a new guy in town? You may be senior age, but that doesn’t mean you can just tramp through here like you don’t need to listen to the big guys.”

“Oh, then by all means. But I don’t think most respected authority figures are known to call other people ‘lamers’.”

Hayner and Pence laughed at the retort. Rai stepped back in shock. Fuu shrugged, as if conceding the point. A couple random passerby stopped to watch the verbal clash.

Seifer was getting irritated. He did not like this stranger waltzing in and acting like he was better than him. “I don’t like people trying to tell me how to do my job. But I’ll give you one last chance to apologize and get lost before I _show_ you what it is.”

“What are you? The mayor? I don’t see anything saying you get to decide who can go where they please and say their piece.”

Seifer balled up his fists, but he quickly realized that a crowd was forming around the sandlot. He couldn’t lose his cool like this. Of course, the fact that he was harassing a group of nine would make it difficult for him to save face. But he knew that they would not try anything too rash either, so it was up to him to take control of the situation.

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. But, I guess if you get on your knees and beg, _maybe_ I’ll let it slide,” he offered mockingly.

“Hmph,” Riku grunted. “Thanks, but not my style.”

A cold silence fell between them. Rai and Fuu were nervous, but they put up a tough façade to support their friend. The crowd steadily grew. They started to chant something.

“Struggle. Struggle. Struggle.”

Sora knew what they were doing. When he had almost gotten into a fight with Seifer, a man interrupted the confrontation and suggested that they settle their differences in a Struggle match. Granted, that match had not come until a later visit, but Sora understood the intention. Every year, during the summer, the town put together a tournament where competitors would compete in one-on-one matches. At the end of the summer, the top four challengers would clash, and the top two would fight to decide who would win the Struggle Trophy, and also get the chance to go up against the reigning champion. He knew that on the fourth day of the simulation, Roxas had won the tournament and become the new Struggle champion. He could tell that the people wanted Riku and Seifer to duke it out in a Struggle match.

“Struggle! Struggle! STRUGGLE! STRUGGLE!”

Seifer threw his hands up. “Fine. You all want it? You’re gonna get it.” He pointed a finger at Riku. “You better get ready. 'Cause I’m about to own you in this.” He walked off to prepare. Rai and Fuu followed him.

A child who appeared no older than nine, wearing a denim jacket, a yellow-tan witch’s hat with an opened zipper on the stocking part, brown gloves and shoes, and green pants approached Riku, holding a blue foam bat with a plastic handle. To Sora, Riku and Kairi’s bemusement, his head appeared entirely black with yellow oval-shaped eyes, but his gaze was full of innocence. The boy handed the foam bat to Riku, adjusted his hat, then ran off to follow Seifer and his partners.

Riku turned to his friends, holding the foam bat uncertainly. “So… how does a Struggle work?” he asked.

Sora took the bat from Riku’s hand and swung it around a bit. “You hit the other guy with the foam bat and try to knock his balls off,” he said.

Riku stared at Sora for a long minute, trying to process what he said. “What?” he finally said.

Hayner took the bat from Sora. “You and your opponent wear Velcro suits, and one hundred orbs are attached to each of you. The match lasts one minute. The objective is to fight your opponent and try to knock off as many orbs as you can with your bat, and attach them to your suit. The challenger with the most orbs when time is up is the winner,” he explained.

Riku regarded the foam bat and nodded. “Alright. Let’s give it a go,” he said.

* * *

Within an hour, word had spread of the day’s Struggle. A team had raised a stage in the Sandlot, taking up most of the area and leaving the perimeter for the audience to stand around and watch.

Riku wore bands of Velcro around his arms, legs, torso, and forehead. Sora, Kairi and Hayner helped him attach small blue orbs. Seifer was already wearing his suit, and Rai and Fuu were busy attaching the last of his red orbs.

When they were done, Riku and Seifer approached an obese man with a bisected moustache and a yellow-and-green track suit. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” the man greeted. He turned to look at Riku directly. “Name’s Dio. It’s a pleasure to have you in this match.” He turned back to include Seifer in the conversation. “Now, I’m sure you both know the rules, but let me explain them again.” He explained the rules. “Now, are you two ready?” Riku and Seifer nodded. “Alright, then. Now, you get up there, and I’ll talk to Biggs so we can get this match going.”

The two competitors nodded and parted ways. They took their Struggle bats from their respective companions and climbed the steps up to the stage, facing each other on opposite sides. This was met with some applause.

A man who appeared to be in his mid- to upper twenties stood on a wooden podium on the side where Seifer stood. He had brown eyes and dirty blond hair, and he wore a black jerkin with white sleeves and a yellow stripe across the chest, red shorts, two-shade orange shoes, and a blue armband. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Biggs, and I’ll be your ref for today’s match,” he said. “On this fine Sunday afternoon, a local resident and a newcomer are about to settle their differences on the stage. Over here, we have our current tournament champion, Seifer Almasy! When he finds something he doesn’t agree with, he clashes with it head-on. And on the other end of the Sandlot, our town has a new visitor, and he’s got a problem with Seifer’s attitude, Riku!”

Seifer pointed his bat at Riku tauntingly. Riku held his over his head like he would his Keyblade. A portion of the crowd, including Rai, cheered Seifer’s name, while Sora, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Hayner, Pence, and Olette called out in support of Riku.

Biggs cleared his throat to indicate that the crowd should quiet down. “Alright, then. Put one minute on the clock and let’s STRUGGLE!”

A horn blared and the fight commenced. Seifer lunged at Riku and swung his bat downward, but Riku stepped out of the way, letting him stumble past him. He then struck Seifer in the arm, sending a dozen orbs flying across the stage. He swung again, but Seifer blocked and retaliated with a blow to the side. They took a moment to try to gather up as many orbs as they could, but Seifer launched into a spinning attack to try to stop Riku. Riku parried the attack and delivered a combo, knocking thirty-four orbs loose from Seifer’s person. Seifer struck back and knocked eleven orbs off of Riku.

Seifer jumped back while Riku set about gathering the fallen orbs. He jumped into the air, pointed his bat at Riku, and dove toward him. “Isn’t this romantic?!” he shouted as he came down.

Riku brought his hands to his cheeks in mock surprise. “Really? I didn’t know you felt that way,” he joked as he stepped out of the way of the attack, letting Seifer pass harmlessly by. “I-I don’t know what to say.” He attacked Seifer, knocking him across the stage and making him drop more orbs.

Enraged, Seifer picked himself up and charged at Riku. He struck Riku in the gut, then in the leg, but Riku retaliated and hit him in the chin, shoulder, and side, sending him flying. As they realized that time was winding down, they stopped what they were doing to gather up the scattered orbs and attach as many as possible to their suits.

A bell rang, signaling the end of the match. Riku and Seifer stopped collecting the orbs and stood straight up. A quick glance made it obvious that Riku was the winner, having far more orbs on his suit than Seifer. But Biggs stepped up, carrying two buckets to make a point of counting how many orbs they each had. When all was said and done, Seifer had only sixty while Riku had one hundred and twenty. Dio marked the score off on the bulletin board, showing all that Riku had won with twice as many orbs as Seifer. Riku’s friends, as well as a number of townsfolk who had turned to his side, cheered.

“Well, it looks like a classic dark horse victory,” Biggs announced. “The winner is Riku!” He grabbed Riku’s wrist and held his arm up. This announcement was met with even greater cheers.

“Way to go, Riku!” Sora called.

“We knew you could do it!” Mickey shouted.

“Yeah! Riku!” Kairi cheered.

Riku enjoyed the cheers and the feeling of triumph. His competitive spirit had been riled up by his banter with Seifer and it had been stoked even more as the anticipation for the Struggle built up. He had not felt this confident and proud since before he had first left the islands. It felt good.

Riku climbed down and joined his friends. Sora pulled him into a headlock while Kairi and Mickey gave him pats on the back.

“You sure showed him!” Sora congratulated.

A man with long silver hair, purple eyes, and several thin scars on his face approached them, prompting Sora, Kairi and Mickey to stop horsing around. The man wore a loose shirt that was lilac in the front and purple in the back, black pants, knee-high lilac boots with swirly lavender designs, a han purple sash around his waist and covering part of his left leg, a black belt with a skull-shaped buckle, and a long black coat with yellow lining which he wore as a cape and kept in place with a short silver chain.

Sora had seen him around town a few times, though he had never met him personally. Roxas, however, had encountered him in the Simulated Twilight Town. Setzer was the Struggle champion until Roxas faced him and won.

“You were pretty good up there,” he told Riku. “I always enjoy an unexpected challenge to place my bets on.”

Mickey raised his eyebrow. “Do you actually gamble on these?” he asked.

Setzer chuckled. “Not in that sense, no. But wondering who will come out on top, between the familiar champion and an unknown challenger, is half the fun.” He turned back to address Riku. “And it sure was fun.”

“Uh, thanks,” Riku replied.

“Never be afraid to face the unknown,” Setzer advised. “But be sure you know what chips you are putting in the pile when you do so.” With that, he walked off.

A moment later, Seifer approached them, not looking too happy that he had lost. He was followed by Rai, Fuu, and the Shadow-faced kid, Vivi. “Hmph. You got lucky,” Seifer said coldly, trying to maintain a confident appearance. “But don’t let this win go to your head. I’ll show you, one day.”

He walked off, leaving his companions. “That was a good fight, y’know? I mean—” Rai blurted as he realized that he was praising Riku.

“Unanticipated performance,” Fuu said, maintaining a little more ambiguity in what she had meant, though the party could easily guess. Rai ran off in embarrassment while Fuu simply walked away calmly.

That left Vivi, who looked up at Riku. “That was cool, Mister,” he said sincerely. He adjusted his hat and ran off to rejoin Seifer’s gang.

“Do you know what you just did?” Hayner asked. Riku looked at him in confusion. “You just beat Seifer in a Struggle match.” He punched Riku lightly on the arm. “You know what that means?”

Pence and Olette pointed their thumbs back over their shoulders, in the direction of Market Street. Sora nodded in understanding.

“You just earned ‘the icing on the cake’,” Sora said.

* * *

The party of nine had purchased Sea-Salt Ice Cream and leaned back against the nearby wall. They enjoyed the salty-and-sweet taste in each bite. They mostly remained silent, replaying the match in their minds, though Sora, Kairi, Hayner, Pence, and Olette momentarily contemplated the discoveries made and questions raised in the mansion that morning.

Sora looked up at the sky and a thought occurred to him. “Say, have you guys ever gone up to eat on the clock tower?” he asked.

Hayner, Pence and Olette were surprised by the question. Pence wondered why he would ask something like that, while Olette worried that something like that would be dangerous.

“No, why?” Hayner replied.

Sora shrugged. “It’s just… I know a guy who would tell you that the view up there is great.”

Riku, Donald and Goofy smiled. Kairi giggled. Hayner raised an eyebrow while Pence and Olette looked at each other in confusion, before the three of them finally mouthed “Oh”. They had gotten an idea as to who Sora was referring to.


	74. Chapter 73: Photos

Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy went around stocking up on items, armor, and accessories from the shops. They had already gone through most of the wares on previous visits and found better armaments, but Sora figured that he ought to give Riku and Kairi some more options, especially since Kairi had barely upgraded from the kneepads and armguard that she had picked up in Radiant Garden. And, of course, it was always good to support local businesses, especially when they could do well to make use of the vast amounts of Munny that they had accumulated through defeating Heartless.

They met up with Riku, Kairi, Hayner, Pence, and Olette at the train station. The Twilight Town trio looked sad. They knew what was going on.

“So, time to go, huh?” Hayner asked.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. We have work to do,” he replied.

“But I’m sure we’ll stop by again to say hello,” Kairi assured them.

“Good luck!” Pence said.

Riku took out a small piece of paper and handed it to Hayner. “Take this,” he said.

“What’s this?” Hayner asked as he took the paper.

“A parting gift,” Riku answered. “A bit of a reminder of what might have been, in another life.”

Hayner, Pence and Olette examined the paper. On it was a printed copy of the Other Twilight Town’s photo of them posing with Roxas in front of the old mansion.

“That’s what you were doing on the computer?” Pence asked, understanding what he had been doing as they left the mansion that morning. “Printing this out?”

Riku nodded in confirmation. “Well, take care, you guys.” He gave them a little wave as he took a few steps back.

Mickey shook hands with the three of them. “It was nice seeing you again,” he told them.

“You too,” Olette returned the favor.

“Let me know how Ansem’s files work out,” Pence made Mickey promise.

“Sure thing,” Mickey replied.

Sora and Hayner raised their arms so that their forearms crossed in front of them. Hayner was not sure what had prompted him to do that with Sora, but Sora recalled the digital Hayner and Roxas doing that one time, and was thinking that Hayner’s heart was sharing the feeling with his digital counterpart somehow and was reacting as the digital Hayner would have with Roxas.

“Stay cool,” Hayner said.

“Keep your head on,” Sora shot back.

Pence gave Kairi a pat on the shoulder, then Olette gave her a hug. “Be safe,” Olette wished her. “Of course, if you’re fighting with a key like Sora, you’ll be fine, I suppose.”

“It was good to see you again,” Kairi said with a smile.

Donald and Goofy waved good-bye. With that, the six travelers went into the train station and used the Safe Point to beam up to the Gummi Ship.

* * *

Mickey held the flash drive up for the rest of the crew to see. They regarded it long enough that they could make out most of its details. The body was black with red lines down the middle. The cap was engraved on both sides with his ever-present head-shaped logo, and the indents were painted blue. A brand name was printed on one side, “ _Hackwrench_ ”.

“So, that’s everything Ansem had on Xehanort?” Riku asked for clarification.

Mickey nodded. “That’s what it looks like,” he answered.

“You think Ansem figured out what Xehanort had planned for after we beat Xemnas?” Goofy wondered aloud.

“It’s worth a try,” Jiminy said from on top of Sora’s shoulder. “Might help Leon and the others with their investigation.”

“Well, then let’s get this to them,” Sora said with certainty.

Mickey nodded. “And we can update them on what we’ve found out about Maleficent’s scheme,” he added.

“Right. So, who’s flying?” Donald asked.

On that cue, Jiminy hopped onto a button, which revealed a cupholder in which sat six ice cream sticks. “I wrote the jobs on three of these sticks,” he explained. Now, you each take one, and if you get one with a role on it, that’s what you do for the trip. Anyone with a blank stick gets to sit and relax.”

Seeing no fault in that system, the six crew members each took a stick. When they saw what they took, Donald took the pilot’s chair, Sora took the gunner seat, and Goofy took the copilot’s chair. Mickey, Riku and Kairi were left to take their spots in the passenger seats.

A few moments after Donald started flying, Riku started to feel uncomfortable as he realized that he was sitting next to Mickey. The air between them had been tense since their argument after they left Castle of Dreams. As he had since had time to calm down and think about how he acted, he felt guilty for flipping out at him like that. He could tell how badly his outburst had hurt him, and he now understood that the mouse was haunted by his failure to keep his old friends safe.

Kairi nudged him with her elbow. He turned to see what she was trying to get his attention for. She cast her gaze to Mickey for a brief instant, then back to Riku. “Talk to him,” she whispered.

Hesitantly, Riku nodded. He knew she was right. He had to resolve the issue.

“Mickey… I’m sorry… about before…” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking about how the whole thing with Terra, Ventus and Aqua affected you. And I don’t know what I would have done in your position, if I would have done what I said you should have done. I guess if I had been through the sort of trauma you had, I would have tried to find any sort of bright spot.” He sighed. “I really am a hypocrite, huh? When I went through trauma, it was my own doing, and I kept blaming myself. I didn’t want Sora and Kairi to see me. I was afraid to face my worries head-on. I guess we took two different approaches to our problems, neither of which was better.” He paused for a moment, waiting to see if Mickey would respond, though the mouse did not move. “I’m sorry for yelling at you, and probably making you think I was blaming you for everything that happened with Ansem. And I’m sorry you had to go through all that on your own.”

Riku was met with a somber moment of silence. He sighed and looked away. He was not sure if his speech would ease Mickey’s mind, but he felt good to get it off his chest.

“It’s not your fault,” Riku heard Mickey say.

“Hm?” Riku grunted, wondering what Mickey meant.

“You had a pretty good reason to be upset,” Mickey elaborated. “Out of everyone here, you were affected the most by Xehanort’s machinations since my failure to stop him. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have been mad when you found out that I could have prevented it.”

“But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you,” Riku countered. “You were hurt even more than me. You lost your friends, and you still haven’t found out what happened to two of them.” He did not notice Mickey shift about nervously when he said the last bit. “And yeah, maybe you should have checked, but after what you went through, can I really blame you for hoping that all that trauma wasn’t in vain?”

After a moment, Mickey sighed. “Thanks, Riku,” he said. “And I know you weren’t blaming me for what happened with Ansem. It’s just that I could never forgive myself for not being able to help my friends. The old wound opened up when Cinderella brought them up, and it just hurt more to think that I’d lost your faith and trust.”

Riku shrugged. “Well, I haven’t _entirely_ lost my faith in you,” he quipped.

He and Mickey started laughing, and Kairi joined it for a bit. She was glad to see that they were mending fences.

* * *

In the Disney Castle library, Queen Minnie Mouse perused the books on the shelves. She saw a spine labeled “Photo Album” and took it off of the shelf, deciding to take another look through it. She turned the pages, examining the pictures that her husband had taken during his quest to close the Door to Darkness.

After flipping past the last page she had turned during her first examination, Minnie stopped dead. She gasped at a sight that she could not explain.

She fully identified the acrylic and aluminum object as a star-shaped trinket with a symbol in the center, a shape she had seen a few times but of which she did not know the significance. It was being held in a white gloved hand that no doubt belonged to Mickey. Mickey was in the process of handing it back to its owner.

The figure who took up the majority of the image was a human woman with blue eyes and blue hair. Minnie was shocked at the sight, as she recognized this woman. She looked as though she had not aged much since they had met so many years ago.

The most surprising part was when she realized that this had to have been in the Realm of Darkness.

_Is that… How was she there… And Mickey saw her?_

Using a letter opener, Minnie removed the picture from the album. She took a piece of parchment and wrote a letter. She taped the photo to the bottom of the paper and stamped the top of the back side of the paper. She found a bottle and, rolling the parchment up and pinning it with a rubber band, slipped the letter into the bottle. She ran out to drop it into the lake, wishing for it to reach Mickey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh. Mickey has some 'splainin' to do! Though I'm sure some of you have seen it coming since Chapter 2.
> 
> To be honest, I forgot about Kairi's armor for a while (and I still haven't kept it in mind even in my current place), so I haven't exactly been incorporating its existence into fight scenes, particularly the armguard (which I based onthe one from Yuffie's garb in FF7, by the way).


	75. Chapter 74: So Very Much to Learn

When they stepped out of an alleyway near the clinic, they saw Aerith running past them, carrying a six-foot metal rod. Kairi was about to wave and greet her, but then the party saw Soldiers, Armored Knights, and Air Soldiers, Emblem Heartless resembling Soldiers except with pilot hats and goggles and makeshift wings, pursuing her. Without a word, they all conjured their weapons and charged into action.

Kairi prioritized using Gravity spells to bring the Air Soldiers down to her level, while Donald sought to do the same thing with the use of Thunder magic. Sora and Riku clashed blades with the Armored Knights while switching back-and-forth to fighting Soldiers. Mickey fought mostly Soldiers but also dueled with an Armored Knight.

Goofy ran to Aerith’s aid as the remaining Soldiers surrounded her. However, just as one of them leapt in to strike, Aerith swung her quarterstaff, so that the lower end hit the Heartless in the chest and sent it flying. A Soldier leapt at her from behind, but Aerith spun around and swatted it away. Another Soldier hopped back and delivered a Cyclone kick, but Aerith hooked her staff under its swinging foot and lifted up, sending it spinning out of control. Without waiting for the last one to try anything, Aerith spun around again and hit it in the chin, sending it flying toward Goofy. The knight slammed his shield into the oncoming Soldier, blasting it to bits on contact.

When all of the Heartless were defeated, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy gathered in front of Aerith. “Those were some nice moves,” Sora complimented.

Aerith smiled and, holding the quarterstaff behind her back, leaned in coyly. “Thanks. Can’t let the others fight my battles for me, can I?” she replied. “I assume that you’re here to check in with the committee, not just to see little ol' me?”

Mickey nodded. “We actually landed over here to see how reconstruction has been going,” he explained, recalling the major destruction that resulted from the Raid Armor attack, “and also because we were curious if the Heartless have started reappearing since the battle. It looks like that’s a yes.”

Aerith nodded. “Yes. The Heartless started reappearing a few days ago. At first, it was just Shadows and Soldiers, but it wasn’t long before bigger types showed up.”

Sora crossed his arms. “Hopefully, Maleficent won’t be inspired to summon any more skyscrapers,” he said.

Aerith sighed, and her expression turned sad. “We’re still in the process of rebuilding the destroyed homes, and everyone who had lived there is still living in the group homes. At least those areas are heavily-fortified, with Lea and Isa on patrol to keep everyone safe.”

“Gawrsh, is there anything we can do?” Goofy asked sympathetically.

Aerith smiled and shook her head. “Thank you, but this isn’t something we can’t handle,” she replied.

The party nodded, seeing her point. Even now, Radiant Garden was still trying to pick up the pieces from the apocalypse that Maleficent, Ansem and the Heartless had unleashed upon the world and which had forced the survivors to become refugees for nine years. With Heartless still roaming the streets, some collateral damage was par for the course. Besides, Sora, Riku and Kairi did not know too much about construction work.

“Well, let’s get going,” Aerith said, waving her arm to beckon them onward. “Everyone’s at Merlin’s house.”

* * *

They followed Aerith up to the Borough, fighting the occasional heartless along the way, and entered Merlin’s house, where they found Leon, Yuffie, Cid, Shera, and Merlin. The crew turned around when they heard the door open. Aerith gave them a finger-wagging wave in greeting.

“Good to see you,” Leon greeted the party. “Did you find anything?”

Sora nodded. “We actually figured out quite a bit about the things that Maleficent’s gang is looking for,” he told him.

The party told the committee what they had learned.

Leon crossed his arms in contemplation. Cid scratched his chin and fiddled with a toothpick between his teeth. Shera sipped some tea pensively. Yuffie took on a “deep thinker” pose, though she seemed to be exaggerating.

“Interesting,” Leon finally said. “If we only knew how the artifacts fit together, we could be that much closer to figuring this all out.”

“It’s a shame we couldn’t do much on our end,” Cid lamented, “not with this nor the whole Xehanort debacle.”

Mickey raised an eyebrow. “Really? You haven’t found anything?” he asked.

Cid shook his head. “That freak didn’t keep that much written down. He didn’t have that many files on what he was doing even as Ansem and Xemnas.”

“Not to mention, Braig still refuses to divulge any information,” Leon added. “So that means we don’t have much to go off of.”

Mickey pulled the flash drive out of his pocket. “Maybe this will help,” he said.

Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, and Merlin looked at the stick in confusion, but Cid and Shera raised their eyebrows in intrigue.

“Whatcha got there?” Cid asked.

“Files from Ansem’s computer in Twilight Town,” Mickey answered. “The real Ansem, I mean, not Xehanort’s Heartless.”

“Well, I’ll be. Mind if I take a look at that?” Cid asked.

“Sure thing,” Mickey replied. He walked over and handed the flash drive to Cid. Cid plugged the drive into his computer and opened it up in a file explorer.

“Just gimme a minute to look through everything,” Cid said.

Leon turned his attention back to Sora and the others. “So, did you come across any more of Maleficent’s new friends?” he asked.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. We’d already met Pete and Loki, and we already knew about Hades. Then we ran into a crazy court jester named Kefka, and some sort of witch doctor. We didn’t catch that guy’s name.”

“An evil sorcerer named Mozenrath, with his pet eel,” Riku added, “a psychotic old woman named Yzma, who seemed to be a mad scientist or alchemist of some sort…”

“And an androgynous mega-sorcerer who we could barely do anything to,” Kairi finished. Sora, Riku and Mickey winced at the memory of that humiliating defeat.

“I see,” Leon said, realizing that with foes like this, and five others that they still knew nothing of, it will not be easy to win this conflict.

“Well, then I suppose you could use some more training,” Merlin suggested cheerfully. Donald noted that he did not seem too concerned with the threat level, and only cared about teaching Sora and company some more magic.

“That reminds me,” Sora muttered. He approached Merlin. “You’ve been holding out on us,” he whispered into the old wizard’s ear.

“Uh, pardon?” Merlin asked, not sure what Sora meant.

“You never told us about water-based magic,” Sora explained.

Merlin’s eyes widened. “Ah, yes. I had a feeling that there was something I had forgotten to mention. Not to worry. That should not be a challenge for you.”

* * *

Toward the conclusion of the lesson, Yuffie, Aerith and Shera set ceramic pots around the street in the Borough. There was one for each of the five magic users, and Yuffie had applied tape labeling which one was meant for whom.

“Now then, your final task will be to fill your pots with water,” Merlin instructed. “Sora, how about you go first.”

Sora aimed his Keyblade so that it was aimed toward his jar but at a thirty-five degree angle rather than directly at it. When he was sure about his measurements, he shouted “Agua!”

A jet of water shot out of his Keyblade, the liquid swirling around itself as it arced through the air, dropping very little spray. The arc led right into the opening of the pot. Sora timed the conclusion of his spell so that the last drops would fill the pot all the way, though he realized afterward that it was about an inch under the lip.

Donald cast Agua and a stream of water shot out of the head of his staff, filling the pot about as much as Sora, though the water struck hard enough that little bits sprayed off of the surface constantly, so that the ground around the pot was damp.

Mickey’s stream was more focused, though he added his own twist by directing the flow to swirl around in a few loops before entering the pot. The pot was filled completely, and a bubble of water formed, not flowing over the lip due to the surface tension.

Riku had to mentally adjust the path the water took as it went through the air, realizing that his initial calculation was sure to miss. After a few turns, he managed to get the water to go straight down into the opening. However, Merlin quickly noticed that his stream was a half of an inch wider than the opening itself, and the edge of the stream doused the lip.

* * *

Kairi’s stream swirled around itself much like Sora’s. When it filled her pot, it came closer to being full than Sora and Donald’s, but not perfectly full like Mickey’s.

Merlin, Goofy, and the girls clapped. “Well done! Donald, that was very close, but you need to be more focused and disciplined if you want to get it perfect. And Riku, your aim needs improvement, as well as your depth perception,” he advised.

“That’s probably what happens when you spend a year with a blindfold on,” Sora joked.

“Yeah. I really need to forget about the Memory Skyscraper fight and get a grasp on physics,” Riku agreed.

He, Sora and Kairi laughed. Yuffie and Aerith giggled as well.

“Look out!” Shera shouted suddenly, pointing into the air. Everyone looked up and saw a trio of dark red draconic creatures circling above them. The creatures had human-like torsos, but instead of arms they had tattered wings and their legs ended in feet with two front toes and one rear toe each, and each toe had a large black claw. At the back of their heads, spikes flared out on either side, and a large, slightly curved spike protruded from each shoulder. A tail extended from each beast’s rear end, extending about as long as the legs. Each creature brandished a familiar insignia upon its breast.

Sora scowled at the Heartless. He remembered the Wyverns all too well. They had been particularly aggravating when he had to fight them at the castle gates during his first visit to Hollow Bastion, due to their tendency to attack and then fly away so that they hovered safely over the abyss and forced him to wait for them to come back for another attack, never mind the fact that when he first encountered them he had lost his Keyblade. He had not faced against them at all during the last several months, although he did spy a few flying around during Maleficent’s attempted siege on the town.

He heard a whirring noise and glanced across the street. He saw a pair of green spiked balls spinning across the street like tops, shattering the pots as they drove through them. When they came to a stop, a pair of long, thin arms and two short legs with large metal feet popped out. The top spike lifted up slightly to expose a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

Yuffie, Aerith and Shera ran back into Merlin’s House. A few seconds later, Yuffie came back out, with Leon following right behind her. It did not take the party long to come up with a strategy: Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Yuffie, and Merlin would fight the Wyverns while Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Leon would fight the Morning Stars.

Kairi cast Gravity and Aero spells to try to bring the Wyverns down to size while Mickey and Donald sought to do lasting damage with Thunder, whereas Merlin launched a wider array of fireworks-type spells and Yuffie threw her shurikens. The Wyverns descended to engage their enemies. One flew toward Donald, spinning about itself in a corkscrew fashion. Donald dove to the side but was strafed. As it slowed down, it was hit in the left wing by Yuffie’s Fuuma Shuriken. Another Wyvern dodged Merlin’s spells and came down upon Kairi, attacking with a flurry of kicks. Kairi backed away to avoid getting clawed and attempted to parry each strike. A successful swipe caused it to falter, and, along with Mickey, she cut through the Heartless with her Keyblade until it was no more. Donald and Merlin ganged up on the third Wyvern with magic spells, hitting it with a continuous barrage until Donald realized that no more magic was coming out of his staff. He brandished his staff, ready to bludgeon it if necessary until his mana replenished, but Merlin delivered a final burst of white fire that caused the Wyvern to explode. The last remaining Wyvern, flying unevenly due to its injured wing, went after Yuffie, but Kairi cast Stop just as it reached her, allowing the ninja to get away. Mickey jumped on top of the Heartless and started hitting it in the head with his staff. When the spell wore off, its head shook violently from all of the concussive blows piling up and it crashed to the ground thanks to the sudden weight. Yuffie threw a trio of small shurikens into the Heartless’ body while Kairi slashed and stabbed at it until it faded away.

Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Leon used brute force attacks on the Morning Stars. When Sora drew near, one of the Morning Stars retracted its arms and stuck out two thick metal rods with large iron balls attached. It leaned its entire body to swing its right arm, hitting Sora in the chest and knocking him across the street. Leon took Sora’s place, slashing through the Heartless with his Gunblade. When it swung its other arm, he hopped back as Goofy stepped in front of him to block the blow. Leon helped Sora to his feet and shot a fireball at the Heartless. Riku fought the other Morning Star, delivering a flurry of attacks. The Heartless replaced its arms with large maces. Riku jumped back as it began to spin these deadly arms at a very fast rate. When it had stopped and retracted the maces, Riku sent a volley of Dark Fire balls at the Heartless. It retaliated by retracting its limbs and spinning around him like a top. Riku tried to block, but he was hit from all sides.

Sora threw himself at the spinning Morning Star to help Riku and sent the Heartless careening down the road with a heavy strike. When it regained its bearings, it leapt high into the air and came down right above Sora. The Keyblade wielder, however, was familiar with this tactic and knew how to use it against the enemy. He blocked its descent by bumping it with his Keyblade. As it was tossed into the air by the hit, he jumped up and grabbed it by the legs. He then threw it hard into the ground, smashing it into the cobblestones and causing it to bounce back up. When it returned to his level, he caught it again and slammed it to the ground again. He did this two more times until the Heartless finally dissipated above a small crater. He turned around and saw the other Morning Star attempt a similar attack on Leon, but the swordsman dodged the first landing and met it with four quick slashes even as it prepared to jump again. When it did so, he simply raised his weapon to stab into it as it came down, then finished it off with three explosive gunshots. The last fireball proceeded to soar through the air as it caused the Heartless to disintegrate.

When the party was aware that the Heartless had been defeated, everyone reconvened. Sora noticed the injuries sustained and cast Curaga, healing everyone right up. Aerith, Cid and Shera stepped out of Merlin’s house to confirm that the battle was over.

“Is everyone alright?” Aerith asked.

Sora set the business end of his Keyblade to the ground and leaned his arm on the handle guard in a relaxed position. “No sweat,” he replied.

Mickey turned to face Cid. “Did you find anything?” he asked.

Cid nodded. “Well, there is some pretty funny stuff on here,” he said, waving the flash drive around. “Though, I don’t think I can fully understand what to make of it. I think you should take it to the guys who were apprenticed to him. They’re up in the castle. Should be in the study.”

“Thanks,” Mickey said. “We’ll get it to them right away.” He approached Cid, who stooped down and handed the flash drive to him.

“Well, see you later,” Sora said, waving good-bye. He and his friends turned and started walking away from the house. As he remembered something, he stopped and whirled around. “And thanks for the water magic lesson, Merlin,” he shouted.

“Yeah, thanks!” Kairi agreed. Mickey, Donald and Riku waved back to Merlin in gratitude as well.

After they had disappeared around the corner, Yuffie stretched her arms above her head. “Well, now that that’s done with, it looks like I’ve got some dirt to wash off,” she announced. She walked into Merlin’s House and started washing her hands in a water basin.

Suddenly, there was a splash and Leon, Aerith, Cid, Shera, and Merlin heard the ninja let out a surprised yelp. They ran inside to check on her. She seemed unharmed, save for some water covering her face. She held a corked bottle in one hand and pressed her other hand over her rapidly-beating chest.

“What happened?” Leon asked, concerned.

Yuffie held the bottle out for her friends to see. “This thing just popped right out of the bowl!” she answered, hyperventilating from the shock.


	76. Chapter 75: Abandoned Armor

Sora knocked on the study door before letting himself and his friends in. He noticed that the room was far cleaner than it was during his last visits. The broken glass had been removed completely and replaced with new beakers and test tubes. The portrait of Xehanort was gone completely, and someone had drawn over the DTD diagram on the wall to make the faded pictures and words more legible.

“Hello, Sora, Riku, your Majesty, Donald, Goofy, Kairi,” Ienzo greeted when he saw them come in. “Welcome back. Thank you for knocking.”

“Hello, Ienzo,” Sora returned the greeting.

“I regret to inform you that, while we have done a thorough search, we have not found any trace of Xehanort nor uncovered any clues regarding what he may have intended,” Ienzo lamented.

“We heard,” Sora replied.

“But we found something that might help,” Mickey said. He took the flash drive out of his pocket and held it up for Ienzo to see.

At the same time, Aeleus came in behind them, forcing the party to make way for him to enter. The hulking man gave them a respectful nod.

“Hello, Aeleus. One moment, please,” he said, raising a finger in Aeleus’ direction. He turned his attention back to Mickey. “What is that?”

“We took a look at Ansem’s computer in Twilight Town and copied everything he had on Xehanort,” Mickey explained.

“Intriguing,” Ienzo muttered thoughtfully. “Perhaps this could indeed provide the clues we need.” He crouched down and took the flash drive from Mickey.

Dilan walked in from behind the group. Donald and Goofy stepped aside to make room for him to pass through. The lancer nervously stuck to the wall and made sure to stay as far away from Sora, Donald and Goofy as possible.

“Hello, Dilan. Have there been any patterns in the Heartless appearances in the castle corridors?” Ienzo asked.

Aeleus and Dilan shook their heads. “Only a scarce few have been found scouting out each floor, only appearing in larger droves when they spotted us,” Dilan explained.

“Then I suppose Xehanort and Maleficent have not left any more secrets or sources of dark energy within the greater part of the castle,” Ienzo surmised. “In any case, we might come across leads for our other examination. Even!”

The blond scientist entered the circular room through the steel-lined hallway behind Ienzo. “What is it, Ienzo?” he asked.

Ienzo showed him the flash drive. “Our friends managed to retrieve some of Master Ansem’s files from a computer he had set up in Twilight Town. This contains information that he was able to gather on Xehanort.”

Even raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating,” he said as he took the flash drive from Ienzo. “Perhaps this will finally push our investigation along. I shall start looking through it right away.”

“Before we do that,” Aeleus interrupted, “isn’t there something you wanted to show them, Ienzo?”

“Oh, of course!” Ienzo exclaimed, recalling what Aeleus was talking about. “You will not believe what we found.” He walked through the hallway to the computer room, and the party followed him. He typed something into the search bar and hit ENTER.

“Chamber of Repose?” Sora read, wondering what that meant.

“It is a hidden room far below us where Xemnas would often go to meditate,” Ienzo explained. He typed a password in, then typed six more words, then proceeded with the operation. “Follow me.” He led the party and his colleagues out of the room and to the elevator that led down to the Heartless Manufactory platform.

When they stepped out of the elevator, they saw two panels slide apart, creating an opening in the floor. A ramp materialized leading down into the hole, so Ienzo led them down. The last ones to get on were Aeleus and Dilan, and once they had stepped off at the bottom, the ramp vanished and the panels above closed up.

Sora, Donald and Goofy looked over the ledge and saw that the spiraling ramp went down so far that it was too dark for them to see the bottom.

“How deep do you think it is?” Donald asked.

“You can find out and tell us,” Riku jokingly suggested.

“That’s not funny,” Donald shot back, annoyed.

“I dunno… Anyone have a stopwatch?” Sora joked.

“As interesting it would be to take that measurement, we need not concern ourselves with it at this moment,” Even interrupted the banter that they were having at Donald’s expense.

“Come along. The exercise is good for you,” Aeleus advised.

“I climb mountains,” Sora complained. “And there’s usually something to see along the way.” Nevertheless, he started the slow, tedious descent along with the others. After a minute, he found himself getting incredibly bored. He tried to pass the time by thinking of other things, such as the mystery of Xehanort. He knew so little about Xehanort. What he seemed to have wanted twelve years ago clashed with Ansem and Xemnas’ goals. For instance, if Xehanort knew what Kingdom Hearts was and wanted to reach its power of light, why was his Heartless so convinced that Kingdom Hearts was pure darkness, particularly when all he was doing was opening the door to the realm of darkness? How did he become a seemingly-amnesiac young man? And how did his later plots as Xemnas correlate to what he had been up to so long ago? If they could understand what he had been planning, perhaps they could figure out why he had not reappeared with the rest of the apprentices, and maybe stop whatever he was planning…

Finally, they reached the bottom. They turned and entered a hallway with white walls. The sudden light caught Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy by surprise, and it took them a moment for their vision to adjust. Sora, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy gulped when they saw the doors with barred windows, which gave off the impression that they were walking through a prison hallway.

“Gawrsh, what is this place?” Goofy asked fearfully.

Ienzo sighed. “This is where we conducted our early experiments on the Heartless, and our forbidden research into the nature of the heart,” he explained, his voice filled with regret. “I was the one who convinced Master Ansem to install this heinous laboratory, before he realized that the heart was not to be tampered with. The rest of us did not listen, however.”

“How many?” Mickey asked solemnly. He did not specify, but the meaning was clear.

Ienzo shook his head. “Too many.”

They reached the end of the hall, and the set of doors in front of them slid open quickly. They all stepped into a circular room, and the doors closed behind them. The design on the wall and floor seemed familiar to Riku and Mickey. However, the six who were new to this location were perplexed, as the room appeared to be empty save for a single throne-like chair.

“So, what did you want us to see?” Sora asked, utterly confused by the absence of anything interesting.

“Allow me to tell you more about this chamber,” Even began. “Oftentimes when Xemnas retreated into this room, Xigbar would eavesdrop. He would claim that he was speaking to a ‘friend’, but he did not hear anyone else in here.”

“And that’s supposed to explain…” Sora trailed off to indicate that he was still confused.

Dilan stepped around the party and sat down in the chair. The black-colored chains on the wall and floor turned white. A panel on the floor in front of Dilan vanished, and a platform ascended to take its place.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy were taken aback when they saw the rusted pieces of armor. They all gasped in unison when they noticed the strange weapon. It was made of what appeared to be blue metal bars that intersected with each other and had a diamond-shaped cross-section. The head vaguely resembled the outline of a crown, with silver metal shaping two upright squares in the corners of the left and right points and a diagonal square in the corner of the center point, with each point having a short length of metal jutting out. Just above the handle guard, the shaft opened up to create two diagonal squares in the negative space. The guard seemed to be more curved and smooth, and it appeared to be made up of four pieces: the upper piece was black, the two middle pieces were gray, and the bottom was off-white. The handle appeared to be a simple, thin, silver metal rod. The pommel did not have a chain attached, but the weapon’s nature was quite apparent.

“Is that…” Donald began.

“A Keyblade?” Kairi finished.

Aeleus nodded. “It would appear so,” he answered.

“They were near Xehanort when Ansem, Braig and I found him in the town square, more than a decade ago,” Dilan explained. “At the time, we simply held onto them for safekeeping, even though we didn’t know what they were.”

“Aqua…” Mickey said under his breath. “I was wondering why you didn’t…” He stopped when he realized that his friends were looking at him in surprise.

“Mickey, did you say Aqua?” Riku asked.

“Was this Aqua’s Keyblade?” Kairi asked, putting the pieces together. Now that she thought about it, the weapon did look familiar, although the teeth were more elaborate than the one she had seen the blue-haired Keyblade Master use.

Mickey nodded. “Yes. It was,” he confirmed.

“You said that Xemnas referred to this armor as his ‘friend’?” Riku asked, directing his query toward Even. “Even if he did remember her, why would he think of her as a friend?”

Even shook his head. “Alas, I do not believe any of us have met this ‘Aqua’, so I could not tell you,” he lamented.

“Perhaps Master Ansem might have known…” Ienzo mused. “He put much effort into gaining an upper hand against the Organization. He must have been able to uncover some of Xemnas’ secrets. The secrets of this armor might be among them.”

“Good idea,” Sora commended. “Well, let’s…” He trailed off as he realized that this would mean they would be going back up the seemingly-endless ramp stairwell. He groaned. “Well, we might as well get going.”

Donald laughed at Sora’s expense, until Riku reminded him that his legs were shorter and he will have to take even more steps.

* * *

Sora and the gang crowded around Even as the academic plugged the flash drive into the computer console, eager for something interesting to happen.

“Back up, children,” Even scolded. “I need some breathing space.” They complied, taking a decent-sized step backward. “Thank you. Now, let us see what special secrets Master Ansem uncovered.”

However, before he could open anything up, they suddenly heard a shout from the hallway just out from the computer room. “YOU GUYS! HEY!” Even groaned at the interruption.

Yuffie followed up on her yell by appearing right next to the group. They had not heard her open the study door, nor had they even heard her footsteps. Even with her ninja skills, her enthusiasm should have allowed those simple sounds to betray her arrival. She had her Fuuma Shuriken slung loosely over her back, apparently having used it to fight her way up to the castle and through its halls. In her right hand, she held tightly to a glass bottle with a cork.

“What is it, Yuffie?” Kairi asked.

Yuffie held out the bottle, and Kairi took it. The redheaded girl examined the bottle and saw a rolled-up parchment inside. The edge of the paper was printed with a familiar seal. She turned around to face her friends and uncorked the bottle. She dumped the paper out into her hand and showed it to the others.

“Minnie!” Mickey gasped when he noticed the seal. “Gosh, I hope nothing’s wrong.”

Donald shook his head. “If something was wrong, she would have summoned us directly to the castle,” he argued.

“Then I wonder what it is,” Goofy mused.

“How about we read it, then?” Kairi asked sarcastically. She unrolled the paper and turned around so that the others could read it at the same time as her. Her jaw, as well as Donald and Goofy’s, dropped when they saw the photograph taped to the parchment. They recognized the blue-haired woman in the picture. Mickey gulped.

“Gawrsh, is that…?” Goofy began.

“Aqua?” Donald finished. A hushed tone filled the room, as almost everyone froze as they realized what this meant.

“Who’s Aqua?” Yuffie asked, genuinely confused as she was the only one present who was not in the loop.

“What’s the letter say?” Riku asked.

Kairi regained her composure and cleared her throat. She began to read aloud:

Mickey,

I was looking through the photo album earlier and, to my absolute surprise, I found this picture among those you took when you were in the Realm of Darkness. As I had met Aqua once, many years ago, and I knew that the two of you were friends, I became quite worried when I saw this and realized that she had been in the Realm of Darkness. And then, I realized that this picture could only exist if you had come across her.

Please, as soon as you can, send me a note and tell me what happened. How did you meet her? What happened to our friend?

Sincerely,

Minnie

Mickey was looking downward, in contemplation and possibly in shame. He did not notice anything happening after Kairi had finished reading the letter. A sharp “Ahem” drew his attention, at which point he looked up and realized that everyone was looking at him. Riku seemed to be trying hard not to glare at him.

“Mickey? Did you meet Aqua in the Realm of Darkness?” Riku asked, having more luck in managing a surprised and concerned tone rather than a cold one.

Mickey sighed. After a short pause, he gave his answer. “Yes. I did. I told you that I had no idea what happened to her, Ventus and Terra after I last saw her, but that’s not entirely true. It was over a year ago, around the time that Sora, Donald and Goofy first fought Ansem in this castle and completed the final Keyhole. Actually, it was not long after that.” He looked up and met everyone’s gaze. “I met Aqua, once, in the Realm of Darkness.”


	77. Chapter 76: A Fragmentary Passage

I’d been walking through the Realm of Darkness for what had felt like a few days by then. I had hoped to ride the apocalypse of Destiny Islands and appear where it would materialize in the Realm of Darkness so that I could find the Kingdom Key of the dark realm.

—Wait. What was that?—

I… uh… well…

—You were on our island when it was attacked?—

I jumped in while the maelstrom was already underway. Even if I had landed on the little island, there wasn’t anything I could have done. And don’t get me wrong. I was just trying to get to the Realm of Darkness through the next calamity I came across, and I thought “maybe this will get me exactly where I need to go.” Though, I admit, I probably would have forced myself to prioritize the mission over the state of your world otherwise, and I knew you needed to be able to go out into the worlds with your Keyblade. I am sorry.

—<sigh> You get a pass.—

I guess I should explain that I didn’t end up where I was hoping to go. So, when I landed in the Realm of Darkness, it turned out that I was pretty far off from where the shadow of Destiny Islands would materialize. So, I worked my way through the terrain, which was filled with Pureblood Heartless, some of which I still haven’t seen in the Realm of Light.

After what seemed like a few days, I felt a massive tremor, like the Realm of Darkness was quaking. I saw Heartless flying up into a portal. I realized that it could only mean the final Keyhole had been unveiled and the Door to Darkness was coming into existence. I began to hurry. I needed to find the Keyblade and get to the Door before it opened. Shortly after, I detected Riku’s heart. It had been cast out by Ansem, our enemy, and was floating in the darkness. I told him what I had planned, and he agreed to help.

—I decided I’d look for the Door and wait for Mickey to arrive with the Keyblade. —

—So where does—

I’m getting to that. A few hours later, I saw a dark portal appear. I stopped and watched it, curious as to who was using a gateway into this place. I saw someone tumble backward out of it and start floating down. I squinted and realized the person looked familiar. There was something glowing in her hand.

I heard her whisper: “Now I can be… one with the darkness…”

Realizing that she was in danger, I ran over and jumped to her aid. I saw the glowing object and realized that it was her Wayfinder, a lucky charm that she made and shared with her friends.

[Kairi examined the photo again] —Like my lucky charm? It has the shape, but it’s not made of the same materials.—

Anyway, I caught the Wayfinder and put it back in Aqua’s hand.

“Aqua, are you okay?” I asked. She opened her eyes and saw me as I grabbed her hand and pulled her to safety.

Once we were on the ground, I let her regain her bearings. “Mickey, how did—” she started to say, but then she gasped and looked around frantically. “Terra! Ven!”

Before we could continue the conversation, I saw something behind her. “No time to talk,” I said. She turned around and saw what I saw: a swarm of Shadow Heartless converging into a whirling tower.

—They can do that?!—

—Wak!—

We summoned our Keyblades to fight. She called them “Dwellers of Darkness”, but I corrected her on their identification. We fought the Heartless and, after a while, forced them to flee.

“Better not push our luck,” I warned her. “Gosh, I never thought I’d find you in the Realm of Darkness, that’s for sure. So, um, what happened?”

“Have you seen Terra or Ven?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, just you.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry. The darkness in this place, it’s getting to me,” she admitted.

“Oh. But, you’ll be okay,” I assured her.

“Right.” Though, she didn’t seem too sure of herself.

“Say, we’ve been looking for ya a long time. How come you’re in this place?” I asked.

“First tell me: how long has it been in the realm of light?” she asked.

“About… ten years,” I told her.

“Interesting.” She didn’t really seem that shocked. I guess she figured time worked differently down there. “After we last spoke, I took Ven somewhere safe, and then I went after Terra. But Terra was about to fall to darkness, so I had one choice.” She took her Wayfinder out and held it up to the light. “I stayed here in hopes of giving him a chance.”

“I… didn’t know,” I said.

She turned around and knelt down so that her face was level with mine. “How 'bout you? What could’ve brought you here? Has something happened? In the realm of light?” she asked.

“It’s the Heartless,” I explained. “They’ve been attacking worlds and taking their hearts. And worlds with no hearts vanish into darkness. But, if we can lock the door between the two realms—light and dark—from both sides, we can protect the other worlds. So ya see, I came here to find the key on this side. Turns out, it’s not so easy getting into the realm of darkness. The points you can cross have become unstable. It’s only when a world gets consumed that an entrance appears in the realm between. So, I waited for my chance… to sneak in.” I took her hand, which was still holding the Wayfinder. “But hey, when I got here, I felt a warm, familiar light. I followed it to find my way… to you.”

Aqua pulled her Wayfinder closer and smiled. “The charm. So they _were_ helping. Terra and Ven brought you and I together again,” she surmised.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“But, the worlds are still in danger. Terra—did he make it back to the realm of light?” she asked.

“We still haven’t found him,” I answered solemnly.

“I see. Well, wherever he is, he’s fighting,” she said confidently. “He’ll beat his darkness. And I know he wants me to fight too.”

“I think you’re right. He’ll be just fine,” I agreed.

“Yes. But what about Ven? He won’t wake up unless I’m there with him. I have to go. I have to find a way back to the realm of light,” she insisted.

“Good. Then let’s locate that key and go home together!”

“Does that mean you know an exit?” she asked.

When she said that, I realized that I was a bit shortsighted. “Well, uh, I was so busy finding a way in, that I didn’t give a lot of thought to where there’d be a way out,” I admitted sheepishly. “But together, we’re sure to find one.”

Aqua laughed. “You haven’t changed at all,” she said mirthfully.

“May our hearts be our guiding key,” I recited the old motto.

“There’s a phrase no one’s used in ages,” Aqua said.

—What?—

What?

—Haven’t heard that one.—

—What d’ya mean? Yen Sid used to say it all the time.—

—He did? —

—I don’t remember him saying that. —

Never mind about that. It’s just an old saying between Keyblade wielders, though it’s fallen into obscurity over the centuries. But nowadays, it’s something I like to try and remember.

Anyway, we started making our way through the depths of darkness. Some more of those unique Pureblood Heartless appeared to attack us, but we worked together to carve through all of them. Eventually, we came upon a cave opening from which a blinding light emitted. We stepped through and came onto a recreation of your small island, though it was broken and corrupted by darkness.

—Wait a second. I thought the remains of Destiny Islands ended up as part of End of the World—

Yeah. I can only guess how that works. I guess it was just a shadow of the islands created from the memory of what didn’t get patched onto that conglomerate. It looked like daytime for some reason.

—If I had been there, I’m sure I would have relished the opportunity to conduct research on that pattern.—

A-ny-way… We stepped onto the beach, on the greater part of the island which seemed to be floating in midair. The edge of the land was compacted into rock, the wooden landing was smashed, and some of the trees’ leaves were a creepy shade of purple.

“This is… where I met those children,” Aqua said.

“So many worlds have been lost. And now they’re trapped here in the dark,” I mused sadly. Then, her words registered. “Wait—you know this place, Aqua?”

“Yes. I visited once,” she answered, “and I met two boys I considered passing the Keyblade onto. But because Terra had already given one of them the power, I didn’t.”

—Hold on a second…—

Something on your mind?

—Something’s coming back to me. Continue.—

Oh, okay. “Aqua, what were the boys’ names?” I asked her.

“They were… Sora and Riku,” she answered.

—That’s right! Riku, you remember her, right?—

—I think so. She wasn’t there long, so I don’t recall that much, I’m afraid. But I also kinda remember meeting another guy, definitely from another world. That was Terra?—

—Well, you two have a lot to talk about. But, for now, let’s let the king finish.—

—Right. Sorry, Mickey.—

Okay. I recognized Riku’s name, and figured out who Sora was, and I knew we were on the right part of the Island. “I see. We’re getting warm,” I told Aqua. She was confused, so I decided to elaborate on what I knew. “It’s Sora and Riku who’ve been helping me. We’re trying to get that door shut for good. Aqua, if this is where my friends first got the Keyblade, it also must be where we’ll find its counterpart. The Keyblade of darkness has got to be here on the dark side of their world.”

She still seemed to be lost in thought, but her musings were interrupted when we felt a tremor. We ran up to the entrance to the cave, what I think you called “the Secret Place”, but suddenly a swarm of Shadows poured out. The school was much larger than the tower we fought earlier, and they behaved like microbes in a demonic tide, swirling through the air. We knew that they wouldn’t let us do anything, and if we tried to ignore it, it would just swarm into the cave and smother us. So, we fought it. It certainly wasn’t easy, but we finally managed to destroy it.

“Let’s keep going,” I said, pointing into the cave. We entered and, after walking through a narrow path, found ourselves in a spot where the walls were covered in chalk drawings, and a few trees grew within. Just ahead was a wooden door without a handle. “I bet it’s in here,” I guessed. We walked up to the door and pushed it open.

—Ah. That’s how you open it.—

—After I saw the Keyhole on the door, I figured it wasn’t actually supposed to open.—

—Wait. Then what do you do if, for some reason, the door gets closed while you’re inside?—

—Let’s all agree to never find out.—

—Agreed.—

So we went through the door and saw, the only source of light in an otherwise-completely dark cavern save for through the door we just stepped through, a glowing Keyblade. “There!” I pointed it out to Aqua.

“Is that what you’re after?” she asked as we walked up to it.

“Yep, it’s just the key I was looking for,” I answered. “A Keyblade from the dark realm.”

“A Keyblade of darkness,” she repeated, probably trying to process that something like what she used to defend others could possibly exist as a relic of darkness.

I took the Keyblade in my hand, and the glow faded. “The door of darkness… tied by two keys. The door of darkness… to seal the light,” I recited a legend I had heard. I raised the weapon above my head, now sure that I was gonna fulfill my objective. “Welp, we’ve got the keys. Now, to find the ones to close the door.”

“Sorry?” she said, confused.

“The door between the two realms—it won’t let a heart with light pass through,” I explained. “So only darkness keeps spilling out. We can lock the door with the two Keyblades, but we need help on both sides to get the door shut.”

“Well, then, since you’re the one doing the locking, let me be the one to close the door,” she volunteered.

I admired her commitment, but I refused. “Sorry, but the job’s taken… by somebody else.”

Then, we felt another tremor. There was a blinding flash, and some rocks in the distance lit up so we could see our surroundings. We walked around a bit, and soon we could see an enormous white door.

“Is that the one?” Aqua asked.

“Yep. The door to Kingdom Hearts.” Then I realized that she would be confused, so I decided to clarify. “Welp, it’s not the Kingdom Hearts you know, not exactly. But even though it’s smaller, it’s still the heart of many worlds. And even if it’s not a complete Kingdom Hearts, we definitely can’t leave it open like this, or darkness will escape and destroy the remaining worlds.” I raised the Keyblade resolutely. “It’s time. With this Keyblade, and the one in the realm of light, we’re gonna close this door. Now, all we need is Riku.”

I looked around, waiting for him to appear. Then I saw him. He was still a disembodied heart, but an aura in the shape of his body formed around him, I guess because his body was on the other side of the Door. He was a couple hundred feet away, and he was running toward the door.

“That’s everybody! Come on, Aqua—”

But then another tide of Heartless came out of nowhere and started swarming straight for Riku. We ran to his aid, but I was afraid we wouldn’t get to him in time.

Aqua jumped into the air and came out in front of the tide. “Back off!” she shouted. She pointed her Keyblade—

—Wait, but her Keyblade’s downstairs. How did she have a Keyblade?—

I think the one she had used to belong to her teacher, Master Eraqus. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was the Master’s Defender. She must’ve taken it up as her own after he was… struck down.

—Oh… You… you were saying?—

She pointed the Keyblade at the horde cast a spell that snared all of the Shadows in chains of light. She managed to trap them, but they struggled, and she had trouble restraining them.

“Aqua!” I shouted.

“Go without me!” she told me.

I didn’t want to leave her. Before I could do anything, the Heartless broke free from the chains and flew right through us. I was knocked away, the blow causing my armor to break off, and I was helpless to watch as the tide carried Aqua through the door, which closed and vanished behind them.

I wanted to help her, but there wasn’t any way I could reach her. Besides, I had to close the door. So, I headed over. I saw the door crack open, and I knew darkness was pouring out. I saw Ansem through the crack, beckoning the door to open. But then, the tip of my Keyblade lit up, as if it was reacting to something. I heard a voice echoing. It said, “Kingdom Hearts is light.”

—That was me.—

I figured as such. Just then, a huge column of light poured out from the opening in the door, nearly blinding me. When the light faded. Ansem was gone. I looked over at Riku and saw that he had his body back. He had reached the door and was working to close it. I saw some Darksides appear a ways behind him, but I sent out a few spells that obliterated them. And then, when the Door was closed, you and I sealed it for good.

—So, then…—

I’m afraid… that was the last I saw of Aqua.


	78. Chapter 77: Yelling at a Mouse

“She sacrificed herself… for me?” Riku muttered, shocked at the story. “Why did you keep it from me for so long?”

“I had to respect her choice,” Mickey replied sadly.

“What about us? You could’ve given us a choice,” Riku countered. “We could have gone and helped her.”

Mickey nodded solemnly. “I know. I wanted to find her, but I had to make sure you were safe first. And then you vanished. I was torn between going to find her and going to find you, but I decided that you needed my help more.”

“But what about after? During the next year? Or, if that couldn’t be done, you could have told us all after we beat Xemnas!” Riku argued. “We could have helped her. And we all would have done so without a second thought!”

Sora and Kairi nodded. “He’s right,” Sora agreed.

“I know. But Master Yen Sid warned me against telling you because that is exactly what you would’ve done,” Mickey admitted. “You would have gone in, regardless of the consequences or the odds. Getting in was hard enough, and even if we were able to pull it off, none of us had a way to get back out with Aqua safely.”

Sora was aghast. “You don’t think we would’ve been able to handle it?” he asked, shocked. “We beat the Organization in a gauntlet! Donald, Goofy and I defeated Ansem in the darkest corner of the universe, and Riku and I defeated Xemnas on our own! We fought Heartless, Nobodies, dragons, skeletons, and even a giant demon! Whatever the Realm of Darkness threw at us, we could take it!”

Mickey had difficulty coming up with a counterargument to that. Sora and Riku were indeed powerful and talented Keyblade wielders. Kairi certainly had great potential. And Donald and Goofy, while not nearly as strong as Sora, Riku or himself, were certainly capable of holding their own and assisting the others if need be.

“Even barring Sora’s recklessness,” Kairi said, “we could’ve found a way to get in and out, then gone right in to save her.”

“Gawrsh, your Majesty, why didn’t you ever tell any of us?” Goofy asked.

“Yeah,” Donald agreed, “we’re supposed to be partners. And friends have each other’s backs, right? All for one and one for all?”

“I didn’t want to risk all of your lives to try to make up for my failure,” Mickey said. “Aqua chose Riku’s life over her own chance of freedom. I didn’t want to dishonor that choice by losing both of you.”

Riku would have none of it. “She risked everything to save me! I deserve to be allowed to try to save her!” he yelled.

“We both deserve that chance,” Sora added.

Riku turned to Sora, unsure of what he means. “Huh?”

“Remember when we were kids? We met Aqua while we were playing on the island,” Sora reminded him.

Riku thought back to the story. “Yeah. Mickey did mention her bringing that up.” He searched through his childhood memories, but could barely come up with anything clear. He shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t really remember it that much.”

Kairi closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a few seconds. After a moment, she opened them. “I think Naminé can help with that,” she said. She placed her hand on Sora’s forehead and concentrated. She placed her other hand on the computer keyboard. The screen filled with static before it cleared up and showed footage of a sunset hour on the play island.

The point-of-view turned up to see someone standing on the bridge that led over to the land platform with the Paopu tree. The woman standing there jumped down to the sand, proving the POV to be that of a child. The blue-haired woman looked at young Sora and a boy to his right and giggled. Sora and the other boy, who was revealed to be a five-year-old Riku, looked at each other in confusion before they returned their attention to the woman.

“One of you might be special enough,” Aqua whispered to herself. “Hey, you two mind telling me your names?”

“I’m Sora,” Sora answered innocently.

“And you?” Aqua asked, addressing the other boy.

There was a slight pause before they heard the other answer: “Riku.”

Aqua appeared to think to herself for a moment. Sora and Riku traded glances again, their curiosity apparently growing.

“Sora, do you like Riku?” Aqua asked.

“Of course I like him,” young Sora replied. “He’s my best friend.”

“Good. So, then, if something happens, and Riku is about to get lost… or, say, he starts wandering down a dark path alone, you make sure to stay with him and keep him safe. That’s your job, Sora, and I’m counting on you to do it, okay?” Aqua then reached out and petted their heads affectionately, causing both Sora and Riku to laugh. Aqua smiled at both of them.

The memory faded and Kairi took her hands away from Sora’s head and the keyboard, causing the computer screen to revert to what it had showed previously.

After such an emotional revelation, everyone present was at a loss for words. The first words spoken, which came from Yuffie, were not what anyone had expected to be the first response.

“Aw, Riku, you were so cute!” the ninja cooed. Riku blushed and dodged her gaze.

Dilan’s comment was less profound but still a stretch from the important points of the revelation. “Had your parents not told you not to talk to strangers?”

Sora and Riku simultaneously scratched the backs of their heads, mildly embarrassed.

“What were we supposed to do?” Sora asked defensively. “Besides, my dad was there watching us. We were all in view of him.”

“You mean your dad who used to take a nap in the boat while we played?” Riku snarked.

Sora blinked as he remembered that his father usually did lie down in the boat to doze off while they were on the island.

“Well, what were you doing, not being the responsible one?” Kairi asked jokingly. “Your dad had to have told you about stranger danger, being a police officer and all.”

Riku shrugged. “I guess I didn’t see anything wrong with just talking to her if she didn’t do anything that didn’t seem right,” he replied.

“So, that was how you met Aqua?” Goofy asked, bringing the conversation back to its original topic.

Sora turned to Goofy and nodded. “Yeah. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but I guess she inspired me to help Riku through thick and thin. She inspired me to always be there for my friends.” He nodded to Riku, then turned his gaze to Mickey. “We have to go in there to save her.”

“But… How would we get in and out?” Mickey asked. “We don’t have an easy way to travel through the darkness.”

“Ahem.” Everyone turned their attention to Kairi. “I think that’s another area where Naminé can help.” She extended her arm to the side, turning it so that her palm faced upward. Taking everyone by surprise, another arm curled upward out of Kairi’s forearm. This new arm was slightly paler, yet still appeared to be naturally attached to the rest of her body.

This arm, which Sora, Riku and Even presumed belonged to Naminé, snapped its fingers. A Corridor of Darkness suddenly materialized in the hall leading to the study, causing everyone to turn and look at it in amazement. Naminé’s fingers snapped again and the portal closed back up.

Mickey whirled back around and stared at Kairi in shock. “That was her who got us out of the Organization’s stronghold?” he asked, recalling the dark portal that mysteriously opened to let him, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi off of the Altar of Naught after they had apparently defeated Xemnas.

Kairi nodded. “Yeah. She also opened one of those to help me escape from my cell.”

“Not to mention, you and I got out,” Riku resumed his rant, “Ansem the Wise got out on his own, and then Sora and I both got out on our own after another hour, just because Sora read a letter that Kairi sent weeks before! We all could have put together a way to get in and out safely. Even if we didn’t have someone who could open those portals freely―”

“Which Roxas can,” Sora added. He turned to address the four former Organization members. “Can you guys still access your dark powers?”

Even put his hand to his chin, pondering the question. “Well, we have not tried opening the corridors,” he admitted. “Although, I do hypothesize that we indeed retain those abilities.”

“Especially as it is clear that we still have our other powers,” Aeleus agreed.

“Anyway,” Riku continued, “even if we didn’t have someone who could open those portals freely, we could have come up with a way to get in and out, and we would have found Aqua and gotten her out safely!”

Sora turned to Riku. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.

Riku nodded forcefully. “We’re going to fix this. We’re going to the Realm of Darkness, and we’re going to rescue Aqua.”

There was a pause as Riku waited for the party to respond, agree or disagree. After a brief moment, Kairi nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Aqua’s my friend, too. I want to help her.”

Donald and Goofy nodded as well. A moment later, Mickey, having managed to gather himself, did the same.

“Ahem,” Ienzo cleared his throat. “As much as I support your commitment to aid your friend, there is still a point that all of you, even his majesty the mouse king, are disregarding, even though it had already been addressed in the king’s story. The Realm of Darkness is a big place. Even if entry and exit were certain and your confidence in your ability to survive proved true, it would still prove difficult to find her. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”

“Ienzo is correct,” Aeleus agreed. “Perhaps it would be prudent for us to develop a means to ascertain her precise location before leaping headlong into an uncertain mission.”

Riku contemplated their words. He sighed, unconsciously allowing himself to relax. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded. “Mickey did barely manage to find the Keyblade and the door when he was in there. We have no way of knowing where we’ll find Aqua.”

“Worry not. We will work together to develop a tracking measure so you can go in, find Miss Aqua, and get her out before you run into too much trouble,” Even assured them. “Just give us some time to put it together. We’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

Sora nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“I guess it’s going to be a while before everything’s ready,” Goofy said. “We probably ought to leave them to their work.”

Riku stormed out of the computer room without a word. Everyone heard the study door slam as he made his exit.

Sora looked at Mickey solemnly, and he could tell how awful he felt about the way Riku reacted. “You should have told us, Mickey,” he said. “You should have trusted us.” He walked out, with Kairi right behind him. Yuffie followed after.

Donald and Goofy looked at Mickey sadly and stayed with him until they all left together.


	79. Chapter 78: Blank Points

Water lapped against the shore of the Dark Margin. The sky was a dark gray, but a bright sun was visible on the horizon, casting its hauntingly-peaceful glow across the ocean at the edge of darkness. The shore was not entirely smooth sandy beach, however; large rocks sat in random places, some which would tower over a man and others small enough to sit upon.

A young woman walked across the sand toward the edge of the shore, leaving uneven footprints. She wore a navy blue high-collard halter top that left part of her back exposed, a black corset with a pair of white laces tying the garment together on either side, black jammer shorts, a pair of long, black stockings and a pair of pointed silver boots, which each had a sharp hook on the outer side. Two pink straps wrapped over each shoulder and under the opposite arm, creating an X over her chest and another one over her back, with a steel badge shaped like an angular heart with a sharp cross at its base. She wore tan, fingerless gloves on her hands and a white bell-sleeve on each arm, each attached below the shoulder and with a small, segmented piece of armor clipped onto it. Two strips of blue cloth were draped over her hips, though one appeared to be torn in half, and a smaller, white strip of cloth tied around her waist.

She was tall and slender, though she was thinner than normal due to only barely getting enough to eat (and sometimes not even that). She had blue hair that had grown out to her shoulders, and her bangs had been sliced unevenly three-quarters of the way down her forehead. She had eyes of the same color, though they appeared sunken and bloodshot. The skin under her eyes hung in bags. Her clothes were cut in a few places and covered in dirt. Her left sleeve was stained with blood and singed at the lower edge.

Aqua sighed, glad to finally have a moment’s rest, something that was quite rare in a dimension where all life was out for her blood. She stumbled to the water’s edge and fell to her knees in exhaustion. She bent over and cupped the water in her hands as the tide lapped in, then brought her hands up to her face and drank. She savored the cold, refreshing taste as the water ran down her throat. A good post-battle Curaga spell went a long way, but nothing beat a relaxing drink of clean water, or at least water as clean as it could be in the Realm of Darkness; she was not sure what the quality was, but she did not care.

“Why, hello. It’s not often I get visitors,” a deep voice spoke, surprising Aqua. She turned around to see who had spoken and, looking over her right shoulder, saw a man sitting on a rock. He wore a full-body black coat with its hood drawn up, casting shadows on his face. She had not noticed him previously as she had mistaken him for part of the rock. She was certainly surprised to find someone else in this dark world, and wondered what caused him to be there.

“Please, call me Aqua,” the young woman introduced herself. She stood up to address the man properly. “Why are you sitting here all alone in the realm of darkness? How did you end up here?”

“Well… I can tell you that this is my second time on these shores,” the man admitted. “But, unfortunately, much like the first, I do not remember who I am or whence I came. Everything was washed away in whatever currents carried me here.”

“That’s too bad,” Aqua said sympathetically. She turned to sit down next to the man. “I know I’ve been here a long time, wandering through the endless hours… unable to escape…”

The man became curious about this woman. She appeared to have enough of her wits about her to even consider a desire to escape. “You wish to return to your own world?” he asked.

Aqua nodded. “It’s my friends,” she explained. “I promised I’d be there for them.”

The man pondered her words. She seemed kind and dedicated to the people she cared about. “Your friends? Somewhere in the scraps of memory I have left, you remind me of a boy I once knew,” he told her. “He is very much like you―true to his friends, and kind. This boy travels to many worlds and fights to keep the light safe.”

Aqua turned to her companion, his last words taking her by surprise. “Keep the light safe? I’ve been gone too long. Did something happen out there?” she asked, worried. “Are the worlds in danger?” Now that she thought about it, she did remember Mickey saying something about the worlds being attacked and swallowed in darkness, and she also walked through desolate phantoms of worlds she had visited. However, she had difficulty recalling the details, as if that was all a dream. Was it a dream? When was the last time she had gotten sleep?

“Sad to say, they nearly fell to darkness more than once,” the hooded man admitted. “But at every turn, that boy arrived with Keyblade in hand to save the day.”

Aqua perked up when she heard the man say the word “Keyblade”. “Huh? Wait a sec. Is his name Terra, or Ven?” she asked, a spark of hope lighting in her heart.

The man shook his head. “Neither of those, I’m afraid,” he answered solemnly, deducing that those were the names of the friends she worried for.

Aqua sighed. “Should’ve known.” She turned away from him to stare out at the horizon. She faintly recalled a conversation she held with a phantom version of Terra and witnessing an illusion of an unresponsive Ventus and realized that it was foolish of her to get her hopes up.

“How long has it been since I met him? At least a year now, perhaps more,” the man mused. “Back then, my heart was clouded with vengeance. I did terrible things, both to him and his friends. I brought unhappiness to more lives than one. I felt something must be done. Was that why? A means of clearing my conscience? Or perhaps, out of a sort of scholarly instinct? While the boy slept his long sleep, I hid the results of my research inside him, transplanting the data to where it might best serve a purpose. In fact, I would like to believe… maybe he can set things right. A boy like him who touches so many hearts―he could open the right door, and save all those people whose lives I managed to ruin. So many are still waiting for their new beginning, their birth by sleep. Even me… and even you.”

Now Aqua genuinely wanted to know more about this boy. She was starting to recall her conversation with Mickey as they retrieved the golden Keyblade of darkness to close the great door. He had said that someone had been helping him in his mission to save the worlds, and that he used a Keyblade as well. But she could not recall what Mickey had said this friend’s name was.

“What’s this boy’s name?” she asked.

The man let out a light chuckle, surprising himself at the mirth that thinking of the boy brought to him. “His name… is… Sora,” he replied.

At that moment, everything came back to her. The afternoon when she had met Sora and Riku when they were children. She contemplated gifting one of them with the power of a Keyblade, but found that Terra had already conducted the Rite with Riku, so she instead trusted Sora with keeping Riku on the right path. She remembered Mickey saying that Sora and Riku had been helping him, and that Sora had the Keyblade from the realm of light. She remembered seeing Riku stranded in the Realm of Darkness without a true form, and knew in her heart that Sora’s actions had somehow offered him salvation, just as he had promised.

Aqua’s eyes filled with tears, which ran down her cheeks. The boy, who had reminded her of Ven, whom she had only wished to be a good friend, had saved so many people with his good heart. He had gone on to help Mickey, and they were probably real good friends now. He had given hope to this amnesiac man whose heart was filled with hate and rage. And now, that cheerful, innocent little boy might be capable of saving so many of those who are suffering.

She looked back out on the horizon, this time her eyes and heart full of hope, thinking that, perhaps, things were not as grim as she once believed. The demesne of darkness was just a tiny bit brighter.

“Sora,” she repeated, smiling genuinely for the first time in a long while.


	80. Chapter 79: Into the Darkness

The next morning, Sora and Kairi left the hotel that they stayed at and ate breakfast at a local café. They found Lea and Isa eating at a nearby table and said hello.

“Hey!” Lea greeted enthusiastically. “How are you guys doing?”

“We’re doing alright,” Kairi answered. “How about yourselves?” Sora smiled at her casual greeting. She seemed to be moving past the whole “kidnapping” thing.

Lea shrugged. “Aside from Isa not being a morning person, I can’t complain.”

Sora chuckled. “Glad to see you’re putting things back together,” he complimented. Isa looked away nervously. He had trouble believing that Sora could be so chill around him, and could not comprehend that Lea could bear to be in the same room as him.

At that moment, Sora decided to address a question that had been bugging him since minutes after waking up. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have seen Riku, would you?” he asked. He had realized that his friend was nowhere to be seen, apparently having gotten up and left the hotel before Sora and Kairi had even awoken.

“Yeah, I think so. I think he was heading toward the bailey,” Lea suggested.

Sora nodded. “Thanks. We’ll take a look,” he replied, before he continued to eat his breakfast.

* * *

Sora and Kairi climbed down the staircase that had been constructed at the cliff at the edge of the bailey, whose wall was still heavily broken, down to the collapsed platform that had once been the castle gates. Peering out across the horizon, Sora and Kairi saw a strange activity in the massive valley. Black specks were shifting around the area, indicating that Heartless were roaming the maw. But that was not what caught their eyes. White sparks accompanied by a dark blue flame exploded around the center of the valley.

Sora and Kairi traded glances. “You think that’s him?” Kairi asked.

Sora nodded. “Definitely.” They ran across the ravine trail and headed for the great maw.

Along the way, they fought some Heartless, though they seemed few in number. Sora surmised that the majority of the creatures that had been prowling the cliff side had been cut down by Riku as he had gone through. During moments of calm, Sora told Kairi that he had been in the mountainous area outside of the town a few times before. The first time had been when he fought over a thousand Heartless during the invasion, moments after learning Xemnas’ identity. The second and third time were when he met a warrior named Sephiroth at the furthest cliff, dueled him, and then went back to tell Cloud where to find him.

“Wow. I guess walking through here gives you something to brag about all on its own,” Kairi joked.

“I guess so. Goofy did get right back up like nothing was wrong after he took a boulder to the face and we all thought he died,” Sora said.

Kairi’s humorous smile faded. “He… what?”

“Uh, yeah, we didn’t think it was really that funny either,” Sora admitted. Without another word, he and Kairi pressed on. Soon, they passed through a fissure filled with glowing blue crystals and came out to the great maw, a large valley watched over by purple mountains on either side.

When they saw Riku, he was surrounded by six Armored Knights. However, by the time they reached him, he had vanquished the last remaining Heartless. As he took a moment to catch his breath, he spun around and raised his Keyblade when he heard footsteps from behind him. Sora and Kairi stopped and waved their hands in front of themselves, trying to discourage offensive or perceived defensive action. When Riku realized who the new arrivals were, he relaxed and dismissed his weapon.

“Hey,” Sora gave a light wave.

“Hey,” he replied.

“You doing alright?” Sora asked. “You’ve been quiet ever since we left the lab.”

Riku remained silent for several seconds before he finally spoke. “I just… I’m still trying to wrap my head around it,” he said.

Sora crossed his arms. “Yeah, it was shocking,” he agreed.

“I can’t believe Mickey never told us so we could’ve helped her.”

Kairi raised an eyebrow. “Huh? Who’s this new Riku we’re talking to?” she asked jokingly.

Riku was taken aback. “What?”

Kairi giggled. “You’re starting to sound like someone else we know,” she replied. She crossed her hands behind her head to illustrate the point.

Riku chuckled. “I guess this guy’s rubbed off on me.” He gave Sora a light thump on the forehead.

“Try not to turn into a total sap, then, okay?” Sora joked. The three of them laughed for a bit. “But, I have to agree with you there.”

Riku sighed. “I deserved to know what had happened,” he muttered. “She sacrificed herself to protect me, and I never knew.”

Kairi nodded. “You’re right. The King should have told us,” she agreed. “But, I can sort of see where he was coming from, being worried about taking us down there. If the Heartless down there are as dangerous as he said…”

“The longer we hesitate to help Aqua, the longer she’s stuck down there with those fiends!” Riku shouted. “I didn’t see much while I was down there, but they were no joke, even for Mickey.”

Kairi nodded again. “My point exactly,” she said. “I can’t imagine Mickey has any good memories from that place. Those things probably scared him half to death. And he already lost Aqua to that place twice. He doesn’t want to risk losing any of us.”

Riku fell silent as he pondered Kairi’s words. She was right. He had not considered how much the ordeal would have haunted Mickey. He felt stupid, like he was being selfish, for only considering his opinion on the matter. Why was he so bent out of shape from learning about Aqua’s fate? He did not know her, and he barely remembered meeting her. Was it because of how he had felt about himself back then? Guilt and shame over his mistakes? Did he not think he was worth something so noble and selfless? Did some of that shame still hold a place in his heart, making it difficult for him to believe that a total stranger would give up everything to save him, not caring what he had done?

“I can’t believe the King had to deal with that all on his own,” Sora lamented.

Riku had to agree. For as long as he had known Mickey, he had been living with the trauma of losing Aqua again, and he had never once let slip that he was going through anything. He suddenly felt sorry for yelling at him.

* * *

Donald and Goofy found Mickey in the marketplace, leaning on the wall and staring out over the town. They walked over to join him. They stood in silence, trying to think of a place to start.

“Well, yesterday didn’t go too well,” Goofy finally said, addressing the elephant in the room.

Mickey shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say I’m surprised, though,” he said sadly.

Donald turned to his friend. “Your Majesty, why didn’t you tell us about Aqua?” he asked.

Mickey hesitated for a moment. “At first, of course, it was because we had more pressing concerns, with the Organization running amok. But afterward, I spoke to Master Yen Sid, and he said that it was too dangerous to try to rescue her,” he explained. “I didn’t want to tell you until I knew I could save her, because, like Master Yen Sid said, you both, and Sora and Riku, too, would jump in and do everything you could even if you weren’t prepared. And I didn’t want to lose anyone else.”

Goofy nodded, seeing his point. “Yeah, from what you told us, it did seem rough even for two Keyblade Masters,” he conceded. “But you had to live with that for over a year, all on your own. You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

“Yeah. We should always be there for our friends,” Donald agreed.

Mickey chuckled. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry I worried you all.”

“Now, Master Yen Sid may have thought we couldn’t do it then, but we sure can now,” Goofy insisted. “After all, you, Sora, Riku, and Kairi have the power to fight through the Heartless, and we’ve got each other.”

“So, once the guys up in the castle come up with a way to find Aqua quickly, we should be ready for a simple rescue mission,” Donald reminded Mickey.

Goofy nodded cheerfully. “Aqua’s our friend too. We want to get her back as well.”

Mickey looked at his friends one at a time, an earnest smile on his face. “Gosh, thanks, guys.” He turned to look back out over the horizon, having cheered up a bit. Though he still felt guilty for not talking to his friends about what he had gone through or telling Riku about what Aqua had done, he felt that he might be able to fix things.

* * *

When Sora, Riku and Kairi returned to town, they found themselves surrounded by CLAYMORE scanner holograms. The ever-generating discs materialized one after the other in a line leading back out to the bailey.

“I wonder what that’s about,” Riku commented. He, Sora and Kairi turned around as they heard more holograms behind them, and they saw Mickey, Donald and Goofy coming toward them, following a trail of holograms. Leon, Yuffie, Lea, and Isa came right behind them.

“What’s going on?” Sora asked.

“Cid and Shera sent us a message from the castle,” Leon explained. “They want us all to head up to the study.”

“The hologram trail is supposed to let you know you should head up there as well,” Lea added.

“Sounds like they’ve finished,” Mickey surmised.

“Well, then, let’s go,” Sora said.

The party of ten followed the holograms out through the bailey and up the path to the castle postern. They entered through the castle’s side door and made their way through the corridors until they reached the study door. Sora knocked, and the door opened as Shera was there to let them in.

“Hey,” Sora greeted as he entered. The others waved hello as well. They stood around the study, aware that there was not enough room in the computer room for sixteen people. Ienzo and Cid were the first to come out to meet them. “Hello, Ienzo,” Sora waved to the scientist. He made eye contact with the engineer. “Hey, Cid.”

Ienzo nodded in respectful greeting. “Welcome. We’re glad that you all could make it,” he said. Even, Aeleus and Dilan entered from behind him.

“So, did you come up with anything?” Riku asked.

Even smirked. “Indeed we have,” he said confidently. “As I suspected, we have indeed retained the ability to conjure Corridors of Darkness. So, after cobbling together radar machines and placing them about the Realm of Darkness, we have successfully conjured a topographical rendering of the dark landscape.”

“So, we can use something that belongs to that Aqua lady and use it to pinpoint her location,” Cid continued. “We even tested it already with Dilan and one of his lances.”

“Luckily, we already have exactly what we need,” Dilan added. “Her Keyblade and armor should retain enough of her signature to track her aura even after twelve long years, especially as it has been kept in a hermetically-sealed chamber for most of that time with minimal exposure to external atmosphere.”

“Well, then what are we waiting for?” Sora blurted excitably. “Let’s find her!”

Aeleus frowned and shook his head at the boy. “Do not sabotage yourself with hastiness, young man,” he scolded. “Unfortunately, the calculations are not precise, and when I entered the demesne to retrieve Dilan, I found that I had arrived at half a mile north of his location. We must study the terrain, first, and assess the situation before we allow you to proceed.”

Riku nodded. “I understand,” he said. “We don’t want to run into too much trouble.” Mickey raised an eyebrow and looked at him in surprise. He seemed to have a more mature, comprehensive grasp on the matter before them, whereas the day before he had insisted on an immediate endeavor. Perhaps he had the time to think things over in the last twenty hours.

“Now, then, let us see what we can find,” Ienzo offered. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy followed him, Even, and Dilan into the computer room. Shera took out a laptop tablet which displayed a screen matching the main computer so that those who remained behind could see what the others were looking at.

What appeared to be a stool had been set up in front of the digitizer. Dilan placed a piece of the blue armor, which appeared to be a helmet, on the seat, which glowed with a blue light.

“Now, let us give it time to start up, and then we will run the scan,” Even said as he typed in commands.

* * *

As they worked, no one noticed a black bird perched upon a pipe just outside of the window overlooking the Heartless Manufactory. It had waited out there through most of the night and the entirety of the morning, keeping tabs on what the scientists had been working on. It was quite intrigued to hear their intentions. Once it had heard enough, it flapped its wings and flew away from its perch. When it had gained top speed, it vanished in a flash of shadow.

Diablo materialized a hundred feet from the window of the tower in the vale miles away from town. He flew through the opening and landed gently on his mistress’ shoulder.

Maleficent regarded her familiar with intrigue. “So, Diablo, what have you learned?” she asked.

Diablo let out a few squawks. Zeromast and Pete wondered how she could understand him. Maybe it was a faerie thing.

Maleficent’s eyes widened in surprise. “They intend to enter the Realm of Darkness to rescue… Aqua?” Her hands clenched into fists and her mouth contorted into a scowl. “They seek to relieve her of her suffering?!” She launched a fireball in her anger, which Zeromast and Pete narrowly avoided.

“Hey, hey, chill out, Maleficent,” Pete pleaded. “Hang on, who’s Aqua?”

“That insolent Keyblade wielder defied me and aided the pathetic prince in breaking the curse I placed on Princess Aurora,” Maleficent answered, through gritted teeth.

“Hmm…” Pete pondered, recognizing a name like that. “Say, did she happen to have blue hair?” he asked. Maleficent nodded. “Oh, yeah. I met her once. So, she’s a Keyblade wielder, huh?”

“There would be no point in attempting to thwart them,” Zeromast said. “The Realm of Darkness is a savage land, and any effort to interfere with an endeavor that already has great risk to them would only pose great risk to us. It would be better to allow fate to determine the outcome of their journey.” He stroked his chin, considering all possibilities. “However, their visit might prove beneficial…”

“How do you mean?” Pete asked.

Zeromast shook his head. “It is nothing connecting to our greater goal. But there are some runestones that I have been trying to gather for years,” he explained. “My collection is nearly complete, but the last one remaining appears to have been lost in the Realm of Darkness. Perhaps the heroes can retrieve it for me.”

Maleficent raised an eyebrow. “Do you propose to convince them to seek it out?” she asked sarcastically.

Zeromast chuckled with mild amusement. “Of course not.” He opened his left pouch and reached in. He felt around, half of his forearm ducked into the pocket. He smiled when his hand closed around his intended artifact and he pulled his arm out, revealing a small jar of blue powder. “They will gather it when it comes to them. I simply need to ensure that it finds them.”

Maleficent and Pete looked at each other in confusion. They wondered what he had planned. They watched as he drew a blue chalk circle on the floor in front of him. The floor turned transparent, but instead of showing the room below, the circle offered an aerial view of Mickey Mouse. Zeromast removed the stopper from the jar and emptied its contents into the portal. The powder fell through the portal and landed in Mickey’s fur, soaking into his skin with the mouse and his friends none the wiser.

Zeromast swiped against the chalk, breaking the circle and causing the portal to vanish. He began to walk away before Maleficent and Pete could inquire more as to what was going to happen.

Pete shook his head. “I am not a fan of that guy,” he complained.

Maleficent shrugged, forcing Diablo to fidget to maintain his balance. “We shall come to understand him in due time,” she said.

* * *

After a few minutes of load time, a polygon rendering of the terrain of the Realm of Darkness—zoomed out by quite a large margin to fit on the screen and rendered as much as feasible on short notice—appeared on the computer monitor. A few minutes later, as the scientists chose to wait for the 3D model to develop before running the sensor, a red dot appeared on what Even’s coordinate system labeled as the western side of the landscape. A pale red aura emanated from the dot, covering what was likely a ten-mile radius, indicating that Aqua’s true location could be anywhere in that range.

Mickey smiled. “That’s it!” he cheered. “Aqua should be somewhere around there!”

Kairi nodded. “Okay. Naminé, can you get us there?” she asked aloud. Everyone around her, even knowing the circumstances between Kairi and Naminé, found the scene before them to be weird, as she was talking aloud to pass a message to someone who, for all intents and purposes that some would care to contemplate, was herself.

Once again shocking all around her in spite of everyone in view having witnessed the same thing occur the day before, a moment after the question was posed, a phantom arm rose up from her real one, rotating about her right shoulder. The phantom hand snapped its fingers, and a Corridor of Darkness appeared at the entrance to the short hall linking the computer room to the elevator. The arm dropped back down and fused back into Kairi’s hand.

Leon, Yuffie, Cid, Shera, Lea, and Isa crowded into the entrance to the computer room. “Now or never, huh?” Leon surmised.

Riku nodded. “Yeah. She’s been down there too long.”

“Well, in that case, you guys should take these,” Lea said. He raised his arms, revealing that he was carrying some of the same coats once worn by Organization XIII, and which he and Isa still wore. “Might camouflage you from the Heartless, and also protect you from the corrupting effects of the dark atmosphere. Not sure how much Sora, Kairi and Mickey will need them for that, though. But better to be safe than sorry.”

Riku smiled. “Thanks,” he said. He took a duster from Lea’s pile, wrapped it around himself, and zipped it up. Sora, Kairi and Goofy did the same. Kairi did a few poses to show off her new outfit, and Sora crossed his arms and affected a stern glare to try to look intimidating. However, Mickey and Donald realized that they were too small to wear the adult-sized coats.

“Your Majesty,” Leon addressed Mickey, “Yuffie found this pinned between some roof shingles a few months ago.” He pulled out a black hooded coat that was the right size to fit Mickey. The hood even had added shapes to fit the mouse king’s ears.

Mickey smiled as Leon returned his old espionage coat to him. “Thanks, pal,” he said as he put the coat on and smoothly fit his ears into the breathable fabric of the hood.

Donald appeared to fret, aware that he was the only one without a protective garment. He was taken by surprise as he was suddenly hit with a large pile of fabric from behind. He scrambled to get it off of his head and, once he had a good look at it, realized that it was a black coat that was exactly his size. He turned around to see Dilan assert eye contact.

“We surmised that you would need one as well,” the lancer said. Donald nodded in thanks and put the coat on.

“Good luck, and be safe,” Leon told the party.

Riku nodded. “We will. And we’ll bring Aqua back, safe,” he assured.

Mickey turned to face his teammates. “Is everyone ready?” he asked. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy nodded in confirmation.

Waving good-bye, they turned and stepped through the dark portal, which vanished seconds after the last of them passed through.


	81. Chapter 80: Den of Wolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Dark Road launched this week. I've got to say, I'm interested in the story and the new characters. Unfortunately, the gameplay is not as engaging as I would have hoped. You're just flicking cards up, and unlike Union Cross, thus far the attacks are not very engaging. I've largely been letting the World Battle run on Auto Battle to complete the "Defeat x enemies" or "Obtain y BP" or just to grind. The gameplay is also too fast-paced to really appreciate. Hopefully, it will improve with updates.  
> In terms of the added lore, I don't understand why they had said that some of the worlds had not been fully completed yet. Why would they do that? These worlds all of a sudden don't have more than seventy years of backstory? You know what? I'm just going to ignore that. I'll only begrudgingly acknowledge it if they give me a VERY good reason to.
> 
> Well, until Episode Two rolls around, let's get back into this story. Be sure to let me know what you think. Don't be afraid to provide feedback, even of the negative kind (so long as it is constructive and not mean-spirited, but why would I expect mean trolls on the Internet?); give me your opinion on my writing and storytelling choices; let me know how you interpret some of the more subtle moments; and I'd also be happy to read some of your theories on what might happen or what might have happened.
> 
> I'm happy to have such supportive readers, and I hope I don't break too many hearts in the next several paragraphs...

As it turned out, the coats proved rather unhelpful in obscuring their scents from the local monsters. They were barely in the Realm of Darkness for two minutes before the first Shadows and Neoshadows swarmed them. As soon as they had carved through that batch, giant spheres with antennae, tails, and faces materialized. The Darkballs flew at them, chomping their cartoonish interlocking teeth in an effort to take a bite out of them.

Kairi dove out of the way while Sora struck the one that was coming for her. She cast Fira, knocking it off balance, and Sora finished it off with a four-hit aerial combo. Mickey, Donald and Goofy fought another one from all angles, but it managed to knock them all into the air by thrashing about in every direction. Sora and Riku slashed a third Darkball into ribbons, though it took a lot of effort, then Riku used Dark Firaga to destroy the Heartless that Mickey, Donald and Goofy had failed to defeat. His eyes widened and he smirked as he realized that his dark magic was much stronger in the dark realm.

Sora, Riku and Kairi helped Mickey, Donald and Goofy to their feet. “You guys alright?” Sora asked.

Mickey nodded while Donald loosened his joints. “Yeah. Just a few scrapes,” he replied.

“These things are a lot stronger than the old batch,” Sora commented, recalling the Darkballs that had materialized in Hollow Bastion. They had given him a lot of trouble at first even after he regained the Keyblade, but they became less of a pain to deal with over time as he grew stronger, to the point where they were hardly any more difficult than Soldiers and Large Bodies, even with only half of his total maximum power. Since then, he and his friends have grown much stronger, so any Darkball in the realm of light should have been a piece of cake even for Donald and Goofy. But these creatures took a lot of effort to bring down.

“Yep. The Pureblood Heartless are a lot stronger in their natural habitat. All this darkness is just going to amplify their power,” Mickey confirmed. “And they’re gonna get a lot more diverse, so we should be on our guard.”

Kairi crossed her arms, realizing just what they had gotten themselves into. “We’re out of our element,” she said. “Let’s hurry and find Aqua.”

“Of course,” Mickey replied. “I should still be able to detect her light, like I did last time. I don’t know if any of you would be able to do the same, given your limited interactions with her.” He closed his eyes and held his hand out. He shuffled briefly as he turned around to check in different directions, before he stopped and pointed in the direction he was currently facing. “That way! Let’s go.”

Mickey led the way, and the rest of the party marched over the terrain after him, keeping their eyes peeled and ears tuned for anything that might come after them. They took in their surroundings. The sky was an entirely dark gray, and there were few clouds. The entire land seemed to be made of black and dark blue rock, shaped into uneven ground and mountains. Some of the rocks were cracked, revealing a blue or purple light, giving the place an even more eerie feel. The entire realm felt more like a haunted cavern deep underground rather than an actual world full of life.

It was not long before they were attacked again. This time, Goofy noticed a few winged Heartless fluttering above them and pointed them out to his friends. They were a cardinal purple color, and they resembled bats with dragon-like heads. The shape of the heads made Sora think of the Living Bone monsters that he had clashed with in the Pride Lands. Jiminy noticed them and, his mind stuck on the first verb he thought of to describe them, decided to name them “Flutterings”. Sora chose not to argue. When the bat-like Heartless noticed them and flew toward them, Sora and Goofy were the first to summon their weapons, and the others followed suit, ready to counter whatever attacks they dealt.

The Flutterings dove toward the party, but Sora, Riku and Kairi cut three of them out of the air with their Keyblades, causing them to fall to the ground. Mickey jumped into the air to intercept another Fluttering, which spun like a top to strike him with its wingtips. As it spun, its wings wrapped around its body in such a way to make it look like an umbrella. Mickey was hit, his strike failing to power through, but he countered by casting Firaga, which sent it into a panic. Donald finished it off by firing another Firaga spell. As one of the first three creatures took flight again, Kairi leapt and delivered an aerial combo before it could attempt a counterattack. The combo, however, was not enough to slay it, only send it flying. Sora and Riku dealt with it and its companions with a Thundaga spell and a Dark Fire storm, respectively.

Not wanting to wait for more Heartless to follow the commotion to their location, they pressed on, Mickey still certain of their path. For the most part, their trek was in silence, allowing them to think over the recent developments.

“Gawrsh, you know, something’s been bothering me for a while,” Goofy said, finally breaking the silence, a welcome change given the spooky atmosphere. “Aqua’s been down here all this time, and Ven’s in a coma, right?” Mickey nodded. “Then, whatever happened to Terra?”

Sora and Riku crossed their arms in contemplation. True, according to Mickey’s story, Aqua had made sure that he would not become lost in the darkness by way of sacrificing herself. But that would mean Terra should have been in the Realm of Light for at least part of the last twelve years. There was a possibility that he became lost while the Heartless had been consuming worlds. But if Mickey and Yen Sid have been searching for him like he said, they should have found him early on, and if not then he would have reappeared after the worlds had been restored.

“Yeah, I have been wondering that as well,” Riku admitted. “Maybe something happened between him and Xehanort after they all got separated…”

“Wasn’t Master Xehanort an old man?” Donald asked, recalling what he knew about the evil Keybearer. “I’m curious about how he could be the same guy as Ansem and Xemnas when they were less than half his age.”

Mickey shook his head. “I don’t know how that happened. That’s actually why I never thought there was a connection when I first met Xehanort as Ansem’s apprentice.”

Goofy scratched his forehead, a bizarre theory coming to mind. “What if Xehanort possessed Terra?” he suggested. Everyone looked at him in surprise and confusion. “Well, he did the same with Riku, right? So, I guess he would have the power to do that. And, I suppose that if he took over Terra’s body, that’s how he would be that young again.”

Everyone considered Goofy’s idea, and realized that it made a lot of sense. However, they had no way of knowing if it was true. Riku shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “Shame none of us knows what Terra looked like. I barely remember even meeting him.”

With no way to press the topic forward, they dropped it and continued their trek. At one point, Kairi stumbled and fell, but Sora came to her aid and helped her to her feet. After a few minutes, they came to a ledge and jumped down to a lower level.

Hearing a splash of water to their left, they turned and saw a new kind of Heartless. It resembled a giant black water droplet with a blue watery tip on top, a pair of black wings, and several ice crystals growing out of its base. The water-based Pureblood was joined by two more friends. They all possessed jagged mouths like Darkballs and the inside of their mouths had the same watery texture as the tip on its head and the crystals below.

Sora sighed as the Water Cores floated closer, waving their icy underbellies so that their movements were reminiscent of jellyfish. “Elemental Heartless,” he muttered, recalling how Mickey had mentioned such creatures in his tale. He summoned his Keyblade, and his allies called upon their weapons in turn. “Counter Water magic with Thunder!” he shouted, advising his companions on the requisite strategy. He demonstrated by rolling in between the Heartless and casting Thundaga. Too late, he realized a logical flaw in his plan as he stood between three water Heartless that were all conducting electricity, with enough instability to cause damage to them. He screamed and his body jittered as the lightning struck him as well a second after the charge of the spell wore off and left him vulnerable.

“Sora!” Kairi called out in concern as he dropped to the ground. She slashed at one of the dazed Heartless and knocked it away, then attempted to drag Sora to safety. However, she was unsuccessful, so she simply cast Cura on him where he lay. He stood up and swatted a Water Core that dove toward them. Goofy joined in and the three of them attacked the Heartless until it was no more.

Riku ran to confront another Water Core. This Heartless created a bubble of water around itself. When Riku jumped and swung his Keyblade at it, it simply vanished into the liquid, much to his confusion. A few seconds later, it reappeared several feet to his left. He made another attempt at attacking it but it vanished again, reappearing a short distance behind him. He whirled around and launched a volley of Dark Fire orbs at it, but this yielded the same result. He turned when it appeared behind him, but this time decided to wait for it to act, as he came to the conclusion that the bubble allowed it to teleport when attacked. The Water Core decided to act and gathered its shield up around it to lob several balls of condensed liquid at him. Riku brought up a Dark Shield, which blocked all but one of the water balls, which hit him on his left arm. He recovered and cast Blizzaga. The water-based Heartless was frozen solid, completely vulnerable. He threw his Keyblade like a javelin, shattering the Heartless on contact.

Mickey and Donald assaulted the last Water Core, the onslaught so unrelenting that it did not have time to even attempt a counterattack, especially with their abuse of spells that it was weak against. When it melted into water and dark smoke, the two spell casters nearly inflicted harm upon each other as they had each fired another spell before realizing that the Heartless was finished.

When they thought that the Heartless were finished for now, they heard Kairi shout “Look out!” They turned and saw another set of Heartless and realized that they had only defeated the first wave. There were five Shadows milling about, two Neoshadows, and four Heartless of unfamiliar varieties. Two of them had a similar appearance to the Water Cores, except for the fact that the tops of their heads were lit aflame and there was nothing too exotic about their lower halves. The other two looked more like hedgehogs, with sharp, light brown rocks standing in for fur, though they lacked legs and their faces resembled those of Darkballs, albeit elongated.

Sora ran up to Mickey and crouched to speak directly into the king’s ear. “Say, is there any magic that counters the Earth-based kind?” he asked nervously.

Mickey shook his head. “None that I’m aware of,” he replied. “Though, I haven’t really seen these things using those spikes for anything other than physical attacks. Just do what you can.”

Sora ran toward one of the Neoshadows and quickly overpowered it. Donald aimed Blizzard spells at the Flame Cores. One of these foes was frozen solid and fell to the ground. Goofy shield-punched it as hard as he could, sending it straight into a rock where it shattered into pieces. Kairi pursued the other Flame Core, striking down any Shadows that came near as she made her dash. She jumped and struck it with her Keyblade, only to watch it turn a bright orange as its entire body became wreathed in flames. As it zoomed all over the place, she realized that she had made it angry. She ran around to avoid the flying fireball, performing rough somersaults and one slightly more graceful cartwheel to dodge it. When it calmed down and the flames began to weaken, she drank an Ether to restore her mana, then conjured her Keyblade and willed a cold magic to envelop it. She threw the weapon, the key arcing through the air all over the place, exuding cold energy that created ice crystals in the air. When the weapon made contact with the Heartless, the fiend was frozen solid, large icicles bursting out from the source of impact. And yet, the Keyblade continued to soar, looping around and striking the frozen Flame Core once again, shattering the icicles but creating new ones. The weapon returned to its target and cut through a third time, this time utterly destroying it.

Kairi gasped in surprise as the Keyblade returned to her hand. She had not expected her Blizzard Raid to be so powerful, particularly since her combat magic was not at the same power level as Sora’s. She wondered if the atmosphere of the dark realm, or at least in this section, was boosting magical power. In hindsight, she thought Sora’s earlier Thundaga was stronger and more focused than usual. Deciding that she would contemplate the issue later, she returned her attention to the Shadows, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Riku had managed to easily destroy the second Neoshadow.

Sora ran toward one of the Earth Cores and swung his Keyblade at it. However, it turned so that its back was to him and the Keyblade bounced harmlessly off of the rock spikes. He ran around to try to get at the face, reasoning that it was the only vulnerable part of its body. However, it continued to turn to avoid him. Frustrated, he jumped over it to try to get directly in front of it for an attack. It acted first, unfortunately, and threw itself at him, trying to take a bite out of him. Sora fell back, but swung his Keyblade to knock his opponent away. It regained its balance, which was not too hard since it did not have any feet, and began to dig its face into the ground. Sora looked on in confusion, wondering what it was about to do. His eyes widened and he raised his Keyblade just as it had begun to twirl its body about the point where it had burrowed. Just in time, he managed to block the attack as the Earth Core threw itself at him, aiming its entire spiky rear at him. It landed on its side from the recoil of the guard and growled, realizing that its attack had failed. Sora took a step toward it and delivered a fierce barrage of blows at its face, bashing it until the Heartless faded away, rocks and all. He turned around and saw that Mickey and Riku had a similar experience with the other Earth Core, though Mickey seemed somewhat dazed, as if he had taken a blow to the noggin. Nevertheless, the Heartless was soon vanquished.

Once the last of the Shadows had been eliminated, the party took the opportunity to sit down and take a rest. Mickey cast Curaga to heal any injuries sustained. Goofy passed bagged sandwiches around to everyone, which they gladly took out and began eating.

“Phew… You weren’t kidding when you said these things were tough,” Sora said. “I’ve never seen them this strong.”

Mickey nodded. “There’s a reason even the Organization never strayed down here for too long,” he replied.

Riku shook his head in disbelief. “To think Aqua had to put up with this for twelve years straight…” he mused.

“Actually, it probably only felt like a few months to her,” Donald corrected.

“That doesn’t make it any better,” Riku argued. “And that’s not even counting the Darksides and whatever else is out there that we haven’t run into yet.”

“Yeah. It is a scary thought,” Kairi agreed. “I mean, the Darkside wasn’t so bad in the Realm of Light, but down here, who knows how dangerous they are?”

Sora looked at Mickey with a raised eyebrow. “Didn’t you take three out with a single shot each?” he asked, recalling what he had seen Mickey do from the opposite side of the Door to Darkness.

Mickey shrugged as he conceded the point. “Okay, I guess we can manage them if we’re careful to avoid their attacks,” he admitted.

“That shouldn’t be hard,” Sora snarked, recalling how slow the Darksides’ movements were and how telegraphed their attacks were.

“Can you tell how much farther we have to go, Mickey?” Riku asked.

“Hmm…” He concentrated on sensing the familiar light that he had used to guide him and the others, reaching his hand out in the direction they had been going. “Not too much farther, I think.”

Riku nodded, relieved by the response. The party continued to eat in silence. When they had finished, they got up and continued their trek.

Once they had gotten into the groove of coming up with strategies to combat each breed of Heartless, any fights during this round became simpler, albeit still rather tedious. From Sora’s perspective, their power level relative to his current ability seemed about relative to how the Darkballs and such had been during his first return visit to Hollow Bastion, after the Heartless across the worlds had been boosted by the darkness pouring out of the unblocked Keyhole and he had been cut to half of his strength. Of course, they were not as formidable like the big bosses that he had to deal with, such as Parasite Cage, Kurt Zisa, Dark Thorn, Storm Rider, Grim Reaper, Groundshaker, or Midnight Ball, and certainly not the several-stories-tall Raid Armor. As such, while the battles in this world were formidable, Sora found that they were manageable, especially as he realized that his offensive magic had been given a boost in the Realm of Darkness for some reason.

After the latest battle, Mickey felt a strange tingling and, based on an earlier feeling he had sensed, came to a conclusion. “I think she’s close,” he announced.

Sora, Donald and Goofy looked around, holding their hands flat over their foreheads as if they were trying to keep the glare of the sun out of their eyes, even though there was no such light source above them.

“What’s that?” Kairi asked, pointing ahead of her. Everyone turned to see what she was pointing at, and they noticed a tall, thin silhouette. They took a few steps closer, and Mickey noticed a few distinguishing traits about the figure’s outline.

“Aqua?” Mickey said, calling out to the figure that he believed to be his long-lost friend. “Aqua, is that you?” There was no response. “Gosh, I’ve been so worried about you. I wanted to come back to find you, but there was too much going on in the Realm of Light. And I was afraid it might be too dangerous. But I’m here now. And I brought some friends for help. Now we can get you out of here.” He did everything in his power to keep from breaking down in tears as he spoke, though his voice conveyed his emotions thoroughly: sadness at the thought of all that she had suffered, guilt at not saving her sooner, and relief at finally finding her again.

Even still, the figure that Mickey was now sure was Aqua made no reply. “Aqua…?” Mickey repeated, the single word pleading for her to say something.

Something appeared in the figure’s hand and she slowly turned around, pointing the object at Mickey. The mouse, as well as those behind him, felt a force blast launch them back several feet. Shocked, Mickey pushed himself back up and stared at the figure in surprise. He now noticed that the silhouetted figure was wreathed in a black flame, what had started out as a slow burn having flared up with that display of power.

“Mickey…” the figure said slowly, in a voice that confirmed her identity, but this only added to his horror. Slowly, the black flame faded away and the figure’s form became fully visible. She looked almost exactly like Mickey last remembered seeing her, though there was something very wrong. Behind the mouse, Kairi gasped at the sight. Mickey’s jaw dropped as he stared into her eyes, which glowed in a haunting color. Mickey’s shock was only met with a scowl and a truly heartbreaking line.

“You’re too late.”


	82. Chapter 81: Aqua

Riku scrambled to his feet and ran to Mickey, pulling him away as Aqua charged in to attack. Aqua let out a fierce shout as she pursued and swung her weapon. Goofy jumped in and blocked the strike with his shield. Realizing how strong she was, however, Goofy retreated at the first opening.

Mickey was still in shock. While everyone else was busy putting up a defensive, he simply stared at his old friend in disbelief. “Aqua, what happened to you?” he asked.

Aqua sneered. “I guess the darkness finally got to me,” she replied coldly. She threw herself at Mickey, plates of the energy that formed Reflect magic revolving around her. Riku tossed his unresponsive friend out of the line of fire and brought up a Dark Shield to block her attack. “So long down here without hope of escape, barely able to survive with what I let myself have, I figured I’d let go of what was weighing me down, and find where my real strength lay.”

Mickey picked himself up, unable to believe what he was hearing. “What was weighing you down? You would never abandon the people you care about! Ven, Terra—”

“Are gone,” Aqua interrupted. “And they’re not coming back. So, no point chasing shadows, right?” Sora came onto the scene and delivered a combo to her left flank, hoping to knock her down long enough so he and his friends could restrain her, but Aqua held her hand out and called up a spherical barrier on the finisher, then let it burst outward, knocking Sora off balance. She then swung her Keyblade up to hit him, then followed through on a quick combo, sending him sprawling. “And as if you’re one to talk, Mickey. Some friend you are, leaving me to rot for twelve years.”

Now Mickey was offended as well as shocked. “You know I did everything I could to find you all this time!” Aqua launched herself at him, swinging her Keyblade in a wide arc, the E-shaped teeth aimed to point at Mickey’s head. Mickey dove to the left to avoid the blow and retaliated with a shot of Pearl. Unlike the elemental spells, Pearl had the same effect as normal, likely due to being light magic in a dark realm, but it did the job well enough. Aqua was thrown backward, allowing Mickey a moment to clear his head.

What could have happened to Aqua? The last time he had seen her, she was just as strong as ever, maintaining her resolve even when the darkness was playing tricks on her mind. But this Aqua was a complete one-eighty. Had something happened after the Demon Tide swept her away? There was something different about her eyes. Had someone inflicted some kind of curse on her? Maybe she had been possessed, like what had happened to Riku. If so, who could have done such a thing?

Aqua switched her focus from Mickey and ran to attack Riku. However, she was pushed back by a strong gust of wind. Kairi pointed her Keyblade at Aqua, putting all of her effort into maintaining the gale force that kept the mad woman from hurting her friend.

“Aqua! It’s me! Remember? Kairi?” she shouted, trying to get through to the blue-haired woman. “The little girl you saved in Radiant Garden? I gave you flowers.” She started to feel weak and realized that she was using up all of her mana maintaining the Aerora spell. Unable to do any more, the spell failed and the wind died down. Kairi slumped to her knees.

Once she had rebalanced her footing, Aqua shook her head. “And I should care because?” she scoffed. She lunged at Riku, but the young man was able to match her strikes and parry them effectively, although he had to consciously adjust his Keyblade’s angle as the way in which the slashes were done was not quite what he was accustomed to. Soon, they ended up locking blades, each fighter trying to push back against the other.

“Hmph. To think I had been ready to sacrifice my life for you,” Aqua taunted.

Riku grunted in irritation. “I’ve been to your low. But I realized that it wasn’t the way,” he said. He removed his left hand from the handle of his weapon and launched a small Fire spell at Aqua’s stomach, consciously regulating the power level so that it did not come out as an explosive force like the earlier spells had done and therefore deep-fry her. The blast launched her away, sending her tumbling backward. She quickly brought herself to a stop by driving her feet into the ground, but was caught off guard as Riku had decided to launch an offensive. He delivered an upward slash toward her, and she jumped backward to narrowly avoid it, cutting close enough for the tip of the blade to clip a few hairs as it passed her forehead. Aqua raised her Keyblade and blocked his next strike, then thrust herself into a barrier-charged surge that knocked Riku off of his feet. When she slowed down and the barrier discs faded, she spun around and hit Riku in the side.

Donald cast Blizzara at Aqua, seemingly encasing her in ice, but the ice was shattered as she willed the barrier she had cast to explode outward. Donald’s eyes widened in surprise. _It’s like that barrier doesn’t even use up any of her energy,_ he thought to himself. _By now, Sora would be running around waiting for his mana to recharge…_ He cast a barrage of Fira spells until he ran out of energy, but Aqua managed to hold up a barrier that continued to protect her from the pyrotechnic onslaught. Donald quacked in fright as the hostile Keybearer threw her Keyblade at him, nailing him in the face and knocking him on his butt.

Sora handed an Ether to Kairi and helped her to her feet while they watched the fighting to on. Kairi drank the Ether to restore her strength.

“What could have happened to her?” Kairi asked, a mix of concern and horror in her voice.

Sora shook his head. “I don’t know. But…” he trailed off, some part of him knowing that something beyond what was already clear was quite amiss. “Does something about her seem… I dunno, off?”

Kairi looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, aside from the obvious. Watching her fight, does something strike you as strange?” he clarified.

Kairi crossed her arms and turned her attention back to Aqua, who had returned to targeting Mickey, the mouse barely holding his own as he did not have the will to hurt someone who had once been his friend. She studied her use of magic, her body language, and her overall appearance, using what she had seen of her in Mickey’s photo for reference of her current physical state. Her gaze fell upon Aqua’s Keyblade, focusing on the way she swung it.

“I saw her fight when I was little, but something’s different. Wasn’t she right-handed?” she commented.

Sora continued to watch Aqua and realized that, contrary to what Kairi claimed, she was currently holding and swinging her Keyblade with her left hand. He had not paid much attention to that detail at first, and certainly had not seen anything wrong with it as he had never seen her fight before. However, reflecting on her appearance in the photo, he realized that she would have been holding her Wayfinder in her right hand. So then, why was the Aqua in front of them a southpaw, like a mirrored copy of herself?

Now that he was reflecting on his prior knowledge of Aqua, he was starting to notice something about her hair, and he recalled the photo to make sure things had not changed too much with her physical condition. Things had not, but even if they had, her hairline was still in the same place as he remembered, slightly right of center, rather than on the left where this Aqua had it.

“Now that I think about it, her hair was swept to the left,” he explained, “not to the right. It was even like that in the photo.”

Kairi nodded. “You’re right. Everything else looks about the same because it’s all symmetrical, but I’m kind of surprised Mickey didn’t notice. But what does this mean? It’s like she’s been mirrored.”

A crazy idea came to Sora’s mind. He looked at her face, taking note of the unnatural state of her eyes: blank, cloudy white, as if they were dealing with something that looked like Aqua but could not fully disguise the fact that it was only a soulless replica. “Or something came out of a mirror.” He raised his Keyblade and entered a battle stance. “That’s not Aqua!” He ran into the fray.

Mickey could only manage to guard against and dodge his opponent’s attacks, but he could not hold out much longer against this assault. It was not long before he missed a beat and his opponent knocked him down with a Blizzard spell.

“Well, I guess you weren’t prepared for the darkness after all,” ‘Aqua’ mocked. “You should have stayed up in the sun.” She raised her weapon and aimed it to delivering a killing blow.

However, Sora struck her hard with his Keyblade, causing her to fly into a rock surface. The rock visibly cracked on impact. ‘Aqua’ gritted her teeth in anger.

Mickey stared in shock. “Sora? What are you doing?” he asked.

Sora turned to look at him only long enough to answer. “That’s not Aqua! Some kind of mirror doppelganger!”

Mickey took a moment to collect his thoughts and understand what Sora had said. That was not Aqua? It was some twisted imitation? His sorrow and horror began to turn to anger at the thought of Aqua’s face and name being used by something that did not care for what she stood for. He pushed himself to his feet and picked his Keyblade up. Whatever this manikin was, he would put an end to its wickedness. He would find the real Aqua, but first, this thing had to pay.

Mirror-Aqua picked herself back up and charged in to engage against Sora. The brown-haired Keyblade wielder was not holding back any longer, so he was now giving her trouble. She managed to throw him down with a barrier surge. She charged in for a counterattack, but realized that Mickey was leaping toward her, spinning so that his Keyblade would come down on her as it came around. A second before he would have hit, she vanished in the blink of an eye. Mickey landed and looked around frantically, trying to locate his enemy.

“Where’d she go?” he asked, fury building in his voice.

He looked around again as he heard a wicked chuckle. “Well, someone’s ready to play,” the voice that sounded like Aqua taunted. Everyone gripped their weapons, waiting for the doppelganger to reappear. She appeared several feet to Kairi’s right and started walking in plain view of everyone. When Kairi ran to attack, she vanished again. Mirror-Aqua reappeared behind Goofy, but this time she charged at him in a barrier surge, sending him flying, then vanished again. Sora, Mickey and Riku kept their ears open, listening for her reappearance. She appeared behind Sora and launched into a barrier surge, but Sora cast Reflect, causing her to bounce around him harmlessly. She vanished at the end of the attack. The same thing happened with Riku, with the young man choosing Reflect over Dark Shield due to the fact that Dark Shield only worked in front of him, and then Kairi.

Sora heard Mirror-Aqua reappear behind him and cast Reflect again. However, this time, the phantom was wrapped in a red aura rather than barrier discs, and she broke through Sora’s defensive spell, much to his surprise, and sent him sprawling.

“Sora!” Kairi shouted, concerned. She made a run to his aid, but Mirror-Aqua appeared in front of her, a sinister smirk on her face. The facsimile began to spin around, cold air radiating from her body. Kairi ran as a funnel of icy wind enveloped the phantom. When the spell burst out into a radial ice blast, Kairi had barely managed to avoid getting caught in the freezing field, but she was still knocked off of her feet by a powerful burst of wind that had been expelled from the field.

Riku teleported behind Mirror-Aqua and launched a series of Dark Fire orbs at her. However, she vanished just before they would have connected, and then reappeared behind Riku, launching into a scarlet surge. Riku, however, jumped out of the way of the unblockable attack. He cast Thunder to strike her before she vanished, and saw that a bolt of lightning connected and caused her to fall to the ground even while the red aura was still active. Unfortunately, she was able to retaliate, launching a fireball that sent him flying upward before hitting a stalactite and falling to the ground.

Goofy spun toward Mirror-Aqua, but the fiend was able to dodge his attack with a quick teleportation. Donald launched Fire and Blizzard spells at her, forcing her to jump around both in and out of plane to dodge. She rematerialized directly in front of Donald and swatted him aside. Mickey lunged at her, swinging his Keyblade for a back attack. However, Mirror-Aqua spun around and caught the teeth of his weapon in the teeth of her own. In the same swift moment, she spun around again and released his weapon to throw him at Goofy, causing both to tumble to the ground.

Mirror-Aqua ran toward Mickey, a bloodthirsty smile on her face. “You’re finished!” she shouted. And it seemed as though she would be right, as everyone else was too dazed and far away to get back up and come to Mickey’s defense.

To everyone’s surprise, even that of the phantom, the same voice rang out in protest. “Get away from them!”

They heard a clang as the phantom’s Keyblade met something of a similar material. They looked up at Mirror-Aqua and found themselves seeing double. They were all confused, but Kairi had a good idea of what had just happened. For she was in a position where she could see the newcomer’s blue eyes, which glared into the empty white eyes in determination and anger.

Mirror-Aqua gritted her teeth. “You…” She pushed herself away from her double, and all around them focused their gaze on the newcomer. They could tell that she held a weapon identical to the phantom’s, but in her right hand rather than her left. Sora and Kairi, from different angles, also noticed that her hairline was in the right place.

“Aqua,” Kairi breathed, realizing just who had come to save them.

Aqua—the real Aqua—flicked her Keyblade down to her side, holding it in her combat-ready stance, standing up straight with her legs together and her feet spread apart at an acute angle. Her mirror clone took the same pose, but backward, so that it truly looked as though Aqua was standing in front of a mirror that was ten feet away from her.

“I thought I was rid of you,” Aqua said.

“You can’t get rid of yourself,” the phantom taunted. “I’m the side of yourself that you don’t want to see, but you can’t hide from.” With that, the phantom vanished. Moments later, she reappeared and entered a Barrier Surge, but Aqua called up her barrier to defend against the attack. The phantom tried the same trick from different angles in rapid succession, but the barrier remained while the assault persisted.

Half a second passed after the last dash before the phantom appeared again for another attack. However, this time she was wrapped in the red aura rather than the barrier discs. Aqua was prepared for this attack, apparently having seen it before, and willed her barrier to explode outward right before impact. Mirror-Aqua was launched backward through the air by the kinetic blast, and Aqua wasted no time in charging after her. She attacked with her Keyblade while her enemy was dazed. However, the phantom soon regained her bearings and began to retaliate. Fortunately, Aqua’s fierce barrage of strikes was unrelenting, forcing the phantom to match her strikes perfectly to avoid taking damage. Of course, when a left-handed swordswoman clashed with a right-handed one who had the same fighting style, it was difficult to match up, and the phantom took several blows before being blasted into a rock. Mirror-Aqua tried to get back up, but was promptly hit with a Firaga spell that burst into a raging firestorm on impact.

Aqua landed nimbly on the ground, but remained tense, as she doubted that the battle was finished quite yet. True enough, she heard a chuckle echo from all around the cavern.

“Now, that is the ferocity that you claim to lack,” the echoing voice taunted. “You see, if that wasn’t true, I wouldn’t be here.”

Aqua scowled angrily. “You have no place in my heart!” she shouted back.

The phantom voice laughed again. “Oh, I see plenty of room. After all…” The phantom silently materialized behind Aqua.

Sora gasped. “Look out!” he shouted in warning. Aqua turned around to see her smirking doppelganger, whose flesh had begun to glow with scarlet symbols.

“Only your heart is hollow enough to be a demon’s,” the phantom concluded before swinging her weapon, which now emitted a fiery red aura.

Aqua blocked the attack and pushed back against the imitation Keyblade, then fired another Firaga spell at her foe. “That’s not true! My heart is strong! And I will never become you. I am stronger than you can ever be!” She threw herself at her enemy and dealt powerful attacks. At the end of her combo, her Keyblade began to glow red and she launched her doppelganger into the air. She then pointed her Keyblade at the phantom, unleashing a massive fire spell, which hit its target with such a huge explosion that Jiminy resolved to describe it in his journal as “burning with the rage of a thousand suns” and decided that it was only barely a hyperbole. Sora, Riku, Mickey, and Donald’s jaws all dropped at the scene, while Kairi and Goofy were slightly better-composed due to having less experience with magic and the powerful spell not seeming as unbelievable to them.

“Firaza,” Mickey identified the spell, its suffix proving that it was indeed a tier above Firaga. “I can’t believe she did it so freely, especially after using up some of her mana already.”

“Well, this place does seem to boost the power of Black Magic,” Jiminy pointed out. “It made something like that enormous and it probably had an impact on her magic training.”

Mickey shook his head. “But still…”

Mirror-Aqua crashed to the ground, her hair and clothes ablaze. Despite the injuries that should have crippled if not obliterated her, she still managed to push herself to her feet, albeit with much difficulty. Symbols glowed upon her skin even brighter than before. Donald tilted his head as he studied the symbols. There seemed to be twelve unique designs, and they all reminded him of a type of calendar.

Mirror-Aqua charged at Aqua, clearly stumbling from pain. Sora was quick to notice that, unlike any of the real Keyblade wielders, she could not use the Cure spell. At first, this seemed odd, as even some Heartless were capable of using healing magic. He supposed that this only proved what the real Aqua was saying: the phantom was not her, just a twisted parody mocking her appearance and lacking everything that made her the person that she was.

The phantom clashed blades with Aqua once again. “You can’t be rid of me!” she shouted into the original’s face. “Every time you look in the mirror, you see what you truly are!”

Aqua, having had enough of this fake, pushed her opponent back, then caught the teeth of its weapon in the teeth of her own, and twisted it hard. The E at the end of the phantom’s Keyblade broke off, followed by the rest of the shaft shattering. The handle of the fabricated Keyblade, which had never been real and was only a ghostly illusion like its owner, disintegrated in the phantom’s hand. Mirror-Aqua gasped in horror before the real Aqua thrust her Keyblade through her chest. The phantom whined in pain as miniscule shards of glass rose from the hole in its chest. The symbols on its arms, legs and back began to fade.

“You. Are not. Me,” Aqua told her doppelganger sternly.

The scarlet symbols vanished, with the one on Mirror-Aqua’s forehead being the last to disappear. She slumped, unmoving, held up only by Aqua’s Keyblade. Her body turned into a glassy, reflective surface like aluminum glass before disintegrating into dust. Something fell from the phantom’s remains, but nobody paid attention.

Aqua dismissed her Keyblade and breathed a sigh of relief and exhaustion. She turned to walk away.

“Aqua!” Mickey called.

Aqua turned around suddenly, remembering that there had been other people there before she fought the phantom. She finally saw the six individuals who were presently approaching her. The torn coats they wore looked like the one she had seen the day before, but she doubted that they were connected. She vaguely recognized the anthropomorphic duck and dog. The silver-haired young man seemed vaguely familiar, though she could not place where she had seen him. The other boy looked quite a bit like Ventus, though she thought she almost recognized him from something else. The girl was unfamiliar to her, though all of them seemed to know who she was. Lastly, her eyes fell upon someone whom she had never thought she would see again.

“Mickey?” she identified. The mouse nodded in confirmation. She shook her head and rested her forehead in her palm. “This is… Is this a hallucination? Or are you really here?”

Mickey nodded again. “I’m real, Aqua. I’m here. We all are,” he affirmed in a comforting tone.

However, Aqua still appeared uncertain. Riku came to the conclusion that, in spite of her resolve, the dark realm had been playing with her emotions and feeding on her despair, and it appeared as though the mirror clone was not the only trick it pulled. Though, considering the condition her body was in, it was no surprise that she was having trouble keeping her mind together.

Riku, Sora and Kairi took a few steps toward Aqua, figuring that she would not expect illusions of them, particularly grown-up versions of them. “Hello. I’m Riku,” the silver-haired boy introduced himself. Aqua’s eye twitched as the name registered, as if she did remember him.

“Kairi,” the redhead added. Aqua’s lip quivered into a small smile briefly as a memory came to her.

“I’m Sora,” the boy with spiky brown hair said, raising his arm the same way he remembered doing when he had first introduced himself twelve years ago. “You met us when we were kids, remember?”

Aqua’s eyes widened as everything came back to her. The conversation from the previous day rose up most prominently, but she also recalled her first encounter with the two boys, and also the afternoon when she and Mickey protected Kairi from the Unversed. It really was them, she knew without a doubt. She let out a small chuckle as tears trailed down her face.

“It really is you,” she said, overjoyed. She turned to Riku, remembering that the last she had seen or heard of him he was trying to close the door in spite of the Heartless chasing after him. “You’re safe…” Riku nodded. “You’re all here.” She pulled the three of them into a heartfelt embrace.

After a moment she gasped and let go, backing away, a look of worry on her face. “But what are you doing here? It’s not safe! Has something happened?” she asked in a panic.

Riku held up his hand, bidding for her to calm down. “Nothing like that,” he replied. “We came to find you. To get you out of here.”

Aqua looked between each of the teens, having trouble believing what Riku had said. “For… me?”

Sora, Kairi and Mickey nodded. “You’ve been down here far too long,” Sora said. “It’s time for you to come back to the light.”

Aqua took a long moment to process everything. They had come to get her out. And they seemed sure that they had a way out. She smiled, relief washing over her. “Thank you.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sora saw a sparkling rock sitting on the ground in the spot where Mirror-Aqua had been destroyed. Curious, he walked over to it and picked it up. It appeared to be a bright blue crystal in the shape of a teardrop. In the middle, he could see a white symbol that resembled a stylized “M”, quickly recognizing it as the same symbol that had glowed on the phantom’s forehead.

“I wonder what this is,” he said, holding the crystal up for his friends to see.

Aqua shrugged. “No idea,” she replied.

Sora shrugged and slipped the stone into his pocket, then walked back to rejoin his companions.

Aqua looked at Mickey and saw that he was averting her gaze nervously. “Is something wrong, Mickey?” she asked.

Mickey hesitated to answer for a moment. “Aqua… I’m sorry I didn’t come back for you sooner,” he said sadly. “I—”

Aqua shook her head. “No need to apologize,” she insisted. “You did everything you could, and you’re here now. Thank you.” She looked around to everyone present, finally recognizing the duck and dog as Donald and Goofy, having met them twice briefly. “Please, tell me what happened while I was down here. I heard that the worlds were threatened twice?”

* * *

“I see,” Aqua said after the party had told her what she had missed. “I remember Mickey giving me a rundown of the Heartless invasion before, but my head’s still foggy. I barely remember much of what he said.”

“Gosh, I’m sorry. This place must have been rougher on you than I thought,” Mickey said sympathetically.

Aqua sighed. “I’ve barely been able to get sleep with the Heartless showing up at every corner,” she admitted. “And edible meals are really hard to come by. Even then, they taste worse than Terra’s cooking.”

Sora flashed a cheeky grin. “Well, when we get back to the Realm of Light, you can eat all the food you want!” he promised.

“Tell me, have you been able to find Terra? Or wake Ven up?” Aqua asked, even though she knew what answer to expect.

Everyone shook their heads regretfully. “Still nothing,” Mickey replied.

Aqua sighed, having figured he would say that. “What about Xehanort? Has he been up to anything?”

“Actually, the Ansem and Xemnas we told you about were Xehanort’s Heartless and Nobody,” Riku explained. “We beat both of them, but we still haven’t heard anything implying he’s returned, even though we found that most of the other Organization XIII members that we beat have regained their human forms.”

“That is strange,” Aqua mused. “I guess I can only hope for so much. I suppose I should do what I can when we get back.” She looked at Sora, Riku and Kairi, remembering what they were like when she met them so long ago, when they were such sweet and adorable children. She smiled as she reflected upon that and compared it to what she was looking at now. “You have all grown so much. Riku, I’m sure that Terra was right to pick you to be a Keybearer. And Sora, I hear that you also have a Keyblade.” She giggled. “You’ve done so much, helped so many people. And to think I chose against blessing you with the power because I figured that one Keyblade was enough for any friendship.”

Sora, Riku and Kairi laughed. The three of them all summoned their Keyblades simultaneously. Aqua took a step back in surprise as she saw that Kairi also had a Keyblade of her own.

“Where did you…?” Aqua asked, too amazed to finish the question.

Kairi shrugged. “I’m not really too sure,” she admitted. “I actually used it during a battle in the Organization’s castle, but I only recently learned that it was my own Keyblade, and around that same time I learned to summon it on my own.”

Aqua laughed. “Wow, I really have a lot to catch up on.” Everyone else joined in, glad to see her enjoying herself.

However, Aqua stopped suddenly and tensed up. Her Keyblade, which had a smooth, thin gray shaft with a flat “E” shape attached to the end on one side, a boxy guard with a squared handle and a frame made up of three copper rods and two light grey blocks, and a chain with a token resembling the sigil on Aqua’s breast attached, appeared in her hand. “We have incoming!” she warned.

As soon as she said that, Darkballs and Neoshadows appeared from all around them. The seven warriors fought the Heartless off, irritated that they could not catch a break from these things.

After Aqua vanquished a Neoshadow with a Blizzaga spell, she stopped dead, her eyes widened in horror as she heard several heavy quakes running through the earth beneath. When the regular thumps ceased, she turned around and saw a pair of glowing red dots shining out of the pitch darkness.

“Look out!” she shouted before an enormous beast leapt out of the shadows. Sora gasped in fright as it swiped him with its front paw, the chain attached to its leg lashing out and striking Goofy in the process.

Riku cast Dark Firaga at the beast, but it barely flinched from the attack. Donald cast Thundaga, but the monster still did not falter and it promptly barreled him over. Mickey came in for the assist, but he was swatted aside with its tail. Aqua appeared more experienced with the monster, dodging many of its attacks and dealing several blows to its flank and stomach. However, she was soon knocked down as the monster struck her in the back with its hind leg.

“Stopra!” Kairi shouted, but the time magic had no effect. “Blizzara! Thundara!” The spells still failed to do damage to the beast. She decided to try a stronger spell. “Firaga!” A huge fireball was launched into the beast’s face. However, she did not have the time to see if her spell had any effect as she screamed in pain and fell to her knees.

“Kairi!” Sora shouted when he heard her cry. As he picked himself up and turned to see what was wrong, he gasped in horror as he saw her hand on fire, the flesh on her arm appearing to be burning off, blisters growing out of it.

Before Sora could come to her aid, the monster scooped her up into its mouth and ran off. The party could only stare in horror as the monster vanished into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got you, didn't I?  
> ...  
> ...  
> ...  
> Sorry.
> 
> Brownie points if you noticed the itty-bitty clues I left that teased that something was off before the twist was explained, though I had no way of knowing if you would pick up on the inconsistencies if you visualized the fight as it played out.


	83. Chapter 82: Dark Hide

Sora sprinted ahead, running as fast as he could in hopes of catching up to the monster. Heartless appeared in his path, but he simply ran past them, not even summoning his Keyblade to engage with any attacks. The Heartless were confused at the fact that the strange creature with flesh had completely ignored them, so confused that they did not bother going after the five other creatures that ran by.

After a few minutes of running, Sora slowed down and finally stopped to catch his breath. At that moment, while his panic had subsided and allowed him to think somewhat clearly, he realized that he had no idea where the beast had actually gone. The very fact that his path had been swarming with Heartless proved that the monster had not come this way. Losing the strength to stand, he fell backwards onto his rear end as he realized that he had lost Kairi, lost her to an enormous predatory hunter, and he had no idea where she could be.

“Sora!” he heard Riku’s voice call. He turned his head until he could see Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua running toward him.

“Gosh, you shouldn’t run off like that,” Mickey advised. “We can’t risk getting separated.”

“Sorry,” Sora replied. “But we have to find Kairi!”

“We won’t be able to find her running around without a clear idea of what we’re up against,” Donald scolded. “Besides, she’s a Princess of Heart. I doubt that thing will have an easy time making a snack out of her.”

Sora shook his head. “That doesn’t totally mean she’s in the clear,” he said gravely.

“What do you mean?” Mickey asked, concerned by his tone.

Sora shivered. “Right before the monster grabbed her, Kairi cast Firaga at it,” he recounted. “But somehow, as the spell was launched, it lit her arm on fire.” Everyone’s eyes widened in shock at that. “She had some nasty burns. We can’t leave her all alone with burns and blisters like that.”

Goofy appeared confused. “But, how could that have happened?” he asked. “Your spells don’t backfire on you. Well, not unless they’re repelled.”

Donald shook his head. “There’s a reason you don’t jump up to the stronger levels at beginner level,” he argued. “I had to limit myself to the first-tier spells when we first met Sora so he wouldn’t try to do the big ones too soon.”

Sora raised his eyebrow. “Really? What’s the problem?” he asked.

Donald groaned. “You don’t get the stronger spells until your heart develops the sense and fortitude to protect your body from their effects! Spells like Fire, Blizzard and Thunder send brief flares in all directions, like a gun’s recoil. Without the proper sense to shield your body as you cast the spell, you’ll hurt yourself. Since she was already accustomed to Fira, it probably didn’t burn her as much as it could have…”

“WHAT?!” Sora and Riku shouted, horrified. _It could’ve been worse?_ Sora thought.

“Gee, it would’ve been nice to tell us about that while we were training in the Mirage Arena!” Sora snapped.

Donald shrugged defensively. “I figured she was fine as long as she stuck to a level she was comfortable with,” he claimed. “I didn’t expect something like this, where those spells weren’t strong enough to do anything to it, making her desperate enough to try something like that.”

“Whatever the case, we need to find her fast,” Riku said, reminding them to focus on the task at hand. “Before that thing hurts her, and before her burns become infected.”

Aqua nodded. “Fortunately, I’ve faced those things a few times in the last month… about two years for you. And in the last few weeks…” She flashed a knowing smirk. “I know where the predators of the dark hide.”

* * *

“You know, Jiminy, I think ‘Predator of the Dark’ has a better ring to it than what you’re suggesting,” Sora told the cricket.

Jiminy shrugged. “To me, it sounds kinda clunky,” he argued.

“Whatever,” Sora said, deciding not to drag the debate. He and his friends followed Aqua, who was paying close attention to the terrain for reference points and using them to determine the path to the monster’s lair.

“So, Aqua, you’ve fought these things before?” Riku asked.

Aqua nodded. “Two, maybe three. Hard to keep track. And it could’ve been the same one for all I know,” she replied.

Goofy raised an eyebrow. “Gawrsh, does that mean you’ve never beaten them?” he asked fearfully.

Aqua shook her head. “I barely escaped with my life the first time, though I did manage to stun it long enough for me to escape. After that, I didn’t exactly want to push my luck. Though, I did follow one from a good enough distance to study its hunting patterns, so I wouldn’t get caught by surprise again.”

Mickey gulped. “Gosh, that doesn’t do a lot for our confidence,” he lamented.

Sora shook his head. “Guys, focus! This thing’s tough, but we’ve beat bigger Heartless. And we did it together,” he told his companions, trying to rally them up. “We were taken by surprise before, but this time it’s us who will have the element of surprise. We didn’t come all this way just to lose to one monster.”

After a moment, Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua smiled. “Sora’s right. We can handle whatever comes our way,” Goofy agreed cheerfully.

Aqua let out a chuckle. “Of course,” she said. She looked away, her smile fading as she became lost in thought. _Maybe if we had been together through it all, none of this would have happened…_

Aqua continued to lead them through the dark mountain, the scenery gradually becoming more cavernous. There were several cracked rocks nearby, indicating that something big had been crashing into them. Territorial disputes between the Dark Hides, perhaps?

As they continued on, Sora grew tired of the silence, and there was a lot that he wanted to ask Aqua about. “Hey, Aqua? What was it like, training with your friends?” he inquired.

Aqua smiled wistfully at the memories of more innocent times. “Every day of learning was enlightening. And training alongside Terra and Ven, I couldn’t ask for happier memories,” she replied. “At first, it was just me and Terra. We teased and fought, and we laughed and had fun. Ven came when I was fourteen. He was about eleven. To you, it would have been about sixteen years ago. At first, he was quiet and introverted. He suffered amnesia due to his heart being damaged when he was being trained by Master Xehanort.”

“Wait, what?” Sora blurted in shock.

“I don’t know the full details, but Xehanort was trying to mold him into a warrior with a heart of pure darkness so he could pit him against someone with pure light to forge the χ-blade. Things didn’t work out, so Xehanort ripped the darkness out of his heart, creating a separate entity, Vanitas,” Aqua elaborated.

“Oh, yeah. I guess the King did mention that,” Sora recalled. “Go ahead.”

“So, Ven started out quiet and nervous, but Terra and I befriended him and helped him open up,” Aqua continued. “He became a sort of little brother to us. We trained and played together, and we all dreamed of one day becoming Keyblade Masters.”

Riku chuckled. “Not too bad a dream,” he mused.

Aqua nodded. Talking about her time with her friends with people who were more than happy to listen seemed to cheer her up. “Master Eraqus was a good teacher. He was a wise mentor, and he could be stern, but cared a lot for the three of us. I listened to his lessons dutifully. I guess you could say I was a bit of a teacher’s pet,” she joked. _Or, I suppose, a “Daddy’s girl”…_ she thought, considering the depth of her relationship with her friends and mentor. “He would tell us that we should never give in to the darkness, saying that it would be best if it were destroyed completely.”

“I can see his point, but I’m not sure if that really is the best course of action,” Riku argued. Aqua turned to look at him in surprise. “I used to think that way, mostly after I let my own darkness consume me. But I’ve since learned that I can use the powers my darkness gives me to do good.”

“He’s right. Light and darkness are two sides of the same coin,” Mickey affirmed. “Neither is exclusively good or evil; it’s all about how you use it.”

Aqua pondered their words. “Huh. I wonder… Cinderella’s fairy godmother did warn me that I couldn’t simply fight darkness with light, as light just casts deeper shadows.”

While she considered the reasoning of that line of thinking, Aqua continued to lead them through the cavernous terrain. Soon, they came to a dim area with a low ceiling. There were spots all over the place where it was clear stalactites and stalagmites had formed only to be broken off and crushed to pieces by some sort of great force. The floor was littered with pieces of broken steel chain links.

“I guess this is it,” Goofy commented. “The Dark Hide’s hideout.”

Aqua nodded. “Yep. We’re in dangerous territory now,” she said.

“Kairi’s in there,” Sora reminded everyone. “We have to do this.”

“Keep in mind, everyone: we’re here to rescue Kairi, not to get into a fight. Best case scenario, we find Kairi, heal her, and get her out safely. Worst case, we run into the Dark Hide, in which case we’ll need to do everything in our power to get out alive and together,” Mickey briefed the party.

Sora nodded. “There’s always some way to beat them. Even if it takes more of a push,” he said. “But if things go in a way where we don’t have to get into a difficult fight, then we get Kairi and get out.”

“Very well. Are we ready?” Aqua asked. Everyone around her nodded. She nodded in response. “Right. Then let’s go in.”

They proceeded quietly, doing their best to make as little sound as possible. Riku contemplated using his Silencing charm to make sure no noise escaped from them period, but he decided against it because a loud warning would be helpful if the Dark Hide started tracking them.

The monster’s lair was surprisingly clean for the home of a vicious predator, though this could easily be chalked up to the fact that most Heartless dissipated on their deaths. Perhaps that sort of matter was enough to sustain most denizens of darkness, even though it probably would not do the same for a human from the Realm of Light. There was enough stone debris to mark the territory.

Goofy stopped and pointed when he saw a few drops of blood on the ground. Sora jumped and nearly shouted in his excitement. “That has to be Kairi,” he whispered, common sense taking over just in time.

Donald crouched down to study the speck. “Not a lot of blood around here. That’s good. She’s not bleeding too much. You know, for a ferocious predator, it’s pretty careful not to cause too much damage to the prey it captures,” he observed.

“Well, if it were trying to bring a smaller Heartless back with it, it wouldn’t want to crush it into smoke long before it’s ready for it,” Aqua surmised.

“Wait… Are you saying it hunts for a pack?” Riku asked, worried.

Aqua shook her head. “I doubt it. Maybe just saving something for later. This time, it could be that, or it saw Kairi hurt herself with her own spell, but not die, and got curious,” she suggested. “I don’t know how intelligent these things are, but that’s a possibility.”

Jiminy shrugged. “Feral or sapient, you’re gonna wonder about stuff that doesn’t make sense to you,” he said. Then, realizing that he was partially visible inside of Mickey’s pocket, he fidgeted with the zipper and closed it up as much as he could.

Aqua resumed in leading them through the cavern, all eyes keeping a lookout in all directions for a pair of red dots. Fortunately, the demonic eyes did not appear. However, they still listened closely for the sound of any footsteps or abnormal breathing.

Sora realized that he was not used to this form of tracking. Usually, he went from place to place heedless of anything that might notice him, and whatever Heartless, or Nobodies in certain circumstances, attacked would materialize out of the ground. Even when there was a giant boss-type enemy, it usually appeared out of nowhere in what was normally a prompted encounter. He had never been caught sneaking into a dark dungeon where a dangerous foe could be lying in wait, capable of striking and catching them off-guard at any time. It was quite an unnerving situation to be sure.

They tensed up when they heard a pained groan. They all looked around to find where the noise had come from. Sora, having recognized the voice, looked in the direction that he thought it had come from. The moment he heard the voice again, confirming the source’s location, he ran toward it. The rest of the party quickly followed after him.

They found a wall with an immense hole in it, elevated by about ten feet off of the ground. The hole seemed large enough for something as big as the Dark Hide to jump through. Sora jumped up, then boosted his height with an aerial spin, and he caught the ledge at the apex of his ascent. He pulled himself up and, standing on the ledge, looked over into the pit. He grinned and nearly shouted in delight as he recognized the figure. Instead, to avoid alerting the beast to their presence, he turned around and gave a thumbs-up to his friends.

Aqua jumped up to the ledge in a similar manner to Sora, except she used some form of light magic to propel herself upward and double her height. Riku ran up the wall and stopped right next to Sora and Aqua. Mickey, Donald and Goofy stacked on top of each other in a ladder formation. When Mickey grabbed onto the ledge, Goofy climbed up his and Donald’s backs to reach the top, then he helped Donald and then Mickey climb up.

They all jumped down into the pit, relieved to find that it was no deeper than the floor on the other side of the wall. Sora and Riku ran to Kairi’s side. Her breathing was somewhat normal, though slightly faster than usual. Her gaze was unfocused, even as her closest friends came into view.

Riku examined her arm, visibly wincing at the sight of the nasty burns. Sora looked at it as well and was somewhat glad to see that it did not look any different than it did before the monster grabbed her.

“Good news: it doesn’t look like it’s gotten infected,” Riku diagnosed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask that resembled a golden Christmas ornament, which contained the restorative fluids of an elixir. “This should repair her burnt skin and restore her blistered tissue.” He popped the cork out and poured the contents over Kairi’s arm. In moments, true to form, the damaged skin healed and her arm looked good as new.

Kairi’s eyes fluttered as her mind cleared. She groaned and looked around, sighing in relief when she saw Sora and Riku. 

“Are you all right?” Sora asked.

Kairi nodded. “I am now,” she replied. “Thanks.” She tried to stand up but found that she was still too disoriented.

The boys wrapped their arms behind her back and helped her to her feet. They took a few steps until Kairi’s head cleared and she started walking on her own.

“What happened earlier?” Kairi asked. “Your spells don’t backfire on you.”

“Turns out you need to develop the resistance to the higher level’s power before you can cast it safely,” Sora explained.

“Great. Good to know,” Kairi replied sarcastically.

The three of them walked over to rejoin Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua.

“Okay, Kairi. Can you let Naminé know that we’re ready to head back?” Riku asked.

Aqua crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Naminé? That’s her Nobody, right?” Aqua recalled Riku bringing the memory-manipulator up when recounting events. “How… Is she here?”

“Kairi and Naminé share a body,” Riku clarified. Aqua mouthed _Oh_ , understanding what was going on, sort of.

Kairi obligingly held her arm forward, but before she could let Naminé act, her eyes widened in terror. “Look out!” she shouted.

The others turned around and flinched in fright as they saw a massive form leap through the hole and land in front of them with a thud.

The Dark Hide had a purple quadrupedal body. Its feet were a brighter shade of purple. The hind feet had three toes each while the front feet had five toes each. Chains were wrapped around the ankles of the front legs, with a three-pronged hook attached to the end of either chain. Three magenta-colored spikes grew from the beast’s spine. Its tail turned red toward the tip, where purple spikes stuck out around it. A mane of six magenta tentacles grew around its head. Bright blue markings glowed on the sides of its head, up the top two mane-tentacles, and along its back around the spikes.

Unlike how it had appeared when it had ambushed them, its eyes glowed yellow. Now that it had appeared up close, Sora, Riku and Mickey were able to process this trait and wonder why its eyes had appeared red earlier. However, Aqua had seen it enough times to deduce that its “red-eyes mode” was for night vision.

Sora noticed that the beast’s form reminded him of the Dark Thorn which Xaldin had unleashed in Beast’s Castle, except for the fact that Dark Thorn was bipedal and could turn invisible, and the fact that while Dark Thorn was almost entirely black with red “hair” and horns, the Dark Hide was multicolored. He found it quite curious that this Pureblood Heartless had a wider range of colors beyond dark blue and purple, as, aside from the glowing Water Cores, the most colorful of this type of creature that he had faced was the Invisible (which he hoped he would not have to run into).

All present summoned their weapons, preparing for a fight they would not be able to avoid.

The Dark Hide charged toward Sora, Riku and Kairi, apparently attempting to trample them. The three Keyblade wielders cast their most powerful Reflect spells. As the Heartless barreled over them, the shields exploded, causing it to tumble across the ground before crashing into the wall.

Not wasting a single moment, Sora, Riku and Aqua ran after the Heartless and attacked it while it was down. As it regained focus and began to stand itself up, it spun around, knocking them aside with its tail. As it slowed down, Mickey jumped onto it and grabbed its front spine with one hand, using the other to slash his Keyblade at the back of its head. The monster counterattacked by jumping up and performing a rapid flip in midair, shaking him off and causing him to crash into the ground.

The beast swiped at Sora, but the Keybearer rolled under the blow. Goofy blocked the head of the hook at the end of its chain, allowing it to clatter to the ground harmlessly. Donald launched Blizzaga spells at its feet, hoping to pin it in place, though it broke through the ice with little difficulty. The duck then launched a Firaga spell at the leg, hoping that the ice spell at least made it slightly more tender and susceptible to damage. This time, the leg flinched, offering encouragement in that it could be hurt.

Riku warped up in next to the Heartless and slashed at its side, then teleported above it and struck out at the base of its middle spike. Next, he appeared in front of it and stabbed at its face, then vanished before it could bite him. He appeared behind it and launched a volley of Dark Fire at its rear, then called up a Dark Shield to block its tail as it tried to knock him out of the air, causing it to bounce harmlessly away. Reappearing next to Sora, he smirked as he saw that he was provoking reactions out of it, which meant that they were doing something.

Mickey cast several light magic spells at the beast, jumping through the air both to avoid the angry monster’s attacks and to get at it from all angles. The creature made of darkness turned out to not be so resilient to light magic and each hit caused it to become angrier. When he landed in front of it to deliver a frontal blast, it spat a large fireball at him, blasting him through the air.

Kairi threw her Keyblade at the monster, striking it in the right leg. It countered by turning toward her and jumping into the air, diving toward her while performing a rapid flip. Kairi dropped to the ground and rolled sideways to avoid getting hit.

Aqua cast several Fire spells at the fiend, then stopped and concentrated. Orange flames swirled around her body, ascending from her head, shoulders, arms, and hips and enveloping her Keyblade. Embers flared from the corners of her eyes. She launched herself forward, a burst of flame exploding under her feet to propel her toward her target. While healing Mickey with a Cure spell, Donald watched in awe as Aqua attacked with flame-tinged Keyblade strikes, flames exploding from every blow.

“Is that a…?” Donald was too shocked to finish the question.

Mickey nodded. “A Power Style,” he finished. “I haven’t learned to use them. I think they’re mainly something that Eraqus put together for his students.”

“Wow,” was all Donald could say in response. He then quacked with fear as the Dark Hide jumped toward him and Mickey. Mickey managed to get out of the way in time, but Donald was barreled over and sent sprawling.

Aqua pursued it, dealing another combo as the flames around her flared up even more. Her style’s power at its maximum, she jumped into the air and released it all in a series of fireballs, the orbs exploding into a blazing firestorm wherever they hit. The Heartless buckled under the powerful blasts. When Aqua landed, the flames around her had faded completely, leaving her in her normal state.

This only served to make the fiend angrier. It began to glow with different colors, and Riku could have sworn he saw red, green and blue copies of itself shifting in and out of its form. It leapt over the party and began running in circles around them, running so fast that it became a blur and it appeared as though they were surrounded by a wide vortex of chaotic energy.

The Dark Hide burst out of the vortex at lightning-fast speed, its eyes glowing a horrific red. The party ran aside to avoid getting plowed down. Goofy picked the already dazed Donald up and carried him out of the line of fire. As it charged by, the ground behind it burst aflame. Seconds after it vanished back into the vortex, it burst back out. However, Sora had gotten his bearings and figured out what was happening, so this time he threw his Keyblade into its path while he ran out of the way, hopping over the line of flames to avoid. He repeated this process with each jump, and Riku joined in by launching a Dark Fire volley from a safe distance, and Aqua threw her own Keyblade or an array of spells with each charge. Eventually, the Heartless slowed down, dissipating the vortex that it had formed.

It jumped over them, nearly tackling Goofy and Donald just as the latter was waking up, causing the duck to jump in alarm. Donald screamed more when he saw three glowing copies leapt out from the original’s form. The red, green and blue clones performed leaping and swiping attacks, proving a greater nuisance for the team who had started to believe they could overcome the monster with strength in numbers. While they were able to avoid getting taken down for the most part, they found it rather difficult due to the four Dark Hides taking up so much room, limiting area to evade. Fortunately, after their brief assault, the afterimages faded away, leaving only one predator.

The five Keyblade wielders attacked the Heartless from all sides, dealing a lot of damage before it shook them off with a spin. Aqua landed cleanly on her feet and threw herself at the fiend again. Sora jumped in as well, using Dimension energy to convert his Keyblade into a whip. He flicked his newly-formed whip, which had a claw attachment at the end. He lashed his weapon at the foe, striking it with its clawed end.

Aqua’s eyes widened at the sight. “Did he just transform his Keyblade?” she asked, awed.

Mickey nodded. “Yep. Master Yen Sid unlocked the power for him,” he replied.

“Back! Back, I say!” Sora shouted with each strike. “Sit! Lie down! Roll over!” The Dark Hide only flinched at the lashes and tried to strike back, with no success. Sora shrugged after a whip strike. “Worth a shot.” Kairi laughed from her position to his left. He looked down at its feet and a smirk formed on his lips. He retracted the whip so he would not be dragging it around, then ran around until he was behind the Dark Hide. He flicked the whip free and slashed it so that it reached under the beast’s body and grabbed onto the hook at the end of the chain around its right leg. He ran around the beast, trying to wrap it up.

“Guys! Get it to spin!” he shouted after making sure that the whip was tied tight around its hind leg. Seeing what he had planned, the rest of the party threw themselves at the monster and attacked from all sides yet again. The Dark Hide spun several times to shake them off, but they kept coming back, not realizing that its legs were becoming more wound up in the whip.

When the whip had looped around the beast’s legs five times, Sora twisted his wrist. The coiled length morphed into solid energy and broke loose from the handle. The free end found the hook on the other chain and wrapped itself around it.

The Dark Hide, still oblivious to the situation, attempted to lunge at Aqua. However, once its feet had left the ground, the energy whip shrank in length, pulling the feet in as it tightened. As the beast’s legs closed inward helplessly, it lost its balance and crashed to the ground. It attempted to spin in an effort to free itself, but it had no luck.

“Now, everyone!” Sora yelled. He pointed the handle of what had previously been the whip and launched Blizzaga and Firaga spells at the monster’s rear end. Riku, Mickey, Aqua, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy ran in to whale on the beast, not letting up. Between its bound feet and the brute force assaulting it all over, it was unable to move, let alone defend itself. As they dealt more damage, the warriors began to deal stronger blows, free to go all out now that the monster was vulnerable.

When it felt Kairi’s Keyblade slice off one of its spines, the Heartless snapped. It roared loudly, spewing orbs of dark energy from its mouth. The orbs homed in on the warriors, forcing them to disengage in order to defend themselves. One of the orbs hit the energy cable, damaging it. With this new opportunity, the Dark Hide broke free, tearing the cable apart and letting it dissolve, then jumped to its feet. However, it was incredibly weak from the barrage, and its knees buckled.

Riku saw that it had regained a fighting position but was unable to stand. “Let’s finish this!” he shouted. He ran up to take the thing head-on, but the Dark Hide spat a mega-sized fireball at him, which he blocked with a Dark Shield.

Aqua was on the scene to pick up his slack. She stared the beast down and jumped high into the air, launching herself further with her Doubleflight spell to gain a higher altitude. The Dark Hide looked up at her and roared. Aqua let out her own battle cry as she held her Keyblade so that it was pointing down toward the Heartless’ head. They stared each other down as the milliseconds before the ensuing contact wound down.


	84. Chapter 83: The Dark Margin

Kairi cast Curaga over herself and her friends as they stopped to catch their breaths after the strenuous battle. Sora, Riku and Goofy stared nervously at the Dark Hide’s crumpled corpse. To their bewilderment, it had not dissipated upon its demise. They quickly surmised that it was one of the rare creatures that would have proven edible enough for Aqua to survive off of it, but the sight still disturbed them.

After a few moments, Aqua began to laugh. At first, the others were confused, but they soon realized why she was laughing and began to laugh along. It had been so long since Aqua had had friends that she could count on.

Kairi smiled and held her arm in front of her. “Okay, Aqua. Ready to get out of here?” she asked.

Aqua gasped as she remembered something. “Wait! We can’t leave yet,” she said, a look of worry crossing her face.

Mickey gave her a confused glance. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“There’s… There’s someone else here. In the Realm of Darkness. We should get him out, too,” Aqua explained.

Mickey looked around uncertainly. He knew that it could be a long shot finding this person in the savage land, and he did not want to take too many more risks. They had been in the Realm of Darkness for too long as it was. However, he did not want to leave anyone else trapped. He decided that he should determine if the objective was a lost cause or not.

“Do you know where he is, Aqua?” he asked.

Aqua nodded. “He’s on the beach. It should only take us half an hour.”

Mickey traded glances with Sora and Riku, then turned to gauge Donald, Goofy and Kairi’s expressions. They all seemed to support the plan, Sora and Riku more so, for some reason. He turned back to Aqua and nodded. “Alright. Let’s go find him,” he said.

They got out of the Dark Hide’s den in much the same way that they had gotten in, with Kairi helping out on Mickey, Donald and Goofy’s ladder. After that, Aqua led them west through the terrain. Heartless appeared every few minutes to attack them, but they defeated the enemy each time.

As the party made the trek, Sora and Riku reminisced on their last time in the Realm of Darkness. They had found themselves on a beach overlooking a pale sunset. They had concluded that they might never get out and spent an hour sitting by the water, when they had found the bottle containing Kairi’s letter.

On that gray sandy shore, they had found that a light will always be able to shine through the deepest darkness.

Soon, the party walked between some large rocks and they found themselves on the beach. Some of Roxas’ memories told Sora that the Organization had called it the Dark Margin. As they approached the shore, Aqua looked around and pointed to the right. Less than a hundred feet away, they saw what appeared to be a rock with a tall, thin extension on the front end, though by squinting they were able to make out the outline of a cloaked man. The party walked along the sandy beach to approach him. As they drew near, they saw that the man was wearing the same type of black coat that they had donned before entering the dark realm.

While the others stopped a short distance away, Aqua walked up to the man. As he heard her approach, the man turned his head to look at her. Sora and Goofy tried to see who the man was, but they could not make out his shadowed face.

“Ah. Hello again, Miss,” the man greeted the bluenette. Sora, Riku and Mickey gasped as they recognized the voice. The man heard the interjection and noticed the six individuals behind Aqua, though he did not seem to recognize them. “And I see you brought friends. Might some among them be the friends that you wished to find?”

Aqua shook her head. “No, they’re not. But they are friends,” she replied.

“Well, then. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Would you care to introduce yourselves?” the man asked.

“A-Ansem?!” Riku blurted, shocked.

“Hmm… I must say, you don’t look like you would be an ‘Ansem’,” the man said, without a change in tone that would otherwise imply that he was joking.

Mickey looked at him in concern. “Gosh, Ansem? Don’t you recognize us? It’s me, Mickey,” the mouse pleaded.

Ansem sighed. “The name does ring familiar, although I can hardly place it,” he said sadly. “I fear that my memory is not what it once was.”

“Gawrsh, it must’ve happened when his machine blew up,” Goofy guessed. “He did say ‘anything could happen’. It blew up Xemnas’ Kingdom Hearts, and it turned Riku back to his real form.”

Ansem nodded. “Ah, yes. I do recall having a conflict with a man called Xemnas, as well as the pain I caused in the war I waged.”

Sora crossed his arms in contemplation. “How about I try? If he remembers his previous actions, he might remember working with my memories.” He approached the man in the black coat. “Ansem? Do you remember me? I’m Sora.”

There was a moment of silence, and Sora was not sure if it worked or not. Then, Ansem nodded. “Ah, yes. Sora. The boy with the Keyblade, who spreads hope wherever he goes.” Sora blinked in surprise, amazed that he truly did remember him, and so vividly at that. It was a particularly interesting case considering he could barely remember his close friend King Mickey and could not even remember his own name. He could not help but grin with pride at the way that the former sage king had described him. “But what brings you here, young man?” Ansem asked.

Sora blinked at the question. “Oh. We came to find Aqua and bring her back to the Realm of Light,” he explained. “She’s been stuck down here for twelve years, and we figured it was high time to get her out. But then, she asked us to help you out.”

“We had no idea you were here, Ansem,” Riku added. “Everyone topside thought you had died in the explosion.”

Ansem chuckled. “Very interesting. It appears as though the powers that be have greater plans for me yet. Or, they merely offered you another soul to grant salvation.”

“Would you like to come back with us?” Aqua asked.

There was a long silence as Ansem considered the offer. Finally, he nodded. “Perhaps there is more that I can do to help your world,” he said. “I had become so lost in my darkness, fueled by my hate and rage. Maybe now, I will be able to redeem all of my past sins. Thank you. I shall accompany you.”

Mickey smiled and nodded. “Maybe your old apprentices can find a way to get your memory back,” he suggested. Ansem did not respond, though he did raise an eyebrow curiously, obscured by the shadow cast by his hood.

“If you don’t mind me asking, by what method were you able to make this journey?” Ansem asked. “Something tells me that none of you would be able to open a Corridor of Darkness freely.”

Riku scratched the back of his head nervously. “Yeah. I lost that power after the Encoder exploded, and I still haven’t quite been able to get it back,” he admitted.

Kairi held her arm out and allowed Naminé to curl her own arm up. “But Naminé can do it just fine,” she said. With that, Naminé snapped her fingers, causing a dark portal to open.

Ansem chuckled. “Fascinating. You and your Nobody have made a pure union in symbiosis,” he observed. He turned to Sora. “As have you and yours.”

Sora and Kairi nodded. They beckoned for Aqua and Ansem to step through. “Well, the Realm of Light awaits,” Kairi said.

Aqua nodded and stepped through the portal. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy followed after, and Mickey walked through alongside Ansem.

* * *

They stepped out into the street in the downtown area. The coordinates had apparently been off, somehow. But none of them cared, glad to be back in the Realm of Light.

Aqua looked around, seeing the buildings and bustling people of Radiant Garden. She listened to the afternoon chatter. She felt the cool midday breeze tickle her skin and blow through her hair. She looked up and felt the sun’s warm glow, a smile forming on her face as she closed her eyes to bask in the serenity of sensations that she had almost forgotten about.

_I’m out,_ she thought. _I’m here. No more constant battles for survival. No more wallowing in loneliness. I’m free. I can finally…_

Riku and Kairi caught Aqua as she collapsed from exhaustion. Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy jumped in surprise and looked on in concern, but smiled and chuckled when they realized that she was just tired.

“She can have this nap,” Mickey said. “She deserves it.”


	85. Chapter 84: Return to Sunlight

Sora, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy watched through the window as Aqua slept peacefully on the medical bed. They heard a beep as an apparatus measured her heartbeat and monitored her vitals.

Next to the visitors, Aerith busily filled out a form on a clipboard. “For now, we should let her rest. When she wakes up, we’ll have a meal ready for her,” she told the party. “I expect that she’ll be asleep until four o’clock tomorrow morning at the earliest. I would recommend that someone she knows be here when she awakens.”

Sora nodded. “Got it. Thanks, Aerith,” he replied.

“Don’t mention it. We were all worried for you.”

“How long were we gone?” Mickey asked, aware that a few hours in the Realm of Darkness did not translate to the same amount of time in the Realm of Light.

“Three days,” Aerith replied. “We had no way of knowing just how much time passed in the dark realm, so we could only hope you were doing alright.”

Riku nodded. “It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing in there,” he admitted.

“Thank you, Aerith. I’ll be sure to come over by four to be here when Aqua wakes up,” Mickey said.

Aerith nodded. “Of course, your Majesty. Be sure that you all get some rest as well.”

“We will. See you,” Sora said, waving back as the party turned to leave. They passed a man in a black coat, who joined them in their pace. Aerith had noticed the man standing off in the corner and wondered who he could be, but she was too focused on maintaining Aqua’s care to bother asking.

* * *

“Hello, everyone,” Sora greeted the crew in the castle study. Ienzo and Even looked up from their studies to find that they had returned.

“Greetings. Did your mission go as intended?” Even asked. He looked at the cast entering the circular room, but did not see anyone resembling the woman in the photograph. The only stranger he saw was someone wearing an Organization XIII coat, but he was far too bulky to be Aqua.

Mickey nodded. “We found Aqua and got her out safely. She’s resting in Aerith’s clinic,” he explained. “And we found someone else down there, too.” He looked up at the man in the coat, prompting the scientists to turn their attention to him. However, the man did not react.

“Um, that was your cue,” Sora whispered to the man. The man turned to him in confusion. “Show them your face.”

“Oh,” the man breathed. He had actually anticipated that he would do so on seeing the people whom Mickey had said were his former apprentices, but he did not recognize the two men in front of him. He realized that he could not recall much about the individuals whom he ought to have known, particularly not their faces. Now aware that these are the individuals to whom Mickey referred him to, the man pulled his hood down.

Ienzo and Even gasped. They recognized the man’s short, pale blond hair, full moustache and beard, and red eyes all too well. They were staring at the face of a man whom they had called their teacher, and who they had believed to be dead.

“M-Master Ansem!” Ienzo stammered, otherwise at a loss for words. A mixture of emotions, surprise chief among them, flooded his head, and he was unable to process an appropriate reaction.

Not bothering to break his gaze away, Even turned his head slightly to try to cast his voice down the hall behind him. “Dilan! Aeleus! You had best come in here!” he shouted. A moment later, the two guards hurried into the study and stopped in utter bewilderment at the sight before them.

“Lord Ansem! You…” Aeleus began, but he also fumbled for words. “We had heard that you had passed on.”

Ansem nodded. “As I have been told. I can only take your word for it, as everything is still hazy,” he replied. He continued to stare at the auburn-haired giant uncertainly. “Forgive me, but… which one are you?”

Aeleus and Dilan blinked in surprise. Ienzo and Even looked at each other with a mix of confusion and curiosity.

“It appears as though his memory’s been messed up since he was sent to the Realm of Darkness,” Mickey explained. “He remembers some of the things he did, but he can’t seem to even remember his own name.”

Even put his hand to his chin in contemplation. “Intriguing. It appears to be one of the unstable effects of the Kingdom Hearts Encoder exploding. Since he was right on top of the source, it is highly likely that the disruption, which may have even been on the atomic level, created an instantaneous spatial distortion that transported him into the Realm of Darkness,” he hypothesized. “As for his memories, that same instability likely destabilized the links in his chain of memories in the initial burst.”

“Is there any way to help him?” Riku asked.

Even shook his head. “I fear that even my great mind has a minimal understanding of the power of memory,” he lamented.

“Maybe Naminé can put his memories back together,” Goofy suggested.

“Hold on,” Kairi advised. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, relaxing. Sora and Riku could tell that she was entering a psychic conversation with her Nobody. After a minute, she opened her eyes again and shook her head. “Sorry. Her powers only work on Sora directly and affect the people he knows only tangentially, and Sora barely knew Ansem.”

Mickey sighed in disappointment. He had just found a friend whom he thought was dead, but said friend might never get his memories back. However, Ansem knelt down and placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. Mickey looked up at him, and Ansem stared into Mickey’s eyes with a sincere, calming gaze.

“Worry not. Perhaps my memories will return now that I am back in the light. Or they may not and I will be left as a blank slate. However, I intend to use the time that I have been allowed to keep to look toward the future,” he assured the mouse. “If a method is discovered that may rectify my capabilities of retention, I will gladly take it. But I shall not concern myself too heavily upon my absent past. Becoming lost in my history is, if I recall, how I became a monster consumed with thoughts of revenge. I am prepared to start anew.” He stood up and turned to his former apprentices. “That is, if you would have me by your side.”

Ienzo jumped in surprise as he processed the offer. “Y-Yes, of course. We would be happy to have you with us, M-… Ansem,” he said.

Dilan allowed himself a small smile. “Truth be told, I did miss you,” he told Ansem. “We all did.”

Aeleus nodded, maintaining his stoic expression. “We are all in search of a new beginning. There is much that we would like to make up for. In our decade as Nobodies, we have committed far too many sins. We have decided that we would use the opportunity granted to us to do something better.”

Ienzo smiled, a tear starting to form in the corner of his eye. “Welcome aboard,” he said, extending his hand.

Ansem smiled and took the younger researcher’s hand, shaking it.

* * *

After leaving the castle study, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy returned to town to visit the Restoration Committee. They recounted their adventure in the Realm of Darkness, telling of the new enemies they faced, their meeting with Aqua and the amnesiac Ansem, and their discovery of the enhancements to offensive spells in that region of the Realm of Darkness.

Leon closed his eyes, thinking hard about what he had heard. “To think the Purebloods could come in so much stronger forms,” he mused, his stoic tone concealing how worried he was about the idea of things being tougher than they already were.

“Well, they said that the Heartless were stronger on their home turf, so even if we did have to worry about them, they wouldn’t be much tougher than the ones we’ve been dealing with,” Yuffie assured him. “I dunno about the Dark Hide thing, though. That sounded like a load of trouble.”

Merlin seemed to be lost in thought on a different matter. “My, that was quite an unfortunate accident, Kairi. I am sorry that I never made certain that you all knew the risks of using spells beyond your level of experience,” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kairi replied.

However, Merlin shook his head, having none of it. “No, no. I’m your instructor in magic. I should have warned you of the dangers. In particular, I should have noticed the risk when I saw that you were still on second-tier while your companions were on third-tier.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his spectacles. “Well, then, I suppose I must do a better job as your teacher, and work to expand your repertoire.”

Donald smiled and rubbed his hands together in excitement. They could all figure out what the old wizard meant. He was going to teach them new magic spells.

Cid grunted. “Well, if you’re gonna be flinging some funky mumbo jumbo around, do it some place that won’t bother us,” he grumbled.

Mickey nodded. “Don’t worry, Cid. We won’t get in the way of your work,” he promised.

“Now then…” Merlin clapped his hands and he and the main party were engulfed in clouds of smoke. When their visions cleared, they found that they were in a circular chamber with torches mounted on the wall. “How about we expand upon your understanding of time magic with the Slow charm?” He waved his wand and conjured a mine cart and a man-sized catapult.

* * *

Zeromast stared at a shelf in his chamber, on which sat eleven crystals of varying color and composite. Each one had a different shape, and each one was marked with a different symbol. The crystals were glowing, and he smiled as he knew that it was due to them detecting another of their kind. The heroes had done as he planned.

His inner musings were interrupted when he heard a set of soft footsteps and the sound of fabric being dragged across stone from behind him. “Good afternoon, Maleficent,” he said without turning around. “I see you followed me to my gateway point.”

“Well, I had to sate my curiosity on this matter,” the witch replied calmly. “You have waited three days for them to return from the darkness with your prize. I figured that I ought to know what sort of bauble you covet so much.” She looked around, noticing all of the artifacts, old parchments, and incenses that the man held in his chamber. Even his bed was engraved with runes and sigils that seemed designed to protect him from hostile spirits, with a dreamcatcher hanging above where his head would lay. “Quite the interesting collection you have.”

Zeromast shook his head. “Do you not know that it is rude to intrude into an abode where you have not been invited?” he asked sarcastically.

Maleficent shrugged. “King Stefan said loosely the same thing, not that it did him any benefit,” she replied in an unconcerned tone. She maneuvered around a totem pole and ducked under a silver birdcage and walked up until she was standing next to him, examining the eleven crystals. “Are these symbols from the Zodiac?” she asked.

Zeromast nodded. “Indeed. When I came upon the first few, I became interested in gathering the complete set,” he answered. “Now, there is only one left to obtain.”

“What plans do you have for when you get the last one?” Maleficent asked.

“None,” Zeromast admitted. “The stones and their magic are merely an object of my fascination. But, perhaps, there may be an occasion where their powers, particularly united, would be of use to me.”

Maleficent smirked slightly, finally getting a read on her mysterious benefactor. More information would be quite helpful in the long run. “You’re a collector of trinkets that mimic magic for you,” she said.

“I am a scholar. I collect knowledge, and take command of that knowledge,” he corrected. “And what I do with that knowledge is up to me to decide.”

“Such as the knowledge of the nature-twisting power that you are supposed to be protecting.”

“Many view the world as one that is flawed and could use an overhaul. Only few possess the means and the will to change things to the way they desire.”

Maleficent smiled. “And when the means fall in the hands of those with the will, who’s to say they can’t give it a try?” She shook her head and turned away, taking one last look at the Zodiac stones. “Very well, then. I’ll leave you to your business. But I must ask, how do you plan to retrieve the stone from our enemies?”

Zeromast smirked to himself, not bothering to turn and face the witch. “Why don’t you wait and see for yourself?” he replied confidently.

Maleficent raised an eyebrow, surprised at the proud response. Nevertheless, she made her way to the back of the room and walked through an invisible portal in the wall above a line of chalk that had been drawn on the floor. When she returned to the fortress and ascended to the council room, she found Pete playing cards with Loki and Dr. Facilier, Cruella reading a fashion magazine, Yzma sleeping on top of Doug’s head while the sheep chemist experimented with chemicals, and Hades having an argument with the Horned King.

* * *

“My, you are rather fast learners,” Merlin said, adjusting his spectacles as he watched Donald fall asleep while standing up. Sora and Kairi were laughing at the duck’s expense. Goofy, in the meantime, was playing around with the catapult, which was now small enough to lift with both hands.

Merlin had spent the day teaching Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald various spells such as Slow, Haste, Zero Gravity, Mini, and Sleep. He found that Mickey was already familiar with most of them, the others had started learning Zero Gravity, and Sora and Kairi had been exposed to Mini. He had intended to teach the Esuna spell, but was informed that Mickey had already taught it to them.

While teaching the Slow spell, Merlin had his students practice by slowing down a moving mine cart and projectiles launched by the catapult. Kairi had jokingly suggested practicing it on each other, and they found that their movements and reaction times had slowed down by at least half of their original rates.

Merlin had followed this up by teaching Haste, which had the opposite effect and sped a person up in relation to everything around them, by roughly the same factor as the rate change induced by Slow, as if its effects were the exact opposite to that spell.

They had soon proven their understanding of the other spells. After they decided that they had had their fun, Sora slapped Donald upside the head, causing him to wake up and jump in surprise.

“Now, you’ve learned the spells faster than I anticipated. We covered far more material today than I had expected. Excellent work, all of you,” Merlin commended. “Now, I suggest that we call it a night. These old bones can’t keep going on forever. And I suggest you get some rest as well, and replenish your energy from your trip through the dark realm.”

Deciding that it was a good idea, the party said goodbye to Merlin and left the training ground. Mickey split off from the others to visit the clinic so that he would be present when Aqua awoke, and the rest of the group checked into the hotel for the night.


	86. Chapter 85: Sleepwalk

Around midnight, Sora climbed out of bed, shaking himself awake. Seeing that the others were fast asleep, he crept out of the room, silently closing the door behind him. He passed through the hallway and left through the front door.

In the darkness of night, the streets were lit up by evenly-placed light posts. The town was quiet at that hour, with only a few people walking around. Sora walked through the streets and past the Borough. He heard a CLAYMORE scanner beep and turned to see a Morning Star appear out of thin air. While a passing civilian ran away, Sora did not even flinch at its presence. Instead, he simply summoned his Keyblade and put an end to the threat. When the Morning Star dissipated, he dismissed his weapon.

“Hey, there,” he heard a voice say. Sora turned around and saw Lea leaning back against a wall. He swung a chakram on his left index finger, apparently having been ready to fight the Heartless as well before Sora defeated it singlehandedly.

“Hey, Axel,” Sora greeted back.

Lea blinked, then rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. It’s Lea now,” he reminded him. “Got it memorized?”

Sora chuckled. “My bad,” he replied.

Lea let out a light chuckle. “Can’t sleep, huh?” he asked.

Sora shrugged. “Guess not,” he answered.

“I can see that. Too much going on, am I right?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. There’s what Maleficent is trying to do, you guys coming back as Somebodies, finding out that Nobodies can grow hearts of their own and that Xemnas and Xigbar were lying the whole time, everything Mickey said about his friends, bringing Aqua back, and bringing DiZ back too…” He sighed. “Yeah, it’s kind of a lot to take in.”

Lea shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of any of it,” he admitted. “Granted, I’m not all that embroiled in what that cranky witch is up to, and I never met that Aqua chick. But I still can’t believe what Xemnas and Xigbar did to all of us.”

Sora nodded. “The Organization caused so much harm on Xemnas’ behalf because he made everyone believe that they didn’t have hearts and couldn’t feel,” he said bitterly. “At the very least, Xemnas had to have figured out at some point that Nobodies could grow hearts, but he lied to and manipulated everyone.”

Lea nodded. “Yeah. I’m not happy about it either,” he replied. “That Xehanort guy must’ve been a real piece of work. But now that we’re back and we’re free, maybe we can start picking the pieces up.”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Of course, it’s a lot to recover from. So much pain, and there are still people who are lost thanks to all that.”

Lea raised an eyebrow. “What’s up with you?” he asked. “You’re usually the one telling people to get out of that kind of funk.”

Sora looked away, a hint of shame in his eyes. Lea did not notice, but even if he had, he would have been mistaken in guessing the real reason he felt that way. After a moment of uncertain silence, he turned back to Lea.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. Lea blinked in surprise at the seemingly-out-of-the-blue question, but he soon realized what he meant.

* * *

Sora and Lea went to the marketplace and each bought a Sea-Salt Ice Cream from Scrooge’s shop, which was still open even at such a late hour. They sat on the ledge at the top of the stairs and began to eat the frozen treat.

“You know, a lot may change, but this ice cream will always stay the same,” Lea said, holding his ice cream stick up proudly. He grinned and turned to Sora, tapping his noggin with one finger. “Got it memorized?”

Sora laughed after swallowing his latest bite. “Yeah. It’s right up here with the—” He stopped and clutched his forehead in discomfort. “Ugh… Brain freeze.”

Lea laughed and, after the headache subsided, Sora joined in. After the laughter died down, they fell silent, unsure where to take the conversation. The silence was only broken by each bite of the ice cream sticks.

“Hey Ax… Lea,” Sora addressed the redhead.

“Yeah?”

“Knowing what you know now, if you could go back, do a do-over, would you do anything differently?” Sora asked.

Lea thought long and hard about the question. When he came up with something, he hesitated for a good while. The ice cream began to melt.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. He shook his head. “There’s just so much that happened. So much that changed… it was difficult. I don’t know where I’d begin with any of it.”

Sora nodded, understanding his response. “Then let me change the question. If you could make a new impact on everything that happened, how would you like it to have turned out?”

“Heh. That’s a bit easier,” Lea replied. “However I’d go about it, and I don’t know if I’d be any more proud of my actions, I’d try to make things turn out better. Better for everyone I care about, you know? Roxas, Isa…” He trailed off, his face contorting into an expression of confusion. Sora raised an eyebrow, noticing that it appeared as though he was trying to think of something, but it was stumping him. Lea shook his head. “Sorry. It just feels like there’s something else. Something else that’s… missing.”

Sora turned away and nodded, having felt the same thing for a few days. He had been stewing in the inexplicable feeling of emptiness and had no idea what to do with it. He wondered if what Lea felt was missing was the same thing that was bothering him.

Sora decided to redirect the conversation to a different point from what he was contemplating. “What about Sa…Isa?” he asked, remembering to not use his Nobody name. “Aren’t you mending fences with him?”

Lea sighed and shook his head. “I dunno. I mean, I’m trying. But he always seems distant whenever I try to talk to him,” he explained. “Not like how he was cold as Saïx; he just shies away from conversation. It happens most when I try to tell a joke. Way back, he would deliver some snarky retort, and as Saïx, he would glare and scold me for acting like a child, or something. But now, he just looks away, answers in short sentences, and just does everything he can to keep me from getting a read on him. I just don’t know what to do with him.”

Sora thought about Lea’s words. He made sure to refrain from seething at the mention of Isa’s Nobody identity, the very mention of whom drew severe amounts of rage at the thought of his words and actions. Moving past his emotional connection to the man as he once was, he considered what he might be going through at present.

“Maybe he’s acting the way he is now because of the way he acted as Saïx,” Sora suggested. “Like how DiZ was, rather is, ashamed of what he had done in the past, and how you and the others feel awful about what you did as Nobodies, especially in light of finding out about Xemnas’ lies, I guess that Isa’s not happy about how he acted around everyone as Saïx. Particularly you.”

“Me?”

“You were his best friend in another life, right? But that fell apart due to him growing colder due to Xemnas’ influence,” Sora clarified. “Maybe now, he’s having trouble reconciling who he had been with who he is now, who he could be now.”

“Huh. Maybe you’re right,” Lea replied. “I guess it wasn’t hard for me to adjust, since I tried to stay the same, but he turned into a completely different person, and now he’s struggling with the possibility of being who he once was, or who he could be.”

“You should talk to him,” Sora said. “Help him through this.”

Lea nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Thanks.”

They finished their ice cream and Sora yawned. Lea chuckled.

“Tired?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sora replied.

“Well, you should head back and get some sleep. At least before your friends wake up and wonder where you are.”

“Sure. Will do. See you.” Sora waved goodbye to Lea and walked down the stairs. He turned the cleaned-off ice cream stick with his fingers so he could look at both sides, and dropped it in the nearest trash can when he found it blank. He returned to his hotel room.

* * *

Sora woke up from what seemed to be a full night’s rest and yawned. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. As he climbed out of bed, he stopped in confusion, moving his tongue around inside his mouth as he felt a strange sensation.

_What’s this salty taste in my mouth?_ he thought to himself. _It’s sweet too. Why is that?_

He was taken out of his thoughts when he heard a knocking on the door. He exited the bedroom and opened the door leading out to the hallway, quickly joined by Riku and Kairi. When he pulled the door open, he found Donald and Goofy on the other side.

“What’s up?” Sora asked.

“We went to go see the King and check up on Aqua,” Donald explained. “And he sent us to get you.”

“Aqua’s woken up,” Goofy told them.


	87. Chapter 86: Trauma Counseling

When she heard the knocking, Aerith opened the door to let the visitors in. She had expected Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy, but she found a pleasant surprise to see that Leon, Yuffie, Cid, Shera, and Merlin had come to see Aqua as well. She was quite bewildered when she realized Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy each carried a takeout box.

“Hi. Oh, please, come in,” Aerith said. She opened the door fully and stepped aside, allowing the ten guests to enter. She eyed the takeout boxes curiously. “What’s all this for?”

“Well, we figured that the meal you prepared might not be enough for her, given how little she’s been able to eat down there,” Sora explained. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Aerith shook her head. “Oh, no. Not at all,” she replied, understanding their concern. “Just be sure to keep the place clean.”

Leon nodded. “Will do.”

“Morning, Aqua,” Sora greeted as he, Riku and Kairi approached the bed in which Aqua lay. It was only the three of them who stepped up to her initially as they did not want to risk her feeling overwhelmed by a crowd, so the rest stayed at a safe distance. They saw that Aqua had already finished the breakfast that Aerith had prepared. Sora opened the takeout box that he had brought, revealing a waffle as well as a plastic fork and knife inside. “In case you’re still hungry,” he said.

Aqua nodded, smiling. “Thank you,” she replied. She took the box from his hands and, using the utensils provided, cut and ate a piece. She visibly savored the taste. As she continued eating, she slowed down to savor each bite.

“Must be nice to have some real food for a change, huh?” Kairi commented. “Did you sleep well?”

Aqua nodded. “Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry if I scared you when I fainted.”

Riku shook his head. “Don’t apologize. It’s nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “Besides, I’m sure you needed the rest after everything you’ve been through.”

Aqua smiled at his words and continued eating. When she finished the waffle, she let out a satisfied sigh, followed by a small burp, which yielded some giggles. She felt her stomach grumble still and reached her arm in Riku’s direction. Riku obligingly handed over his takeout box and Aqua began eating the omelette inside. She popped open a carton of milk to drink with it.

The others waited for her to finish the omelette and milk. “Aqua, would you like to talk about what happened in the Realm of Darkness?” Riku asked.

Aqua’s face fell. Merely thinking about that place was hard on her. She turned her head away, attempting to spare her friends from having to see her pained expression.

The others noticed this and looked on with concern. Riku knew that his question would bring such tragic thoughts to the surface, but he knew it had to happen to help her recover.

Jiminy climbed out of Mickey’s pocket and hopped onto the bed. “It’s okay, Miss Aqua. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” he reassured her. “But talking about it with people who care can certainly help.”

There was silence for a few minutes as Aqua thought hard about whether she wanted to talk while her visitors waited patiently for her response. Finally, she decided that discussing it with her friends would be better than moping about her experiences in her thoughts, so she nodded. “Okay. I’ll try,” she said.

She let out a deep sigh before she began. “I dove into a pool of darkness to catch Terra as he fell in. I put on my armor and turned my Keyblade into a glider to try to fly us out, but there was not enough time to get out before the portal closed. So I removed my armor and sent it flying through with Terra, so that he would have a piece of me with him, even while I fell into the darkness.

“It was cold, and dark. Obviously. It took a while before my eyes adjusted. When I landed on hard rock, I just laid there for hours, even after I had started to make out my surroundings. Eventually, I decided that I might as well get to doing something. I started walking, making my way across the winding terrain that sometimes bridged over empty air. I ran into some of the dwellers of darkness, which you called Heartless. At first, they just watched me from a distance. I guess they weren’t sure what to make of me, but they made me uneasy. I still had my master’s Keyblade, so I could fight them off if need be, but I was paranoid that they could come after me at any time. But I kept going, hoping I could find some way back to my friends.

“I went on for days, unable to find food. I managed to find some streams where I could drink, but I was growing weaker from starvation. The Heartless started coming after me. I saw the ambush as a blessing in disguise at first, figuring that I could start hunting them for food, until I realized that they disintegrated when I slew them. I became tired, barely able to hold off my assailants, before I found some creatures that seemed different from the others. To my utter relief, it did not disappear when I killed it. I didn’t waste any time taking big bites into it. It tasted awful, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to have something to eat.” She stopped suddenly and reached her hands out toward Kairi. Talking about her first meal in the Realm of Darkness made her realize that she was still hungry. Kairi handed her takeout box over to her, and Aqua began to consume the bagel inside. She continued her story in between bites. “After that, I knew what to look for when I wanted food. It wasn’t much, but I managed to keep up my strength just enough.

“I walked for what felt like weeks, maybe months. Over time, my hope began to dwindle. I started to think that I might never get back to the realm of light. When three giant creatures appeared around me, I summoned my master’s Keyblade and got ready to defend myself, but then I reconsidered. I wondered if there was really any point. I dismissed the Keyblade, thinking that I might as well just fade into the darkness.” Tears began to well up in her eyes and roll down her face. “One of the creatures raised its fist to strike me down, but a ball of light appeared out of nowhere and destroyed it. In surprise, I watched the light fly around and blast right through the other two monsters. For a split second, the ball of light took the form of two Keyblades, which belonged to Terra and Ven. The shapes vanished as quickly as they appeared, but I was fine with that. The spark of light that reached out to me in my deepest despair gave me hope again. I realized that there will always be a light shining through the darkness, no matter how deep it is. I took out my Wayfinder and remembered all of my friends. Terra, Ven, Master Eraqus, Snow White, Cinderella, and you guys, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Sora, Riku, and Kairi. Everyone I met on my journey gave me the strength to keep going.

“I decided to press on, knowing that as long as I had my friends in my heart, I would find my way back. However, somewhere along the way, I felt something. A tremor that shook the whole place around me. I looked up and saw a shimmering vortex open up. Light shone through from the center of the rift. I was utterly perplexed, wondering if it was a portal to the light that just appeared out of nowhere. But then, to my horror, a massive pillar of dark energy shot up into the portal. Turning my attention away from the sight before me, I wondered what could have caused something like that to happen. I pressed on, hoping to come across some sort of clue. I fought more of the creatures as I made my way through the area, but they weren’t that much of a problem, until I met something else.”

Sora, Riku and Kairi looked at each other in concern as they considered what she could mean. “You mean…” Riku began.

Aqua nodded. “Yes. The beast we fought earlier. The one that the beetle called ‘Dark Hide’,” she replied.

Jiminy shook his head in mild annoyance. “Now, why do people keep calling me that?” he mused. “I’m a cricket, for the record. Jiminy Cricket.”

“Sorry,” Aqua said sheepishly. “At some point, I started to get the feeling that I was being watched. I turned and saw a pair of glowing red eyes. It must have seen that I noticed it, it jumped around, still obscured in shadows, and I could only see its eyes and hear its movements. Seeing its red eyes, which were different from the other monsters’ yellow ones, I initially mistook it for an Unversed, but I soon realized that it was yet another of the dark dwellers. I tried to keep track of its movements, but it was moving too fast, and I had soon lost all sign of it. I was starting to panic. I had been caught unprepared by something big that was ready to kill. As I tried to figure out where it was, it suddenly charged at me from behind. I tried to block its strike but I was hit with a strong force that sent me sprawling. It came after me again, its entire body wrapped in shadow, so I got back up and sent a Fire spell at it. But it just jumped over the fireball and sailed above me. Once I had regained my bearings, I was able to defend myself from its charges with Barrier. When it realized that its tactic wasn’t working, it jumped into the field, giving me a good look at its horrifying appearance. Its colorful form certainly didn’t assuage me from comparing it to an Unversed. It was fast, and really strong. I had to act frantically to survive the attack, barely able to even get a breath in between. Fortunately, I was able to figure out its attack pattern, so I started to get an edge against it. Or so I thought. It suddenly started glowing with a vibrant array of colors, and it began to launch hologram clones at me while leaving fiery trails as it charged. I could barely hold my own against one monster, let alone four of the same thing. As soon as I was able to stun it, I turned and ran as fast and as far as I could, jumping off of a cliff to make sure it didn’t follow. I was so terrified. I curled up in a corner, afraid that it would still find me. I winced whenever even a Shadow walked by.” Aqua shuddered as she relived her horrible experience. All around her looked on in sympathy. Riku took her hand in his own supportively.

“After I finally calmed down, I continued walking. Pretty soon, I found myself in what looked like a forest, which confused me. I knew that I had seen what looked like trees back when I fought the Dark Hide, but those had been bare and petrified, whereas the forest I was passing through was vibrant and alive, albeit quiet. When I was out of the forest, I looked up and stopped dead, shocked, unable to understand what I was seeing. Before me, I could see the castle from Cinderella’s world, Castle of Dreams.

“I walked through the town between me and the castle, noticing that the place was completely deserted save for the Heartless, and the landscape was distorted over different levels. I wondered what could have happened in the Realm of Light to cause the world to be in the Realm of Darkness, what could have happened to the people. While I felt sorrow at the tragedy that had befallen them, even when moments before they had thought they were safe, I took solace in the fact that, whatever did happen to them, they weren’t stuck in the dark world. When I reached the castle, I found myself lamenting on the past and wishing for another chance to see my best friends again. Suddenly, I heard someone call my name. I turned to see Terra. Instead of relief, I felt horror, worried that Terra hadn’t made it out, or something happened to him to drop him back in the Realm of Darkness. When I noticed that he wasn’t saying anything in response, I tried to grab his hand, but my hand passed right through. I realized that he was just a phantom born from my memory. I wondered if I should take it to be encouragement so that I don’t lose heart, but I only really felt sorrow.

“I arrived in a forest clearing that I recognized as being from Snow White’s world, and realized that it had fallen as well. I saw the glass coffin that Snow had been put inside when she was put under a poisoned sleep, but found a sleeping Ven inside. But it was also an illusion, which vanished the moment I recognized him.” She sniffled. “I promised to find a way to wake him up, but… I-I never did. His heart’s been lost for so long.”

Sora reached over and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You did everything you could to help your friends.”

Aqua nodded, tears still running down her face. She grabbed a napkin and blew her nose with it. “I turned my attention away from the empty coffin when I noticed a wall mirror floating in midair a short distance off. When I walked over to examine it, I was suddenly pulled in by a phantom in the form of my reflection. I explored the world inside the mirror, and all the while a voice similar to my own spoke in my head, taunting me and trying to get me to fall into despair. As I entered another zone, I looked at myself in a mirror and wondered if that torture was supposed to make me face my demons. Then, my reflection stepped out and summoned a Keyblade of its own, claiming that only my heart was hollow enough to be a demon’s. I defied the phantom and fought against it. As I fought it, I realized that it had been born of my own doubts.”

“It sure didn’t look like it when that mirror clone thing attacked us,” Riku interrupted. “It seemed more interested in taking your darker side up as its own and trying to kill us, before you even knew we were there.”

Aqua simply shrugged, not sure what to make of that incident. “As I made my way out of the mirror realm, I wondered if the darkness was really causing me to lose hope, and I feared that I would soon succumb. I then found myself in a forest filled with giant thorn bushes, which looked to be what was left of the Enchanted Dominion, Princess Aurora’s world. I saw apparitions of Terra and Ven and I followed them, not caring if they weren’t really there or if I would lose myself along the way. I just wanted to see them again, and I wouldn’t let anything get in my way. I pursued them, only to find myself in a clearing where a bunch of the giant creatures creating a giant orb of dark energy. I don’t know what it was for, but I knew I had to stop it, so I fought and defeated the giants.”

Sora looked at Riku and Kairi. “Doesn’t that sound like the thing that appeared over the island during the storm when the Heartless attacked?” he asked.

Riku nodded. “I think so. A Darkside led the assault, right?”

“Yeah,” Sora replied.

“I fought through the giants and destroyed the orb, and the rest of the giants were destroyed,” Aqua continued. “After that, I found Terra and Ven. Ven was unresponsive, but Terra spoke back. He was surprised that I could see him, but he couldn’t see Ven, and he couldn’t really see anything, only hear me. I worried that they were just illusions that the darkness brought forth to cause me pain, but Terra insisted that he was real, but he wasn’t himself… that he was… lost in shadow. I tried to ask him what he meant, but he started to tell me that Ven was in danger. I… I told him that he was sleeping safe and sound. But then… But then, something happened… and Terra…” She broke down crying, blowing her nose in her napkin.

Everyone around Aqua looked at her in sympathy. From what she had told them, she had been through a lot of emotional trauma. The Realm of Darkness had not been kind to her. They could only imagine that what had happened to her after the point where she cut herself off had proven to be especially traumatic. Mickey wondered if that was what caused her to give up and nearly let herself fade into darkness when he had found her.

“It’s okay, Miss Aqua,” Jiminy said. “You don’t have to say any more if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t worry,” Mickey assured her. “The darkness won’t have a hold over you ever again. We’ll make sure of that. And we’ll do everything we can to help you find Terra and Ven.”

Sora and Riku nodded. “Yeah. That’s a promise,” Sora said.

They were all taken by surprise when they heard a loud rumbling sound coming from a great distance away. Leon and Yuffie tensed up, and Cid pulled out an electronic tablet to see what was going on.

Cid cursed. “CLAYMORE’s going nuts over in the group homes!” he announced. “S.O.S. alerts say Heartless are swarming the west side!”

Yuffie looked at Leon in shock. “All those people are in danger!” she told him.

“Then we need to get going,” Leon asserted. He turned to Cid and Shera. “Get in touch with Dilan and Aeleus. We could use all hands on deck.” He turned to the rest of the party. “Let’s go.”

Mickey nodded, then turned back to Aqua. He saw that she had started to push herself into an upright position, but he put his hand on her shoulder. “No, Aqua. You should stay here and rest,” he said.

Sora approached Aerith. “Hey, can you stay here with her?” he asked.

Aerith nodded. “Of course,” she replied.

Mickey turned to Aerith. “Thank you,” he said. With that, the party left the room and ran to the exit.

Aerith made her way to Aqua’s bed and gathered up the takeout boxes and trash. She noticed that Aqua appeared to feel guilty for not being able to help. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Aqua. Everyone has their off days, and you need plenty of time to recover from those months,” she said. Seeing that her statement was not making Aqua feel any better, she decided to take a different approach. “Besides, you don’t want to go throwing up your breakfast in the middle of the street right in front of everyone, would you?” she joked.

Aqua let out a light chuckle.

* * *

The party arrived at the west end of the group homes, where the Heartless were indeed storming in. They saw signs of conflict on the opposite end of the crowd and noticed that Aeleus, Dilan, Ienzo, Lea, and Isa were already on the scene, fighting to keep the Heartless from getting too far. In the meantime, while it was not strong enough to obliterate all of them, CLAYMORE kept the Heartless disorganized and disrupted them whenever they planned to attack.

Everyone brought their weapons out and armed themselves for battle. “Split up and go at them from all angles. Yuffie, King Mickey, Donald, get up to the roofs and engage the aerial enemies. Don’t let them get any further,” Leon ordered.

“Right!” everyone shouted in unison. They moved in to take out the fiends, with Mickey, Donald and Yuffie climbing up buildings which flanked the crowd to reach the roofs.

With the strike force assaulting them from all sides and the holographic security system constantly exploding from under their feet, the Heartless did not last more than five minutes. Leon, Ienzo, Lea, and Isa left the group to check on the civilians and make sure that no one had been harmed. The rest of the party gathered in a circle, contemplating the nature of the attack.

“This was an organized assault,” Aeleus observed. “Previous efforts to breach the perimeter have been small and undisciplined. This could only have been enacted by those that control the Heartless.”

Mickey nodded in agreement. “But why would Maleficent do this? Why go to the trouble of setting this up?”

Before anyone could come up with an answer, Kairi gasped. “Behind you!” she shouted, looking over Sora’s shoulder.

Sora reacted instantly, calling his Keyblade into his hand and spinning around to strike a green fireball that had been hurled in his direction. He watched the fireball sail back toward the horned witch who had thrown it. Maleficent raised her hand when the green flame closed in and it dispersed around her.

“Hello again, child,” Maleficent greeted with a sinister tone in her voice.

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey brandished their Keyblades, and started to notice that the evil fairy was not alone. Before they could identify her compatriots, they heard Goofy scream in surprise and confusion, and turned to see a familiar white cat clambering all over his body, reaching into his pockets and scratching his arms. Yzma then jumped off of Goofy and tackled Donald. After repeating the process with Donald and then Mickey, she tried to do the same to Riku but he threw her off. She then ran over to Maleficent, holding up a plastic bag full of black and purple rocks and goop.

The skinny dark-skinned man who stood a few feet from Maleficent bent over and examined the contents of the bag. “Outstanding work, Miss Kitty,” he commended. “I can’t wait to see what we can make from these materials and ores straight from the dark realm.”

Sora gritted his teeth. “You again?” he spat.

The witch doctor raised his eyebrow at the less-than-cordial greeting, but regained his composure. “Ah, yes. I don’t believe I’ve properly introduced myself. How silly of me,” he said. He gave a slight flourish with his hand and bowed. “Dr. Facilier at your service.”

“Yeah. Nice,” Riku said sarcastically.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. How rude of you to greet us so discourteously,” Maleficent scolded.

Sora rolled his eyes. “Said the woman who threw a fireball at me when my back was turned,” he retorted.

Maleficent smirked slightly. “That, I couldn’t resist,” she admitted.

“You might do well to curb your impulses, lest you thrust yourself into a difficult dilemma,” a deep voice spoke up. The party turned their attention from the evil fairy and the witch doctor to the pale-skinned man with shoulder-length white hair. His calm aura and piercing red eyes gave him a rather intimidating appearance despite the fact that he was otherwise normal-looking compared to Maleficent, Dr. Facilier, Yzma, and the also-present Pete. After several seconds, Mickey, Donald and Goofy managed to recognize him from their scrying session. Sora did not have that luxury, but he quickly noticed how he seemed to hold himself as an equal with Maleficent, willing to get away with scolding her to her face. As such, like how he determined Maleficent’s identity from seeing her the first time for only three seconds, he could guess who this stranger was.

“I presume that you are Zeromast?” Sora inquired.


	88. Chapter 87: Skills of the Scholar

Zeromast simply nodded. “Correct, Keyblade wielder,” he answered. “I must say, it is quite an honor to meet you.”

Sora blinked in surprise. He had expected a little more of an evil monologue. “Uh, okay…”

“Yes. I have watched you carry out both of your quests, and you never stood down from your mission despite the seemingly-insurmountable challenges; you never faltered in standing up for what you believe in,” Zeromast continued. Maleficent and Pete looked at him with the same amount of surprise that Sora and his friends exhibited.

Kairi nudged Sora in the arm with her elbow. “Looks like someone’s got a secret admirer,” she joked.

Sora crossed his arms. “Let me get this straight. You’re a fan, and yet you teamed up with Maleficent, Pete and Hades to destroy everything,” he said.

“It’s not quite as black-and-white as that,” Zeromast argued. “And I can understand that you would not be able to see things from my perspective. But I have seen the entire development of history, and I concluded that the world should be made perfect.”

Riku pointed accusingly at Zeromast. “Yeah, at the expense of everyone and everything!”

Zeromast shook his head. “I make no attempt to justify myself to you,” he replied. “But the World must be rewritten.”

Sora summoned his Keyblade back into his hands. “Well, if we stop you right here, that won’t happen! And you won’t be able to hurt anyone else along the way!”

Zeromast smiled. “You are welcome to try.” He reached into his right pocket and, in spite of the small volume, pulled out a five-foot long rod made of some sort of silvery metal, which Mickey, Donald and Aeleus studied curiously. Next, he took out six planes of a similar metal, each of an identical trapezoidal shape. He tossed them into the air, and they floated around the top of the rod before attaching in such a way that the smaller edges of two of them fit around the top circular edge and the other three attached to the long faces of the first three. Lastly, he pulled out a tiny cinch sack and dumped out a glowing red crystal, holding the staff low so that the crystal would insert itself into the slot enclosed by the small edges of the top three panels. He pocketed the cinch sack and held the spear upright, allowing all around him to examine the weapon he had just constructed.

“Is that…” Aeleus began to ask.

Zeromast nodded. “Yes. Pure adamantite,” he answered. “One of nature’s strongest substances, and not easy to come by, I’ll have you know.”

“But I doubt it’s any stronger than a Keyblade,” Sora quipped.

There was a standoff for several seconds. Sora remained focused on Zeromast, while Riku locked eyes with Maleficent and Mickey looked up to challenge Pete. The others looked from one adversary to the next, each one trying to decide who to fight. Kairi and Donald began to consider matching up with Dr. Facilier, in order to counter against his magic. They could all tell that Yzma, in her feline form, was almost not worth fighting, but would certainly prove to be a nuisance.

“Are you not curious as to what sort of power allows the changes we seek?” Zeromast asked.

Sora shrugged. “I am kind of curious,” he admitted. “But I’ll get over it.”

Zeromast nodded. “Fair enough,” he replied.

Sora charged toward Zeromast, signaling the others to engage their opponents. Sora delivered a quick opening combo, but Zeromast blocked each blow with a seemingly-rehearsed deftness. Riku fought Maleficent with his Keyblade and his Dark Fire spells, while the sorceress fought back against him and Dilan’s wind-guided spear attacks with blows from her scepter and psychokinetically-guided magic fire which she swirled around her body and thrust at her targets. Kairi, Donald and Yuffie left Dr. Facilier on the defensive, running around to avoid Kairi’s close-range Keyblade swings while avoiding her and Donald’s spells and Yuffie’s shurikens and fighting back with his own spells and tricks. Mickey and Goofy clashed with Pete, though the fat cat did what he could to hold them off. Yzma jumped between fighting groups, trying to attack the heroes, though she was usually snatched off and pitched away. Donald eventually dealt with her by immobilizing her with a Stopga spell.

Zeromast continued to block each of Sora’s attacks, but Sora hit hard and ferociously enough to push him back a step each time. At a few points, Sora brought his foot up to kick Zeromast, but he stepped out of the way and pushed his foot aside with the lower end of the spear. Once they had moved back several feet, Zeromast smiled and jumped back a few more feet. He then slammed the bottom of his spear against the ground.

Sora whirled around as he saw a honeycomb barrier materialize in a dome around the two of them. He saw that his friends and other enemies were surprised by the development. Looking at the ground, he noticed that there was a circle of chalk, about fifty feet in diameter, drawn around the two of them. He turned back to Zeromast, realizing that it was his doing.

“This should ensure no interference,” Zeromast said, his lips curling into a smirk.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Sora replied. He pointed his Keyblade at his adversary and shouted “Freeze!” A Blizzaga spell flew at Zeromast, who dodged the attack. His free hand reached into his pocket. Sora cast Blizzaga again, but Zeromast disrupted the spell by swinging his spear at it. Sora then cast Firaga, and a large fireball sailed straight toward Zeromast, intent on homing in on its target. However, Zeromast pulled out a rune with a rectangle drawn on it and held it in front of him. The fireball made direct contact with the stone and vanished into it.

Sora’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s a neat trick,” he said. He thrust himself into a Quick Run, swinging his Keyblade to attack as soon as he landed, but Zeromast blocked it. Sora dealt a fast combo, but Zeromast parried each strike, then brought the bottom of his spear up to strike him in the side. Sora recovered from the blow and swung his Keyblade at Zeromast’s head, but the taller man leaned back to avoid the strike. He then grabbed Sora’s arm, holding it above both of them, and brought his knee up into his ribs.

Meanwhile, Pete rolled an explosive bowling ball right at Mickey and Goofy, but Goofy bumped it aside with his shield, where it exploded near Yzma half a second after the Stopga spell wore off, blasting her several feet and causing her to splat into the barrier dome. Pete raised an energy barrier to block Goofy’s tornado attack and Mickey’s Pearl shots. He laughed confidently as he saw their attacks fail to reach him. However, his eyes widened and he gulped as he saw Aeleus charge at him, massive axe sword in hand. Aeleus swung the Skysplitter, hitting the spherical barrier with the enormous front face of his weapon like a baseball bat, launching Pete into the air and sending him flying across the town, screaming all the way.

Riku swung his Keyblade at Maleficent, who blocked the strike with her scepter. A thin laser shot out of the crystal ball at the top and hit Riku in the shoulder. While he was momentarily stunned from the burn, she blasted him away with a fireball. When Riku fell out of view, Dilan became visible, as he aimed his six spears in her direction. Maleficent vanished in a burst of green flame before the wind-propelled weapons flew straight through her. She reappeared right behind Dilan and shot a fireball at him, but he spun around and created a wind funnel fast enough to create a vacuum that caused the fireball to dissipate inches from his hand. He summoned one of his spears back to his hand and stabbed it toward Maleficent, who blocked it with her scepter. She tried to blast him with a laser, but Riku threw himself at her and struck out, sending her stumbling back. The sorceress conjured her dragon made of green fire and sent it swirling around Riku. Riku simply teleported out of its radius and reappeared behind Maleficent. He brought up a Dark Shield to block the dragon when it flew after him and resumed his attack on the sorceress.

Dr. Facilier gracefully dodged Kairi and Donald’s magic spells while keeping his distance, and sometimes sacrificed an unmarked voodoo doll (though there may have been a few marked ones there; he could not tell) to protect himself from Yuffie’s shurikens. As he did so, he lobbed fireballs and gravity spheres, and occasionally blew some purple powder at his opponents. Kairi and Donald used Aero magic to disperse the powder before it could make contact and expose what effects it caused, and the witch doctor gritted his teeth at seeing his resources be wasted in a diversion tactic. On a few occasions, when Kairi drew too close for him to dodge her strikes, he made an effort to counter with his staff. However, it became apparent that, however limber and athletic he may be, he benefited more from being a trickster by trade and was not adept at combat, even against the mildly-skilled Kairi, so in those instances he put more effort in getting out of melee range and getting back onto even ground with his opponents.

Sora continued his duel with Zeromast, though he was starting to become worried. Everything he threw at the man, his foe was able to anticipate and counter. When Sora jumped away to launch a strike raid, he simply dodged the Keyblade, on its throw and return trips, and he then swatted the final throw away with his spear. Each blow of Ars Arcanum was blocked just as flawlessly, as if he already knew exactly how, where and when each hit would come. At the end of Sora’s attempted assault, Zeromast rolled out of the way and slammed an elbow into his back as he landed, knocking him face-first into the ground.

Sora began to push himself to his feet, but Zeromast grabbed onto him by the hood and lifted him up, throwing him into the barrier. Zeromast ran to swing his spear at Sora, but Sora silently cast Reflega. The adamantite bounced right off of the shield, which promptly exploded in a kinetic burst that sent Zeromast flying. Seeing an opening, Sora cast Thundaga, figuring that his foe could not dodge it or absorb it into a runestone so easily. However, he did not consider Zeromast using his spear as a lightning rod (in part because he did not know the properties of adamantite and if it would conduct electricity like iron or copper). Indeed, his foe let the spear fall from his hand in such a way that it pointed up and connected with the ground before Sora cast his spell, and the lightning bolts missed Zeromast entirely in favor of coursing through the metal rod. However, he quickly realized that Zeromast would not dare to grab it with his bare hands while it might still be electrified, which meant that he would not be able to block his attacks.

Sora ran forward and jumped into the air, raising his Keyblade over his head to strike Zeromast. However, the scholar performed an acrobatic flip forward, bringing is feet up to kick Sora’s legs and throw him off balance. The boy crashed to the ground, his Keyblade skidding away. Sora quickly pushed himself to his feet and spun around to punch his opponent, but Zeromast caught his fist in his hand. He brought his opposite arm down on Sora’s arm, forcing him to lurch forward, then brought it back up to strike him in the face, then let go of his fist to punch him in the gut.

Gradually, everyone fighting outside became distracted by the duel that took place within the dome, and they ceased their own battles to watch. Leon, Lea, Isa, and Ienzo rejoined the party and were taken by surprise to see Maleficent on the scene, but their attention quickly fell on Sora’s fight with Zeromast as well.

Lea leaned in to whisper to Isa. “You think that’s the new baddy?” he asked.

Isa nodded. “Must be,” he replied.

“What did they say his name was? Zemus? Zorro?”

“Zeromast,” Isa corrected him.

“Right. Thanks.”

Sora gained some distance and cast Agua, spraying the ground and Zeromast’s legs. He then cast Blizzaga, freezing the water and causing ice crystals to grow. Zeromast’s feet were frozen to the ground as well, but he picked his spear up, turned it so he was holding it upside-down, and tapped the ice with the crystal at the tip. The crystal glowed red and the ice began to melt, then the water evaporated. He jumped over the ice surrounding him and brought the lower end of the spear up to hit Sora’s chin. However, the boy leaned back to dodge and brought his Keyblade up to strike him in the arm. He followed up on the hit by casting Zero Gravity, lifting Zeromast into the air in a spherical force field.

Before Sora could take advantage of the opening, Zeromast clicked his boots together and the soles emitted a dark light. He instantly rotated so that he was upright, then he dropped through the force field, shattering it and landing on the ground. The dark light faded away a few seconds later while Sora gaped in utter shock.

Ienzo looked up at Aeleus. “Were those the gravity discs that Even designed for Braig to stabilize his quantum distortions?” he asked.

“I believe so,” Aeleus replied.

Sora propelled himself across the ground with his Keyblade to try and trip Zeromast up, but Zeromast swiped the bottom of his spear in his path, tripping up his legs and causing him to fall on his side. Sora scrambled to his feet and swung wildly at Zeromast, who blocked his attack, forcing the Keyblade to bounce off. He took a second to study the top of the spear, then flicked his wrist. In a flash, the Keyblade’s position in his hands reversed. He swung again, this time catching the top of the shaft in the teeth. He pulled his weapon, yanking the spear out of his opponent’s grip. He dismissed his Keyblade, allowing the spear to fall.

With both of them disarmed, Sora hopped into a stance with his left foot forward and his hands raised in fists. He raised his knee and snapped his leg out, kicking Zeromast in the side and knocking him ten feet away. He could hear Riku and Kairi letting out a cheer.

Zeromast pushed himself into a kneeling position. “That’s new,” he mumbled. A second later, he saw Sora running after him and swinging his Keyblade. He caught the weapon and pulled it away, using the motion to also pull himself to his feet, and kneed Sora in the gut. He followed that up by punching him in the jaw, and then turned around and flipped him over his shoulder, slamming him onto the ground. Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy gasped.

He calmly walked back to his spear and picked it up, keeping his gaze on Sora as he struggled to get to his feet. “You think yourself powerful,” he said condescendingly. Sora picked his Keyblade up and charged at him, swinging it ferociously, but Zeromast blocked each strike and managed to deal a few hits with the bottom of his staff. “But I have sparred with simulations of the greatest senseis—” he dealt a karate chop to Sora’s shoulder in between parries “—sparred with facsimiles of the most skilled swordsmen—” he pushed Sora’s Keyblade aside, then spun around and latched the spear’s shaft into the key’s teeth and yanked on the key to make him stumble “—and studied with recollections of the greatest minds in history. You probably have no idea what I’m talking about.” He dealt a sharp karate chop to Sora’s back, sending him tumbling forward. “I have watched your growth—” he wrapped one arm around Sora’s neck and hoisted him up before throwing him back over his head “—observed your style—” he took his spear and held it over his head to defend himself as Sora swung an arcing attack from above “—studied your strengths—” he jumped out of the way several times as Sora launched into a desperate but sloppy Sonic Blade “—your weaknesses.” He withdrew a handful of orange marbles and threw them at Sora. They exploded into fist-sized fireballs in midair a few inches away from him. While Sora was stunned from the blast and the heat, Zeromast charged in and punched him in the gut. “You have faced great warriors and tremendous monsters,” he continued as he backhanded Sora in the face, then raised his forearm into Sora’s chin, “but in this fight, on this day…” He grabbed Sora by the jacket collar and threw him to the side, sending him tumbling. He picked Sora up and twisted his arm behind his back. “You…” He let go of Sora’s arm and kicked him in the back. “Are…” He took his spear and tripped Sora, causing him to fall forward, then jumped in and punched him hard in the center of his back, knocking the wind out of him and slamming him to the ground. “Lacking!” He kneeled on Sora, putting his entire weight on his back, then pressed down on his neck to hold his head to the ground.

“Sora!” Riku and Kairi shouted simultaneously. Mickey, Goofy, Leon, Yuffie, and Lea gaped in shock. They could not believe what had just happened. Even Maleficent was bewildered. Donald attempted to charge to his defense, but he forgot about the barrier and ran straight into it.

Zeromast shifted Sora about, then stuck his hand in one of his pockets. He felt around for a few seconds, but shook his head and exited the pocket, realizing that he was searching the wrong place. He shifted Sora about again and reached into the other pocket. He smiled when he closed his fingers around the item he sought. He pulled his hand out and held the teardrop-shaped crystal in the sunlight.

“Hello, Virgo. How long have I been searching for you?” he mused. He glanced back down at Sora, who could see the stone out of the corner of his eye. “Thank you for retrieving this for me.”

“Retrieving… Wait… You’re the reason… Mirror Aqua attacked us…?” Sora asked, coming to understand what had gone on.

“Mirror Aqua? So, that’s the form its avatar took.” Zeromast chuckled. “The powder was meant to call out to it and make it come to you. I imagined that it might be hostile due to the Auracite’s nature, but to shape itself into a parody of your friend… That requires further analysis.” He slipped the stone into his pouch. He shifted as if he was about to get off of Sora, but he stopped when Sora’s muscles tensed. He could tell that the boy was already preparing to get back up and retaliate. He shook his head and grabbed Sora’s right arm. “So that you don’t get any unwise ideas…” He lifted Sora’s arm and grasped under his armpit with his free hand, and pulled. Sora heard a popping noise and felt an aching pain shoot up his arm. He could not restrain a scream in pain.

“Sora!” Kairi cried out.

Zeromast stood up and retrieved his spear. He made his way toward the barrier. Everyone on the other side slowly backed away. Sora did not get up to retaliate, still aching and realizing that he could not feel the fingers on his right hand. The scholar held his spear horizontally and jammed the tip into the barrier. The energy shield glowed red at the point where the crystal touched, and wavy red lines spread around the dome. After several seconds, the entire barrier glowed red and dissipated.

He turned to face Maleficent. “So, shall we be on our way?” he asked.

Maleficent, after regaining her bearings from the shock, scowled at him. “Why don’t we just finish the job right here, right now?”

Zeromast shrugged. “You’re welcome to try, though I doubt the dozen champions behind you will give you the chance to take a step toward him,” he retorted before turning away. Maleficent glanced over her shoulder and saw that she and her cronies were clearly outnumbered and outmatched. Her stubbornness fought against her sense, but she finally sighed and began to follow after her ally.

However, Aeleus hefted his axe sword upon his shoulder. “Sora may have been disadvantaged, but I do not believe that you will fare quite as well in a different kind of struggle,” he announced, before he leapt high into the air and raised the Skysplitter up. As he came down, he swung his enormous weapon over his head to crush Zeromast under its bulk.

Zeromast calmly gripped his spear in both hands and stabbed it upward. When the crystal on the tip met the face of the axe sword, the crystal glowed a brilliant red. The axe sword became illuminated in a similar hue, then a fifth of a second later it turned completely red. A third of a second after that, the weapon burst into atom-sized particles, releasing a resounding boom as Aeleus’ enormous axe sword, which he had used as his own for ten years, was no more.

Aeleus landed on the ground and dropped to one knee from the momentum, then refused to move. He remained in that position for a solid minute, staring at his empty hands, trying to process what had just happened.

Everyone else simply stood gaping. Riku was quite familiar with the axe sword. The massive weapon, in the hands of its powerful master, had packed a powerful punch when he had fought Aeleus’ Nobody form Lexaeus in Castle Oblivion. Lexaeus had used it to cause earthquakes inside of the castle and rip pointed rocks from the floor, and he had nearly killed him with it at the very end of the battle. And yet, Zeromast had just obliterated it with a single tap from his spear like it was nothing. They were too stunned to react, and too afraid to do anything even if they were not.

Zeromast lowered the spear so that the crystal was level with the lower half of his face, and blew on it as if he were blowing smoke from a gun.

Sora growled. “What is it that you want?” he shouted, gritting his teeth through the pain that ached his entire body.

Zeromast turned to look at him in his peripheral, regarding the question he posed. “A better World,” he replied. He began to walk away, with Maleficent, Dr. Facilier, and a dizzy Yzma following.

Sora looked at Maleficent, trying to get a read on the witch. He found it difficult to understand how she was reacting to the day’s incident. He was wondering what she had come to do on this morning, anyway. Zeromast had come to confiscate the Realm of Darkness stone, while Dr. Facilier and Yzma attacked them to collect materials that they had gathered in the Realm of Darkness. But Maleficent had simply shown up, summoned Heartless, and fought them.

“Maleficent, what did you get from this?” he asked.

Maleficent smiled and turned to address him. “Plenty,” she replied, an amused tone in her voice. She raised her hand and conjured a Corridor of Darkness, through which she and her allies vanished.


	89. Chapter 88: Jiminy's Journal #2

**The Realm of Darkness**

Story

A photograph and a tale told by King Mickey informed us that Aqua was stuck in the Realm of Darkness. A friend that the king made years ago, Aqua vanished under mysterious circumstances, her fate unknown until the king found her during his trek through the Realm of Darkness as he sought to help seal the Door to Darkness, only for her to vanish from his sight yet again. Resolving to set out and rescue her, the gang donned black coats and entered the Realm of Darkness after Even determined her general area. The party journeyed through the hostile dimension, fighting through new and powerful legions of Heartless.

As King Mickey led the way to finding Aqua, we soon came across something that looked like Aqua, but this Aqua attacked and tried to kill us, to which the king was afraid to fight back. However, Sora and Kairi figured out that the opponent was a mirror duplicate created from the darkness and encouraged him to fight back. However, it overpowered the gang, and they were only saved when the real Aqua arrived and fought back against the fiend, destroying it in the process.

After catching up on the events that occurred during Aqua’s absence, the party was set to head back to the Realm of Light with Naminé’s powers to conjure dark portals, but we were ambushed by a number of Heartless, and Kairi was taken away by a giant Heartless, the Dark Hide. With Aqua’s help, we tracked the beast back to its hideout and, after a harsh battle, the gang slew it. We were set to return, but Aqua insisted that we bring back someone she met at the Dark Margin. When we made our way to the beach, we found a cloaked figure who we recognized as Ansem the Wise, whom we thought to be dead. Unfortunately, we found that he had lost most of his memories. Nevertheless, he agreed to return to Radiant Garden with us. And so, we returned to the Realm of Light through a Corridor of Darkness. Seconds after Aqua took in the senses of the light realm, she fainted from exhaustion.

Characters

Aqua

A Keyblade Master who trained alongside Terra and Ventus, and a friend of King Mickey’s. She played a pivotal role in a historic clash against Master Xehanort a dozen years ago. To save a friend, she cast herself into the Realm of Darkness. After a long time fighting for survival, where the darkness fought to drag her into despair. However, she remained strong, and she was finally rescued by Sora, Mickey, and the gang.

Ansem the Wise

Former sage king of Radiant Garden and chief researcher of the nature of the heart, he was a friend of King Mickey. Xehanort led his pupils in betraying him and casting him to the Realm of Darkness. Taking up the name DiZ, Ansem became consumed with hatred and sought to use Sora, Riku, Naminé, and Roxas to get revenge on Organization XIII. He had a change of heart when he witnessed the sacrifice Riku had made to ensure that Sora woke up, and he sought to make things right by dismantling Xemnas’ Kingdom Hearts with a digitizing device, apparently perishing when it malfunctioned and exploded. We found him alive in the Realm of Darkness, but it appears as though he has lost most of his memories.

Mirror Aqua

A twisted copy of Aqua that attacked us while we searched for the real Aqua. It seemed to focus its efforts on Mickey and claimed to be the real Aqua fallen to darkness. However, Sora and Kairi deduced that it was a mirrored replica and encouraged the rest of the party to fight back. Despite its dangerous tricks, it was defeated and slain by Aqua. It appears as though she had been plagued with more of these phantoms in the past, but this one appears to have been conjured by the Virgo Auracite.

Heartless

Fluttering

Bat-like Heartless that reside in the Realm of Darkness. They fly around and attack any who draw near with its spinning and diving attacks.

Water Core

Pureblood Heartless that command the element of Water, they attack with water-based attacks. When they envelop themselves in watery bubbles, any attempt to strike them will cause them to harmlessly teleport away. Vulnerable to Thunder magic, and to a lesser extent Fire as well, and they can be immobilized with Blizzard spells.

Flame Core

Pureblood Heartless that command the element of Fire, they throw balls of fire and launch themselves at their enemy in a flying rage while wrapped in a glowing flame. Vulnerable to Blizzard magic.

Earth Core

Hedgehog-like Heartless with sharp rocks growing out of their backs. While vulnerable in the front, attacks from behind will fail to do damage. They will attempt to throw their stony rears at their prey to harm and stun them.

Dark Hide

A massive predator that uses night vision to hunt in the dark. Its fast and powerful attacks along with its explosive energy blasts make it a force to be reckoned with. When its prey proves to be just as ferocious, it unleashes phantom copies of itself to overwhelm them. Quite curiously, it does not fade into smoke when slain, unlike other Heartless.

**Radiant Garden**

Story

We returned to Radiant Garden and shared what we had learned about the artifacts with the Restoration Committee. While in the Borough, Merlin taught the magic users how to cast the spell “Agua”. After that, we all went up to the castle to deliver the flash drive containing Ansem’s notes regarding Xehanort to the former Organization members. We learned that there had been no development on the Xehanort investigation, but Ienzo did show us a surprising secret hidden in a chamber that Xemnas had used for meditation. In there, we found a long-abandoned suit of armor as well as a Keyblade, both of which King Mickey identified as having belonged to his missing friend Aqua. As we attempted to examine Ansem’s files, Yuffie arrived suddenly and showed us a letter, on which was taped a photograph of Aqua, which could only have been taken by King Mickey. Sora and Riku confronted the king with this and the king revealed that he had encountered Aqua in the Realm of Darkness, around the time he had found the Keyblade from that realm, but the two of them had become separated due to a Heartless attack moments before the king and Riku aided Sora, Donald and Goofy in closing the Door to Darkness.

Sora and Riku were quite upset with the king over the news, particularly bringing up how he never told them and that they could have gone to save her, though the king voiced some understandable concerns regarding the risks of such an undertaking. Nevertheless, Sora and Riku insisted on entering the Realm of Darkness and rescuing Aqua. The researchers offered to develop a means by which we might be able to locate Aqua’s location in the Realm of Darkness so as to more efficiently find and rescue her. The following afternoon, we all gathered together and used a program to identify Aqua’s general location, though the calculations were not entirely accurate. With this information, the party donned a set of black coats reminiscent of those worn by each member of Organization XIII, with myself nestled in the king’s pocket, while Kairi called upon Naminé to open a Corridor of Darkness through which we transported ourselves into the Realm of Darkness.

\--

The mission was a success, and we returned with not only Aqua, but Ansem the Wise in tow. I must say, I am surprised to see him still alive after his apparent death by the explosion of the Kingdom Hearts Encoder, let alone find him in the Realm of Darkness, but I suppose he did say that “anything could happen”. Aqua fainted from exhaustion seconds after we arrived in the Radiant Garden streets, so we took her to Aerith’s clinic so she could rest, then we went up to the castle to show the researchers that their former teacher was still alive, albeit amnesiac. Ansem elected to rejoin his former pupils in hopes of working alongside them so that he may have the chance to do some good after years of mistakes and failures. Afterward, Merlin conducted another magic lesson with Sora, Mickey, Riku, Kairi, and Donald as the students.

The following day, we visited Aqua in the clinic, and she recounted her experiences in the Realm of Darkness, though she eventually broke down in tears, unable to continue discussing it. Fortunately, we were all there to offer our comfort and support. However, we were forced to leave her so that we could respond to a Heartless attack in the group homes, where many civilians had been relocated after the Raid Armor destroyed their homes. The gang, along with the Restoration Committee, ~~Axel~~ Lea, Isa, Aeleus, Dilan, and Ienzo, vanquished the Heartless, only to be confronted by Maleficent, Pete, Dr. Facilier (the witch doctor from Beast’s Castle), Yzma, and Zeromast. During the fight with the five of them, Sora found himself in a one-on-one duel with Zeromast. To our great shock, Zeromast was able to counter nearly every attack Sora threw and defeated him. He took a stone that Sora had found after our fight with Mirror Aqua, and made his way to leave. However, Aeleus attempted to strike him down with his axe sword, but Zeromast simply used the crystal at the tip of his spear to reduce the weapon to nothing.

Characters

Zeromast

An enigmatic man who boasts vast knowledge about all history and even claims to have watched Sora’s every move on both of his adventures. He is the one who has gathered Maleficent and her cabal of evildoers into a hunt for artifacts with an end goal of altering reality, though he keeps his true intentions hidden from everyone else. Armed with a spear made of pure adamantite and tipped with a crystal that can disintegrate matter, he has proven himself a formidable combatant who managed to counter every attack Sora threw at him, making him especially dangerous.

Dr. Facilier

A voodoo practitioner with a keen showmanship, formidable magic and a living shadow, though he is one to scramble for escape when he knows that he is outmatched. Little is known about him or why he is allied with Maleficent and Zeromast.

Yzma

Formerly the treacherous advisor to Emperor Kuzco, she attempted to get revenge for him firing her and also take control of the kingdom by poisoning him, only to turn him into a llama with a badly-labeled potion. While trying to finish the job with the help of Heartless, she was inadvertently transformed into a cat. Even after being retrieved by Maleficent’s council, she is still in the form of a grumpy cat.

Heartless

Wyvern

Giant Heartless that attack from the air. They are quite swift for their size and are hard to attack, especially while they are high in the air. Counterattacking when they come down would be most effective.

Magic

Agua

Shoots a jet of water from a focal point, usually serving as the tip of a Keyblade or wand. Spell caster must be disciplined to properly focus the water trail. Unless it is consciously manipulated, the water trail will follow a parabolic arc as if it were in projectile motion.

Slow

Decreases the rate of a target’s movements and perception time.

Haste

Increases the rate of a target’s movements and perception time.

Sleep

Inflicts a drowsiness upon any caught in the target radius, which will force them to fall into a standing slumber. Effects will wear off after a short time, and will be nullified if the affected person is caused to feel pain.

* * *

“Hold still. This might hurt a little,” Leon said.

Sora groaned. “It already hurts a lot. Just get it over with,” he retorted.

Leon shrugged and popped Sora’s dislocated shoulder back into place. Sora could not help but yelp in pain.

After the fight at the group homes, the party had returned to the clinic, Riku and Leon supporting Sora all the way. Ienzo had sent a message to Even and Ansem, informing them of what had occurred, and the two scientists left the castle to visit the large group. When they had arrived, Aerith determined that Sora’s shoulder had indeed been manually dislocated, and she set about treating his other injuries. Both she and Aqua had been quite shocked to hear what had happened.

“I should’ve been there,” Aqua lamented.

Sora shook his head. “You wouldn’t have changed anything. Besides, I’m actually glad you didn’t have to see that,” he replied, stewing in his humiliation.

Aerith handed him a Hi-Potion, which he drank. He felt a relaxing warmth spread through his body, and his cuts and bruises healed.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked.

Sora nodded. “Physically, better. Thanks. My ego, less so,” he answered. He scratched the back of his head.

Leon lowered his head, deep in thought. “If our new enemy is this strong, your mission just got a lot harder,” he said.

Riku sighed. “Not like the fight was a cakewalk beforehand,” he lamented. “The new guys aren’t too bad on their own, but they and the new boss Heartless they bring along will definitely be a problem.”

“Yes, Maleficent and that Zeromast character have gathered quite a fresh array of fiends in their diabolical mission,” Even agreed. “What sort of threat do they now pose, from your understanding?”

“Well, aside from Maleficent and Pete, there’s Loki, the trickster god,” Sora began, counting on his fingers as he rattled off the list, “Hades, god of the Underworld, who we already knew about…”

“Yzma, a sort of alchemist with shape-changing potions, though now she’s stuck in the form of a kitty cat,” Kairi added, “and then a dark sorcerer named Mozenrath…”

“The evil voodoo guy, Dr. Facilier, and a magic-powered clown named Kefka,” Donald continued.

“Don’t forget Kuja,” Riku interjected. “He was just too powerful, and we couldn’t do a thing to him with our strongest attacks and best spells.” He sighed, remembering the one-sided battle.

“Kuja? Interesting…” Even whispered curiously, a comment that no one noticed.

“According to the Gullwings’ report, that means there are still four creeps that you haven’t met,” Yuffie surmised.

Mickey nodded. “That’s right. They said that there were thirteen of them in total, including Maleficent, Pete and Zeromast,” he agreed.

Sora crossed his arms and groaned. “Man, if we’re gonna be going up against even more of them, we’re going to need to get a lot stronger,” he said.

“It’s not just in power,” Aeleus argued. “You need to learn new techniques. That man knew all of your attacks, and he was able to predict and counter whatever you tried.”

“Except that kick. Phew, when you tossed in that roundhouse, he really looked surprised,” Yuffie pointed out. “When’d you learn that?”

“My cousin taught it to me a few days before the king, Donald and Goofy picked us up in the Gummi Ship,” Sora answered.

“Then I would suggest you expand your repertoire,” Aeleus advised. “Learn new skills and spells so that you do not fall into the same traps as today.”

Sora nodded. “Got it.”

Mickey crossed his arms. “In the meantime, we should plan our next move,” he said.

* * *

Dr. Facilier laid out the dark realm ores on a table, allowing Yzma and Doug to study them. “Don’t either of you get any wool or fur mixed in,” he reminded them.

“Yeah, yeah,” Doug waved him off.

Maleficent had spent the past hour since returning from the town staring out the window directly facing the distant civilization. She heard footsteps as Zeromast made his way back downstairs after his visit to his study. She turned around and glared at him. “Why did you not allow us to simply destroy the fools right there?” she asked.

“It seemed an inopportune moment to give them such an ignoble end,” Zeromast replied.

“What sort of end would you claim that boy deserves?” Maleficent shot back.

Zeromast shook his head. “Oh, Maleficent. Your heart seems clouded by thoughts of revenge.

Maleficent scoffed. “After the defeat and insults he dealt to me in the past, are you saying that I should not want vengeance?” she asked. She raised her voice with that question and spread her arms to address the whole room and try to get the others on her side.

Dr. Facilier shrugged. “I’m more of the getting power and cash type,” he said.

“I don’t really see anything wrong with payback,” Mozenrath argued. Xerxes nodded in agreement.

“My relations with others will mean nothing when I am their god of death and destruction,” the Horned King boasted.

Kefka cackled. “Yeah, going after one guy isn’t worth it,” he said. “It’s better to listen to the sweet music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison!”

Pete shivered at the lich and clown’s claims. “Eh, I’m not really that focused on revenge,” he admitted.

“I have a higher priority in taking the respect that I so deserve,” Loki clarified.

“For my part, I would really like some payback against Zeus and that Herc the Jerk,” Hades said.

Diablo cawed.

Cruella exhaled a puff of smoke. “I suppose some retribution might not be too bad,” she conceded. She looked down at her fur coat and stroked it with one hand, smiling. “But there are certainly more important things in life for a woman like me.”

Pete looked at Doug curiously, expecting him to be shocked to be working with someone so obsessed with skinning animals and wearing their furs, given the culture from which he hails, but the sheep barely reacted.

Doug looked up, seeming disinterested in the topic of conversation. “I don’t really care. Just so long as I get paid,” he said in a blasé tone.

“Nobody knew me,” Zeromast admitted, providing his input on the question. “And I am not one of those people who grow so attached to a certain character in a book or movie that I react poorly when another character quote-unquote ‘mistreats’ them.”

“I think we can all tell how I feel about vengeance,” Yzma said, gritting her teeth as she thought about Emperor Kuzco.

“I’ll worry about righting any wrongs against me when I reclaim what is rightfully mine,” Hämsterviel argued.

Kuja shrugged. “I haven’t given the passion of hatred too much concern,” he admitted. “Though I doubt resolving it swiftly would make for compelling drama.”

Zeromast turned back to Maleficent. “Besides, wouldn’t you prefer the victory to be your own?” he asked.

Maleficent shrugged, unable to argue with that point. “I suppose it can wait until a more proper moment,” she conceded. “Besides, with all of our combined strength, it will be a matter of time before he fails to escape.”

“And speaking of a matter of time,” Zeromast interrupted, “as Pete confirmed for us, they are growing closer to seeking the artifacts out for themselves. They determined the nature of the clock hand while he was in the process of stealing it.”

Pete scratched the back of his head nervously. “Yeah. They nearly got me on my way out,” he said.

“Jeez Louise, I don’t remember them catching on this quickly in the last two years,” Hades complained.

“It is precisely because of their experiences being so far behind in understanding the matter until it was nearly too late that they want to get as far ahead as they can,” Zeromast explained. “After letting the Heartless abscond with the Princesses and not understanding what Xehanort’s Heartless had intended until it was already too late to do anything that would prevent the opening of the Door to Darkness, and being stuck only able to aid the Organization’s plans, only able to reach the Nobodies’ stronghold shortly before their plan would have come to fruition, they have no intention of allowing our efforts to escalate to a potential victory.”

Kuja sighed. “To think they have grown so tired of the play that they would desire to avert the third act?” he whined melodramatically.

Dr. Facilier shrugged. “I’m sure they’re fine with the first two acts,” he argued. “And I can’t see anything wrong with them not wanting to see Kefka’s dreams become a reality.”

“Which is why we must gather the artifacts before they can interfere too greatly,” Zeromast reminded everyone. “We have far too many to gather before we can achieve what we want.”

He began to walk out, but stopped when Maleficent addressed him. “Which reminds me, Zeromast: the boy did raise an excellent point. What is it that _you_ want?” she asked.

“Hmph,” the scholar grunted in remark. He turned around to face her. “What is it that _you_ want?” he asked in turn.

Maleficent was taken aback by the turnaround. However, she regained her composure. “To plunge all the worlds into darkness and rule over it all,” she answered haughtily.

Zeromast nodded lightly. “Then, that is all you should concern yourself with,” he said. “Do not bog your efforts down with the wishes of others. That has never suited you. You should only wish to take your own ambition.” With that, as he left Maleficent and most of the other villains flabbergasted, he exited the meeting room. Each member of the council could only ask themselves what this seemingly-omniscient researcher and occult collector wanted out of the plot.


	90. Chapter 89: Overdue Holiday

Sora rested for a few hours and later did crunches and jogged around town to make sure he was back in shape after the beating he had gotten. In the meantime, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy went to the marketplace to stock up on curative items and check out the latest accessories and pieces of armor. They reunited at the Borough and made their way back to the clinic, where they intended to meet with the gang one more time before setting back out.

When they arrived at the room Aqua was in, they looked through the window and saw her out of bed and stretching. Mickey knocked, and Aerith let them in. When Aqua saw them, she smiled warmly.

“You’re heading out?” Leon asked, noticing their heavy shopping bags.

Mickey nodded. “Yeah. We can’t let them cause any more harm in the other worlds,” he replied.

“And I have a lot to learn if I’m going to be able to fight Zeromast again,” Sora added.

“Even now, there’s so much turmoil in the worlds,” Aqua lamented.

Kairi nodded in agreement. “Yeah. But it’s our job to clean it up,” she said.

“Okay. Then I’m coming with you,” Aqua said resolutely.

Everyone around her was taken aback. Sora, Riku and Mickey shook their heads defiantly. “No. You still need to rest,” Mickey protested.

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Aqua insisted. “I’m a Keyblade Master. It’s my job to maintain the balance among the worlds. I’ve been gone for too long. Let me help you.”

Even still, the party was still uncertain about letting her back into the field so soon. She sighed and shook her head. “Just let me do what I can, please. And if at any time you think I’m not fit for the task, I’ll sit back and do what you say.”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy turned to Mickey, waiting to hear what he had to say. They were all on the fence: happy at the thought of having her along but also concerned for her well-being.

Mickey was conflicted on the matter himself. On the one hand, he had just found Aqua a second time, and he did not want to risk anything happening to her. He was of the mindset that if she were to get hurt, or worse, then it would be all his fault. Even beyond that, he was afraid that in her present condition, having just spent what to her felt like months barely eking out in a deadly land that clawed at her sanity, she would not be fit to handle herself properly without plenty of rest and time to restore her strength. Then again, he recalled that she handled herself quite well on survival instinct, and she had the six of them to support her and keep her safe if things got out of hand. He also realized that not having friends by her side would not be beneficial to her mental state, and even though Leon, Aerith and the others were around, they were complete strangers to her, whereas she had fond memories of the six of them. He took the moment to weigh out the pros and cons.

Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Just be careful, alright?”

Aqua exhaled a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Mickey,” she said.

“In that case, let us take you to the castle,” Ienzo told her. “We have something that belongs to you in the computer room.”

Aqua nodded. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

Aerith handed her a sheet of paper. “I’ve prescribed a diet for you. Try to get eight hours of sleep a night, eat right, and get some healthy cardio regularly, and you should be back to your full strength pretty soon,” she instructed.

“Thank you,” Aqua said, folding the paper into thirds and handing it to Mickey, who slipped it into one of his pockets.

Each member of the party, now with seven members, said their good-byes to the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee and followed Ienzo, Even, Aeleus, and Dilan to the castle. Some Heartless appeared along the way, but they quickly realized that an attack on all eleven of them, even if Even did not carry his weapon and Aeleus no longer possessed his, was poorly-conceived. As they entered the study, Aqua greeted Ansem. When the group entered the computer room, Aqua gasped as she saw just what Ienzo had referred to.

“That’s my armor! And…” She picked up the blue weapon, which she had left behind in the Realm of Light so long ago. “My old Keyblade…” Tears welled up in her eyes. The Keyblade reminded her of her past with Terra, Ven, and Master Eraqus. She missed them so much.

At the same time, she remembered that she left the parcels with Terra in hopes that they would give him strength. But if they were here, and he was not, then what happened to her friend?

She dismissed Stormfall to the Keyblades’ pocket dimension. She then touched the helmet of her armor with her left hand and touched the orange gem on her sleeve armor. The gem glowed, and the armor vanished, seemingly dissolving and fading into the gem. She turned to the scientists and gave a respectful bow. “Thank you,” she said.

Mickey looked up at her. “Are you ready?” he asked. Aqua nodded. “Alright, fellas. Let’s go.” He waved goodbye to all of the scientists, but his gaze fell mostly on Ansem. “It was good to see you again.”

The party said their good-byes and used the Safe Point next to the computer terminal to beam up to the Gummi Ship.

* * *

Aqua gaped in awe as Mickey gave her a tour of the Gummi Ship. Her amazement at the advanced technology was palpable. She was still wide-eyed with disbelief when she was led back to the cockpit.

“First spaceship?” Sora asked.

“Second,” Aqua corrected. “There was this alien mothership, and it turned out that even that hadn’t been safe from the Unversed.”

Riku whistled. “Kinda makes you wonder what’s out there past all the worlds,” he mused.

Mickey shrugged. “Even after putting this ship together, I never found any way to get beyond the field of the worlds,” he said.

“Might depend on limitations on the Gummi material, since it is made from the barriers between worlds,” Donald guessed.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Mickey agreed.

“So, where should we go next?” Goofy asked.

“Well, we’re still in the dark on how to actually find the artifacts, despite all the progress we made in our investigation,” Riku explained. “So, the best we can do right now is travel to different worlds, ask around, and hope we can find someone willing to tell us what’s going on. Of course, it looks like that last part will be pretty tough, since they all seem insistent on keeping the secret.”

Sora approached the pilot’s chair and brought up a heads-up display showing all of the previously-mapped-out-worlds, and examined each icon that appeared. He focused on the worlds that the gang had not yet visited since first setting out on this quest, and reflected on his memories of each world. As his gaze fell on the representation of one world, his thoughts drifted to another world directly linked to the first one. He remembered the omnipresent feeling of joy that filled the air, the sound of children laughing, and the feeling of snow on the ground and falling around him.

Most importantly, he was sure that such a peaceful, whimsical place would have a calming effect on Aqua and help her recover. And while there, he could ask a certain wise, mostly-jovial old man about what they needed to know.

“How about Christmas Town?” he finally said.

Aqua, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey looked up at him curiously. Mickey had read about Sora, Donald and Goofy’s visits to the holiday-themed world, while Riku and Kairi had heard bits and pieces about it. They had known about Halloween Town, but they could only imagine what other holiday worlds would be like. Aqua, however, knew nothing about such worlds, so she was utterly confused.

“Why there?” Riku asked.

“For one thing, we know someone there who can see everyone, sleeping or awake, so I’m willing to bet he’s someone who will be able to help us on the right path,” Sora explained, a smirk crossing his face as he left the identity of the person he was referring to hang in the air. “But aside from that, I think a happy place like that should be able to help Aqua.”

Aqua blinked in surprise. “Me?” she asked.

Donald and Goofy nodded, seeing Sora’s point. “Yeah. That place is sure to help you cheer up after everything you’ve been through,” Goofy affirmed.

Aqua smiled, touched by the consideration. “You don’t have to do this,” she said.

Sora shook his head. “But you really need it. Come on. It’ll be great!”

Riku walked up and took a look at the world map. “I don’t see Christmas Town on here,” he said.

Sora looked at the map and realized he was right. “Oh, yeah. Now that you mention it, I guess we did only get there by going to Halloween Town first, and back the same way.”

“So, I guess we go there first, then pass through the woods and get to Christmas Town?” Donald asked.

Sora nodded. “Sure. And hey, you guys can get to meet Jack and the others too. Jack Skellington, I mean,” he added, remembering that they had only recently crossed paths with one Jack Sparrow. He had noticed that they shared the same first name upon his return visit to Halloween Town, shortly after his first visit to Port Royal, though he had managed to mentally avoid whatever confusion might have arisen by thinking of the pirate as “Captain Jack”.

Aqua, Mickey, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy looked at each other for a moment, each of them coming to a decision. Finally, Aqua looked back at Sora and nodded, and the others followed suit. “Alright. Let’s go to Christmas Town,” she said.

Sora grinned. “Great!” He dismissed the heads-up display and sat down in the pilot’s chair, whereas Riku took the gunner’s chair. Mickey hopped into the copilot’s seat, while Aqua joined Kairi, Donald and Goofy in the passenger chairs, where she was content to watch the stars and asteroids fly by as the Gummi Ship sailed through space.


	91. Chapter 90: Fun Frights for the Shell-Shocked

Aqua looked around the place in which the party landed. Everything was dark under the cover of night, lit only by orange-glowing street lamps. The building walls were built and the street laid with dark stonework. She noticed that certain aspects of the architecture and street decorations were shaped into monstrous, cartoonish designs.

Looking down at herself, she saw that her clothes had darkened. Her halter top and corset had turned a deep black, the straps and cloths became cobwebs, and her boots became a rougher iron, with bat wings taking the place of the hooks on the sides. Examining her hands, she saw that her skin had turned pale, though she quickly realized that it was only slightly paler than it had been of late, and her fingernails had been painted black. There were stitches around her upper arms, though they appeared to only serve an aesthetic purpose.

Looking around at her companions, she noticed that their appearances had also shifted to fit the atmosphere of the world. Sora’s clothes turned to black and dark gray colors, with the shoulders being a lighter grey, his sneakers had been replaced with black shoes with pointed toes and a grey strap over the middle of each one, his legs were wrapped in red and white bandages, and he wore white gloves that extended halfway up his arms and had pointed fingers. An orange mask shaped like a cartoonish devil head with triangular eyes and a jagged mouth sat on the right side of his forehead, covering his right eye, and a pair of bat wings was attached to the back of his jacket. His hair was a slightly darker shade of brown, his skin had developed a paler complexion, and the area around his eyes had become ashen and shadowed, giving him a ghoulish appearance. A pair of pointed fangs stuck out over his lower lip, adding vampire imagery to his guise.

Donald’s normally-pristine white feathers were now specked with dust and soot, and his body was wrapped in linen, making him look like a mummy. Most unsettling, however, was the fact that there was an empty space where his abdomen ought to have been, leaving his upper body floating a few inches above his pelvic region, either part connected only by a strip of linen. The same case applied to his right arm, where the linen was loosely wrapped about the forearm to show an empty space beneath, whereas it was more tightly wrapped around his upper arm and his hand. The exposed area around his eyes was marked with black kohl.

Goofy wore a tan turtleneck sweater as well as a yellow jacket and green pants that were both tattered and patched-up. His hat had been replaced with a large steel screw that seemed to be embedded into his scalp. His white gloves were gone, and his toes were bursting out of his brown leather shoes. A metal cone with a small pumpkin sitting on the tip covered his nose, his skin had turned to an almost-chalk white, his eyes were a heterochromia with the right iris being a swirly black and the left iris being blood red, and his fur was ruffled and messy.

Riku was just as pale as Sora, though he seemed to be covered in dirt and ash. His hair was messy and the area around his eyes was shadowed like Sora’s. His jeans were black while his jacket was a medium gray. His sneakers looked old and beat-up. He had a lot more arm hair than usual, and there was some hair poking out of his pantlegs, making it look like he was covered in fur. His hands were similarly hairy, and his nails had lengthened and pointed into claws. Most interesting of all, though, were the canine-like ears sticking up on his head, slightly further up from where his human ears usually were.

Kairi’s clothes had become a black and purple dress with black frills around her shoulder straps, and her sneakers became black and purple boots. Her belt-satchel took on a design which resembled a spell book. A pointed black witch’s hat sat on top of her head. Her fingernails were painted purple, which she admired with amusement. She also had black lipstick and eye shadow.

Mickey looked feral and disheveled, his skin a deep gray and his fur messy and all over the place, shown most prominently on his ears. His sclera were yellow, and his mouth was filled with sharp, uneven teeth. The red and yellow of his clothes were muted, and his sleeves were tattered. The fingers of his gloves were stretched due to pointed claws inside. His tail now had a zig-zag shape.

All seven of them looked at themselves and each other, taking in their new costumes, though Sora, Donald and Goofy were already quite familiar with their own appearances, having been to Halloween Town quite a few times before.

“We look like monsters!” Aqua said, surprised. She took another look around the area, quickly realizing what a world themed around Halloween entailed. “Is everyone here a monster?”

“Yeah, but it’s alright. They’re all real friendly,” Sora assured her. He beckoned the party on. “Come on. It’s past the main square, through the graveyard, and into the woods before we get to Christmas Town.”

As the rest of the group followed Sora, Aqua had a sinking feeling in her gut. “Graveyard…?” she mumbled. After a brief moment, she ran to catch up with her friends.

As they passed through the avenue, they passed many citizens. Each one was unique, with some of them being classic horror movie monsters and others having more surreal shapes. When the passerby noticed the party, they began to gossip amongst themselves. Sora could hear a few snippets. “Hey, look. It’s Sora and the other two… And more friends… Let’s introduce them to town…”

Less than a minute later, Riku noticed some movement in an alley, but before he could discern what it was, an obese blue-skinned clown jumped out in front of them, laughing maniacally. Kairi let out a shriek, Donald quacked in surprise, and Aqua jumped in fright, while Riku got into a defensive position. The clown began to laugh more cheerfully and waved to them. “Welcome to Halloween Town,” he said. “That was a pretty good shriek there, miss.” He waved before trotting off.

After he was out of sight, Riku and Kairi breathed a sigh of relief. Aqua shivered, netting concerned looks from Mickey and Goofy. Donald glared at the clown as he continued his way down the street.

As they continued along, more of the monstrous townspeople jumped in front of them to give them a scary greeting. After the third, most of the party had gotten used to the bizarre greetings, and barely reacted to the appearance of three vampires, one of which held a black parasol heedless of the time of day. However, Aqua became more and more jumpy and agitated. She looked around at each of the monsters skittishly, seeing spooky-looking but friendly-seeming people, but expecting any one of them to jump out and strike, only for each one to just laugh and wave before leaving. Although no one was harmed, she could not be sure that there would not be any danger around.

The party soon entered the Guillotine Square, the center of town. In the very center, there was a fountain with a spout shaped like some sort of gargoyle, which spewed a glowing green liquid into the basin. Surrounding the square were different, important-seeming buildings. Up a long flight of stairs, Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized the laboratory of Dr. Finkelstein. To the right, there was a multi-storied house elevated above the ground accessed by a thin staircase, with a doorbell string shaped like a spider on a web. Sora knew that house was the home of Jack Skellington. The city hall was to the left of the party as they entered. Between the laboratory and Jack’s house, Sora could see the pathway to the graveyard.

As they started to pass the fountain, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald turned around and noticed Aqua’s agitation. “Hey, are you okay?” Kairi asked.

Aqua sighed and rested her forehead in her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m a bit paranoid…”

Before she could elaborate, a skinny figure rose from the fountain basin. The body was dripping with the green liquid. Aqua tensed up at the sight. When the others turned around, it took them a moment to realize what was actually going on.

The figure was a skeleton that was stick-thin, with a nearly-spherical skull, though his mouth looked almost as it would with human flesh, albeit wider, rather than being a mandible attached to the skull by two joints. His torso was well-proportioned to his thin frame, but his legs were very long. He wore a tight-fitting black pinstriped suit with a white undershirt, black shoes fitting his rather small feet, and bow tie that looked like a bat. The skeleton jumped out of the pool and performed a flip in midair. He landed a few feet in front of the party, his arms spread out, and leaned it, putting on a menacing expression.

Sora, Donald and Goofy, despite knowing this character personally, still jumped in fright from the ambush. Riku, Kairi and Mickey jumped as well, with Mickey letting out a yelp. Aqua screamed in terror and brought her arms up in a defensive brace, squeezing her eyes shut as well. Her panic was at such a level that she lacked the presence of mind to summon her Keyblade defensively.

The skeleton, Jack Skellington himself, stood up straight and let out a laugh. “Hello, everyone!” he greeted cheerfully. “I heard from word on the street that you were back in town. And what do you know? You brought friends to share in the frights. Oh, it is so great to meet you all.” He stopped as he noticed the visitor in the back of the band. “Um, did I say something wrong?”

Sora, Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, and Mickey turned around again and saw Aqua cowering, in the middle of her panic attack. Their expressions of surprise and confusion quickly turned to concern and sympathy as they realized how badly Jack’s jump scare had affected her.

Mickey immediately ran to her side. “Aqua, it’s okay. There aren’t any Heartless. No monsters that will hurt you,” he said soothingly. “It’s fine. You’re safe.”

Jack tilted his head, perplexed. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Sora rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, though the action did not have the same personal effect as usual due to the fact that his fingers were covered. “Aqua’s been stuck in the Realm of Darkness for a long time, fighting for survival with strong Heartless attacking her almost constantly. The darkness also threatened to pull her into despair,” he explained, starting to understand exactly what was happening to Aqua.

Jack let out a gasp, realizing just how much harm the scares were doing to her. “Oh, I am terribly sorry. I had no idea,” he said. He approached Aqua calmly and gingerly patted her on the shoulder. He turned to look at the rest of the party and shifted the bone structure around his eye socket to mimic a raised eyebrow. “So, after you presumably rescued her from that trauma, you then proceeded to bring an emotionally- fragile woman to a town where everybody scares each other for a living?”

The party averted his gaze, feeling ashamed of what they had just done. “Yeah… I guess we didn’t really think this through all that much,” Sora admitted. “We were actually trying to get to Christmas Town, hoping it’s be a little less stressful on her.”

“Oh. I’m sure that would be better for her. But you couldn’t just go straight there?” Jack asked.

Sora shook his head. “We’ve only been able to get there by coming here first, so we figured we’d just pass through to get there,” he explained. He turned to look at Aqua. “Sorry about that, Aqua.”

By that point, a walking ragdoll made of stitched-up parts and wearing a patchwork dress had come out of the laboratory and come onto the scene. Seeing Aqua’s distress, she immediately ran to her side. She had overheard the entire exchange beforehand and understood the situation, so she wasted no time in helping to calm Aqua down. Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized the woman as Sally, the “daughter” of Dr. Finkelstein and Jack’s girlfriend.

“Come with me, everyone. I’ll make some tea. It should help you relax,” Sally said. She led Aqua along, and the rest of the group followed her into her home as she led them to her chamber above her father’s lab. There, she made tea and gave everyone a cup each. “Now, please, tell us what happened.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about all the trouble I put Aqua through in this chapter. I'll try to go easy on her the more she recovers.


	92. Chapter 91: Prankster Trio

“Oh my. That must have been quite troubling,” Jack Skellington said after Aqua, with assistance from Mickey, Sora and Riku, concluded her story.

Aqua had calmed down quite a bit thanks to the tea as well as Jack and Sally’s kindness. She had relaxed from her panicked and confused state. Sora smiled on seeing this, feeling better about his mistake in bringing Aqua to Halloween Town with her mental state.

“Christmas Town should help you,” Sally said. “We should make our way there.”

Jack clapped. “Then I’ll let everyone know that they shouldn’t try to scare you on the way out,” he assured. “Sorry again about that. We all thought it was just harmless fun.”

Aqua smiled and shook her head. “It’s alright,” she said. “I’m sorry to have ruined the mood.”

Everyone blinked in surprise at what she said. However, after a brief moment, Mickey chuckled. He remembered her unfailing politeness and kindness, and it showed even when she was the one who had been inadvertently emotionally attacked.

Jack nodded. “Well, I’ll go pave the way. Anyone want to come along with me to spread the word faster?” he asked. Donald and Goofy stepped forward. “Great! You all wait for us to get back.” He turned around and started to walk out, beckoning for Donald and Goofy to follow, which they did.

After they left, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Sally turned to face Aqua. “You okay?” Kairi asked.

Aqua nodded. At this point, her companions noticed that her transformation upon entering this world had not affected her face much like Sora, Riku and Kairi’s had. Her eyes were already sunken and tired, and her appearance had not improved much after eighteen hours of sleep and a couple meals. This only served to emphasize the toll that her time in the Realm of Darkness had taken on her body.

“I’m fine now,” Aqua replied.

“I’m sorry about bringing you through here without considering that everyone would try to scare you,” Sora apologized once again.

“You don’t have to—” Aqua began.

“Hey, don’t blame yourself. We all agreed to this,” Mickey argued. We all should’ve considered what would happen.”

Aqua shook her head. “No, really. It’s fine now,” she insisted.

“We really ought to think things through next time,” Riku said.

The discussion was interrupted when they heard gears turning and three distinct voices screaming in surprise. This disruption was followed up by a gaggle of childish laughter. The group got up and ran downstairs. When they stepped out of the front door, they saw Jack, Donald and Goofy caught in a net hanging from a crane arm above the street. Donald was shouting incoherent complaints and obscenities.

“What happened?” Riku asked as the group ran down the stairs. Donald was pulling at the ropes holding them up, and Goofy struggled with trying to break the rope in other ways such as biting on it and trying to cut at it with his head bolt.

Jack poked his head out of the net and looked down at them. “It was Lock, Shock and Barrel,” he told them.

As if on cue, more laughter became audible from thirty feet away. Turning to locate the source, the party saw three children, two boys and one girl, in Halloween costumes. They all had chalk-white skin and eyes with yellow sclera, but they each wore a different costume. One of the boys, Lock, had red hair that was curled at the front, and he wore a red shirt, red pants with an arrow-tipped tail, and a red grinning devil mask. The girl, Shock, had slightly frizzy black hair, and she wore a purple dress, black pants, a tall purple witch’s hat, and a green frowning mask that had the shape of a large nose. The other boy, Barrel, was visually distinct from his friends by being chubbier and having a spherical head and short teal-colored hair, and he wore purple pajamas with a cheap skeleton-torso design on the front and a white mask with teeth painted in a smiling shape where his mouth was. The kids, who resembled eleven-year-old trick-or-treaters, laughed uproariously at the confusion they had caused. They stopped laughing, however, when Shock gasped on noticing that the companions of their victims were looking right at them.

“Hey, isn’t that Sora?” Barrel asked on recognizing one of the teens. “Who are the other guys?”

“Run away!” Lock shouted. He and Shock turned around and began running in random directions. It took a moment before Barrel realized what they were doing.

“Hey, wait for me!” Barrel pleaded.

Aqua turned to Sora, who was rolling his eyes at their antics. “Who were those children?” she asked.

“Pranksters who are always up for some mischief,” Sora answered. “They used to work for a nasty bag of bugs named Oogie Boogie, and we fought them after they stole a synthetic heart that Dr. Finkelstein had built. More recently, we caught them causing trouble in Christmas Town, at one point taking lessons from Maleficent and talking her into bringing Oogie back to life, though they also spent time quote-unquote ‘helping’ the Doctor in his lab. They’re not exactly ‘bad’ kids, just naughty with a twisted sense of humor.”

“I see…” Aqua said, pondering.

Jack sighed. “I told them once, I told them twice to straighten up their act,” he lamented.

“Sounds a lot like Huey, Dewey and Louie,” Mickey suggested. “They used to have quite a mischievous streak.”

“Who are they?” Aqua asked.

“Donald’s nephews,” Mickey replied. “They used to play a bunch of pranks on Donald before Scrooge whipped them into shape.”

Donald continued struggling against the net until he tore a hole large enough for him to fall through, landing on his face. He picked himself up and started running in the direction that the kids had gone. However, he stepped on a trip wire and was sent stumbling through a cloud of smoke that exploded under his feet. He wandered around blindly until he ran face-first into a wall.

Mickey shook his head. “Then again, those three usually knew where to draw the line,” he admitted, realizing that the pranks were not as harmless as the ones he was familiar with.

Aqua shrugged. “I suppose that when they get out of hand and don’t learn their lesson, they could use some discipline,” she said, smirking.

Riku nodded. “Yeah. They could learn how to behave,” he agreed.

With that, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Aqua ran off to chase the three troublemakers down. Jack and Goofy watched them go, each wearing a puzzled expression.

“Um, aren’t they going to get us down?” Jack asked. Goofy shrugged as best he could.

“Give me a moment,” Sally said. She began untying the stitches holding her arms together, and they began to crawl around to locate the trap’s mechanism.

* * *

The chase led them through the graveyard. They looked behind each of the tall gravestones to see if any of the kids were hiding there, but to no avail. Sora and Mickey stopped for a moment and listened for a particular sound. When they heard the familiar angry warbling of a certain duck, they turned and followed the noise. Riku, Kairi and Aqua followed them through an open gate and into a walled-off clearing with a hill that rose up in the middle and curled off to the side and spiraled into a point. They found Lock, Shock and Barrel fighting back against Donald. Lock was jumping around, sometimes landing feet-first on Donald’s head and back; Shock spun around, attacking with her outstretched arms and using her dress and the brim of her hat like buzz saw blades; Barrel rolled and slid right into Donald, knocking him down whenever the duck tried to get back up to retaliate.

“Hey!” Sora shouted. The three kids stopped harassing Donald and turned to his direction. Barrel let out a scream, and the kids ran in random directions. Sora approached Donald and helped him to his feet, casting Cure to restore his vitality. Donald grumbled and stomped his feet in frustration. He started to run after the kids, but Sora grabbed him by the linen on the back of his neck, then pointed out that some loose linen had wrapped itself around a small headstone. Sora pulled the linen free and stepped back to allow Donald to get moving. He then ran off to chase Lock, accompanied by Aqua. Mickey and Riku went after Barrel, while Kairi and Donald pursued Shock.

The kids were fast, though Barrel was somewhat slower, but their pursuers were faster, and despite their erratic movements it was easy to catch up with them. However, they had traps set, and they did everything they could to trigger them. Lock and Barrel flicked the stems on some jack-o-lanterns, igniting the tips, and threw them at Sora, Aqua, Mickey, and Riku. Sora and Mickey each dodged one, but the next two exploded in front of Sora and Riku. The kids cackled as they were sent flying by the blasts. Shock hopped over graves in her path and waited for Kairi and Donald to step on the dirt patches. When Kairi stepped on a grave without thinking, the dirt cleared away as a metal disc began spinning underneath. Since her foot was on the disc and she was mid-stride with her other foot, the disc caused her to spin around rapidly about her foot. She squealed in surprise and fear before she finally fell backward and rolled down the hill, crashing back against the wall. Seeing this occur, everyone made a mental note to not step on the graves.

They also made certain to follow the children’s movements with keen eyes, spying for anything that might seem off and watching for them to directly activate any of their traps while also determining if they appear to be avoiding traps that they want others to spring. Lock, Shock and Barrel ran around dodging traps without difficulty, in an almost rehearsed manner, while Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Aqua were extra cautious and uncertain about which areas were safe, giving the kids a slight advantage. However, they were still outnumbered, and all eight of them were running in all directions, so it was not long before Sora and Riku caught up to Lock and Barrel.

Realizing that they were about to get nabbed, the boys decided to counterattack. Lock hopped onto the spiral hill and kicked himself off to punch Sora in the chin. Barrel ran up to the top, then rolled down to strike Riku in the legs, knocking him down, and then hit Mickey in the face.

Laughing wickedly, Shock jumped over Donald’s head and landed on a grave right in front of Aqua. The disc under her feet spun her around, but since that was her mode of attack anyway it did not bother her. Aqua stopped before her, not sure what to do. With a simple movement of her foot, Shock pushed herself off of the disc and sent herself spinning like a top, even faster than before, right into Aqua’s legs, knocking her to the ground.

Sora summoned his Keyblade and swung it underhand, tripping Lock and causing him to fall on his face. Mickey used his Keyblade to pole vault himself through the air so that he landed in front of Barrel. He spun himself around, delivering a sweeping kick to the boy in the skeleton costume and sending him tumbling back until he stopped over one of the graves, and then promptly spun around on the disc underneath. Donald turned around and saw Shock spinning. A smirk forming on his bill, he cast Blizzard, freezing the ground in front of her. With reduced friction, she continued spinning in a straight line until she tripped over a headstone.

Lock was the first to get back up and retaliate, jumping and kicking Aqua in the stomach. He then ran over to a jack-o-lantern, pushed it up Spiral Hill, lit the fuse, and rolled it down at Sora, Riku and Mickey, who were all sent flying when it exploded. A somewhat-dazed Barrel ran over to help Shock to her feet. He pointed to a hole that had been blasted through the wall several months ago. “Through there!” he advised.

Shock nodded. “For once, you’re right. Lock! Let’s move!” She and Barrel ran around the hill as they attempted to make their escape, with Lock soon joining in.

Kairi’s vision cleared and her head stopped spinning, and she looked up to see the chaos the kids were causing. As they were beginning to make their escape, she pushed herself to her feet.

“Okay, that’s it!” she grumbled. Pinching her forefinger and thumb in her mouth, she let out a piercing whistle that caught everyone present off guard. Some nearby crows and bats flew off in a fright. “You kids have been  _ naughty _ !”

She raised her Keyblade and shouted “Magnera!” A vortex appeared five feet in the air behind Lock, and the kids found themselves momentarily running in place. Almost as soon as they realized this, they were quickly yanked back and lifted into the air. They screamed in terror as they spun around the vortex uncontrollably, before the spell finally dispersed and they dropped to the ground, Shock being the only one lucky enough to land in a sitting position.

Lock, Shock, and Barrel looked up in fear as Kairi stomped up to them and stood over them, glaring down at them with an expression that made it clear that she was not amused by their antics. Barrel shivered and Lock gulped, knowing that they were about to get it.

“Do you kids have any idea how much trouble you’ve been causing?” she asked sternly.

“I-I-I-I…” Lock stammered.

“The fun ends when people get hurt,” Kairi continued, emphasizing the point with a stomp, which caused a ring of lightning bolts to strike around them, leading the trio to flinch in fright.

“It-It-It was Barrel’s idea!” Lock blurted, trying to deflect the brunt of the teen’s wrath.

“Hey, Lock, that’s not fair,” Barrel said weakly.

But Kairi was having none of it. “Whosever idea it was, you should ALL be ashamed of your actions! How would you feel if you were the ones caught by these pranks?”

Barrel sighed. “That spinning disc did kinda make me sick,” he admitted.

Lock, Shock and Barrel looked down shamefully. “We’re sorry,” they said in unison.

Kairi nodded without changing her expression. “Now go apologize to my friends,” she ordered.

They stood up and sulked over to Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Aqua, and did as they were told. When they saw Jack, Goofy, and Sally enter the courtyard, they walked over to them and apologized to them as well.

“Alright, now go home,” Kairi instructed. “It’s way past your bedtime.”

“Yes ma’am!” they replied quickly.

“And no dessert!” Kairi added.

“Aww,” the kids groaned as they ran off.

When the kids were gone, Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, Aqua, Jack, Goofy, and Sally approached Kairi, all of them smiling in a manner that clearly conveyed how impressed they were.

“That was fantastic!” Jack commended. “Even I haven’t been able to get them to forego desserts as punishment for their pranks getting out of hand.”

“You really showed them,” Sora said. Donald and Goofy nodded in agreement.

Kairi giggled, amused by the praise. She shrugged. “Well, not all of the kids I’ve babysat have been the easiest to handle,” she said. “You have to know how to bring them down a peg when they try to get out of control.”

Aqua felt the area on her stomach where Lock had kicked her. “Those three can really put up a fight,” she mused.

Sora scratched the back of his head. “Yeah. I always feel weird when we fight them,” he admitted. “I mean, they’re just kids, elementary school age, but they think helping Oogie Boogie and Maleficent cause destruction is ‘fun’.”

Sally nodded in understanding. “Yes, it is quite unsettling. But this conflict is behind us for now.”

“Now, isn’t there some place we should be getting to?” Jack asked rhetorically, changing the subject.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll admit, I felt rather awkward writing this fight scene. I know you fight them with just as much vigor in the games, but I felt a bit uncomfortable depicting the gang whaling on little kids with metal weapons. But then again, the trio more than dishes out trouble in return.


	93. Chapter 92: Through the Holiday Hinterlands

Jack, Donald and Goofy rejoined the party at Spiral Hill, having spent the last twenty minutes spreading the word to the rest of the town to let them know not to scare Aqua. Jack seemed to have something green tucked into his sleeve, but Sora paid it no mind.

Jack waved in greeting. “Okay. It should be all clear,” he said. “Everyone’s going to take it easy on you from now on.”

Aqua nodded. “Thanks.”

“Now, let’s get a move on,” Jack continued. He turned around and led the party through the graveyard. When they passed a small grave marked ZERO, a ghost dog with a body resembling a white tissue and a small pumpkin on its nose rose up from the dirt and flew after them, yapping playfully. Jack petted Zero despite the canine’s incorporeal form. Sora did the same, remembering the dog from past visits, and Kairi and Aqua joined in.

The group continued on their way, with Aqua now taking in the sights of the spooky town with fascination. The gothic aesthetic was quite charming in its own way, and the yellow glow of the enlarged, or at least extra-close, moon was entrancing. She remembered going trick-or-treating when she was a little girl, and she recalled how everyone adored the spooky decorations and monstrous or cartoonish costumes. She remembered one year dressing as a witch, almost like she was now, and another year as a mermaid. Some of her friends went as a rock star, an astronaut, a werewolf, and a skeleton. During her first years as a pupil of Master Eraqus, she and Terra would play pranks on each other in the week surrounding Halloween and even try to scare Eraqus, with limited success but still amusing results.

She smiled, remembering why she loved Halloween as a kid.

Sora and Mickey glanced back at Aqua and smiled softly, glad to see that she was enjoying herself.

The peaceful stroll was interrupted, however, by a telltale rumble of shadowy vortexes. Everyone faced forward and saw twenty Heartless materialize. Eight of them resembled ghosts with grey bodies with wispy tails, purple shirts marked with the Heartless insignia, white gloves, and yellow eyes, with one eye hanging out of its socket by a chain. Four others resembled stick-thin mummies with exposed hands and feet that had elongated fingers and toes, one yellow eye uncovered by bandages, a small curled tail sticking out of the top of the heads, and rib bones wrapping around the abdomens. Six others had the shape of purple humanoids with stylized gargoyle heads and blue bat-like wings. Among the Search Ghosts, Wight Knights and Gargoyles were two Shadow Heartless.

The seven world visitors summoned their weapons. Aqua raised an eyebrow. “These Heartless look kinda funny,” she said.

“The ones you’d seen are known as Pureblood Heartless,” Mickey explained. “The ones with the emblem tend to take on a wide range of shapes, often fitting the theme of the world they’re in.”

“We’ll show you the ones Jiminy’s made a record of in his journal later,” Riku promised. At the same time, the Search Ghosts, whose intact eyes had been shining like flashlights in search of prey, waved their arms in alarm as the lights turned red before shutting off entirely, signaling that all eight of them had noticed the party.

While Sally and Zero fled to a hiding spot, the rest of the party jumped into battle. Sora, Riku and Aqua challenged the Search Ghosts. Mickey carved through the Shadows before he, Donald and Jack went after the Gargoyles. Kairi and Goofy turned their attention to the Wight Knights.

The Search Ghosts struck first, with one of them extending its arms to slap Sora and Riku. Aqua jumped in and vanquished the offender with a powerful combo attack. She turned to attack two more simultaneously, but they disappeared in a yellow haze. While she looked around in an effort to locate the Search Ghosts, Sora and Riku attacked two more of the Heartless. As Riku destroyed his opponent, one of the Search Ghost materialized behind him and swiped its arms out at him, its face glowing with a soft fluorescent green light. When it scratched Riku and sent him stumbling forward, it floated a bit higher, invigorated by the energy it absorbed. However, this did not buy it much more time, as Aqua turned on it and froze it with a Blizzaga spell, then obliterated it and the Search Ghost behind it with a Firaga spell.

Mickey attacked one of the Gargoyles in midair, dealing enough abuse to destroy it, but another Gargoyle swiped its claws, knocking him out of the air. Donald got payback against it with a Blizzaga spell. Jack glared as three Gargoyles floated in front of him. He waved his hands and summoned three fireballs that floated in a triangle in front of him. He ran straight for the Heartless, and the fireballs moved with him. One of the Gargoyles flexed its deltoids and stabbed the upper tips of its wings at him, but he shifted his body so that the blades passed his thin limbs. He waved his arms again, so that the three fireballs spun around rapidly in a circle, then lunged forward right through the Gargoyles, burning them with his fire magic. Donald cast Blizzard at the sixth Gargoyle, but it transformed itself into a wispy blue flame that floated around him. Donald watched it float uneasily. When it was over a foot behind him, it turned back to its physical form and swiped at him with its claws. It then began to gargle a ball of blue flame in its mouth, but Mickey clobbered it before it could charge it up. Jack spun around and destroyed it by conjuring a chunk of ice and pitching it through the Heartless’ chest.

One of the Wight Knights spun its arms around its body, but Kairi brought her Keyblade down on one of its wrists to disrupt this action, and then delivered a series of quick slashes. She refused to give it room to recover, and after several stabs and slashes, it dissolved. Another Wight Knight jumped over to Goofy and swiped its clawed hands upward at him, but the canine knight blocked the attack and the following scratch with his shield, then entered his tornado spin, knocking down his opponent as well as another one. He delivered a series of further blows that knocked the Wight Knights into a wall and each other before they finally collapsed.

A Search Ghost appeared behind Kairi and prepared to attack. Aqua saw this and prepared a spell, but stopped as she realized that she might hit Kairi. Looking around for another option, she noticed that they were in the shadow of a ten-foot-tall gravestone.

“Get out of the way!” she yelled. Kairi turned around on hearing her voice and saw the Heartless about to attack. She cartwheeled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the strike. At the same time, Aqua launched herself at the face of the gravestone, her body wrapped in barrier shells. She hit it with full force, breaking it free from the earth and sending it tilting forward. The Search Ghost barely had time to notice something was happening before the gravestone crashed down on top of it. A spectral heart floated up through the stone and faded away in midair.

Sora parried the last Wight Knight’s spinning attack, allowing Mickey to vanquish it with a Pearl spell and a spinning attack. Jack called down a series of singular lightning bolts onto a Search Ghost in quick succession, destroying it with the last strike of the spell. The last Search Ghost tried to attack Donald, but Sora parried the strike and pushed Donald out of the way while Riku annihilated the Heartless with a barrage of Dire Fire balls.

The party glanced around and waited for a moment, in case any more Heartless were to materialize. When none appeared, everyone except for the unarmed Jack dismissed their weapons. Jack strolled back until he found Sally and Zero hiding behind a scarecrow that held a sign saying “WELCOME TO HALLOWEEN TOWN”.

“It’s all clear now,” Jack told them. Sally and Zero extracted themselves from their hiding place and walked with Jack to rejoin the party. “Well, shall we proceed?”

With that, the gang continued on their way. After a few minutes, they passed the last of the graves as the scenery transformed into woods. They passed through the trees, barely able to see anything beyond their immediate surroundings, although Jack led them along with a confident stroll. Sora, Donald and Goofy followed with a similar amount of awareness of their route.

Soon, they entered a clearing in the hinterland. Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Aqua looked around at the circle of trees curiously. Each one was as wide as three of them, and they were adorned with unique designs. Each painted image was different, but easily identifiable. One resembled a painted egg. Another depicted a turkey. There was also one shaped like a four-leaf clover, one in the shape of a heart, and one that showed a rectangular fireworks launcher. Straight ahead of them, they saw a tree painted with a fully-decorated Christmas tree. Looking closer at each tree, they saw a golden doorknob on each of the paintings, allowing them to realize that the paintings were actually doors, each in the shape of their respective image.

Kairi turned around and gasped, causing the rest of the group to turn as well. Rather than the somewhat-open path through which they had traversed, directly behind them was another tree with a door shaped like and painted to resemble a Jack O’Lantern.

Jack nodded, understanding her surprise. “Yep. That’s our way back to Halloween Town,” he said. “I was perplexed when I first saw it too.” He turned back around and pointed at the tree with the Christmas tree door. “As you can probably guess, Christmas Town is through there.”

Sally gave them a wave. “Well, I should get back to town. My father will want my help with his work,” she said.

Jack nodded. “No problem. Thank you for accompanying us,” he replied.

“See you,” Sora added.

With that, Sally turned around and opened the pumpkin door, revealing a hollowed-out void in the tree, and climbed through, vanishing into the darkness. Zero yapped his own good-byes and followed after her. The door closed behind them.

Aqua stared at the door in wonder. “So, what’s it like there?” she asked.

Sora chuckled. “Snow covering the hills, brightly-lit and colorful houses, the smell of peppermint and chocolate filling the air, and carolers singing all around,” he described his experience with a dramatic flair. Kairi and Goofy giggled at his delivery. “Sure, there’s still the occasional Heartless running around, but the atmosphere is as happy as you’d expect.” He looked around at the forms everyone else had taken in the spooky world. “You’ll even get new costumes when you pass through.”

“And you can even meet Santa Claus,” Goofy added.

Riku and Mickey blinked in surprise. Kairi let out a girlish giggle. Aqua’s eyes widened up at the name. “Santa’s in there?” she asked excitedly.

Jack nodded. “The one and only Sandy Claws,” he affirmed.

Riku and Kairi looked at each other in confusion, then turned to Sora for an explanation. Sora simply smiled lightly and shrugged.

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to have some visitors,” Donald said. “Even you,” he added with a knowing smirk, the comment directed toward Jack.

Riku crossed his arms. “What do you mean? What did Jack do in Christmas Town?” he asked.

Jack rubbed the back of his head. “Well, you see—”

“What are we waiting for? Let’s go!” Aqua interrupted. Not waiting for the others to lead her on, she ran past them and pulled the tree-shaped door open, then jumped right into the hole without any hesitation.

The rest of the party simply stared in bewilderment. They had been completely caught off guard by Aqua’s sudden action.

“I… guess she’s excited?” Goofy said.

“We should probably go after her,” Mickey suggested.

“Yeah. Good idea,” Sora agreed, speaking in the same uncertain and surprised tone as Goofy and Mickey.

Sora approached the tree, and snowflakes floated out of the hole in the tree and spun around him. He jumped in and dropped through the hole. Donald and Goofy followed, while Riku, Kairi and Mickey looked on in wonder.

Once Donald and Goofy had gone through, Jack turned to the three stragglers. “Well, in you go,” he said. Mickey walked up and climbed through the hole, followed by Kairi and then Riku. Jack squatted down to step through and pulled the door closed behind him before he dropped down.

The party members found themselves swirling through a vortex filled with whirling snow flurries, each person save for Jack feeling a tingling sensation all over their body as their skin and clothes shifted.


	94. Chapter 93: Snowfall and Peppermint Mines

While her friends were floating through the vortex in the tree, Aqua had already exited into Christmas Town. Standing atop Yuletide Hill, she looked around in amazement, staring at the snow-covered hilltops and the brightly-painted buildings. She stuck her tongue out and tasted the snowflakes that landed on it. She felt the refreshing cool, but not too cold, air brush her skin.

After a moment, Sora was sent flying out of the portal in the tree behind her, and since Aqua was only a few feet in front of it, the impact sent her crashing forward to the ground. Sora took a moment to recover his senses, and realized that his chin had landed on Aqua’s back. A second later, he realized where his hands had ended up and quickly rolled to the side, glancing from side to side in embarrassment and hoping that Aqua had not noticed. Understanding that the others were soon to pop out of the tree, he cast Haste on himself, stood up, ran over to a convenient position by Aqua, and dragged her out of the way, just as Donald started to fly out of the tree. He waited patiently for Donald and Goofy to land, letting out a laugh when Goofy landed on top of Donald. When he saw Mickey start to fly out, he pushed the dog and duck aside, then pulled Mickey away when he hit the ground. He noticed that the world was speeding up around him and he realized that the spell was wearing off. Once he had gone back into sync with the rest of the world, he saw Riku fly out and crash on the snowy ground. Kairi then flew out and landed on top of him when he tried to pick himself back up.

Sora laughed, remembering how Goofy and Donald had landed on top of him and jolted him back to the ground when they had first arrived in Christmas Town. Riku pushed Kairi off of him and shot Sora a glare. Kairi pushed herself to her feet and prepared to lightly scold him, but she burst out laughing when she saw that Sora’s clothes had transformed into a black Santa sweater and hat with white trim. The hat was lowered over his face, covering his right eye much like the devil mask had. His pants, socks and shoes remained the same as they appeared in Halloween Town, but he now wore black gloves with pointed fingers, a faded red belt, and two buttons on the front of his sweater that were shaped like his crown pendant.

Sora, similarly, could only smile at the sight of Riku and Kairi’s new costumes. Riku’s ears and extra body hair were gone, and he wore a black sweater, a red jacket with white lining, black gloves, red sweatpants, and black snow boots. Meanwhile, Kairi wore a dark red sweater-dress and Santa hat with white trim, along with black snow boots. Seeing her costume and comparing it to his own made Sora imagine Mrs. Claus imagery, which made him blush lightly. Noticing that, Kairi took a look at her new clothes and giggled in amusement.

Riku pushed himself to his feet and laughed when he saw Sora and Kairi’s clothes. He looked over at Mickey and realized that he was wearing a green and red version of his regular clothes as well as a pointed green hat, making him look like an elf. The four of them glanced over at Donald and Goofy to glimpse their new forms. Donald now appeared to be a snowman with actual sticks for arms, and he wore a red-and-green striped scarf, red and white socks that exposed the fronts of his feet, two blue buttons, and a blue bucket on his head. Goofy appeared to have transformed into an anthropomorphic reindeer with curling antlers and a glowing red nose. Most of his clothes vanished, with his body covered by a dark red fur, and he wore a small red coat with white fur trim and a neck collar that resembled a decorated wreath, a large red belt with a yellow buckle (in spite of the fact that he did not wear pants), and a pair of dark red gloves with green bands.

“Is everyone alright?” Aqua asked, having heard the crashing noises and determining what had just happened. The rest of the party looked over at her, and noticed that she was brushing snow off of her face and the front of her body. As she cleared herself off, they noticed that she was wearing a sleeveless red coat with a black corset and white fur trim, black shorts, white elbow gloves, tinsel wrapped around her waist and draping down her sides, and black boots with jingle bells attached rather than metal hooks or wings. All in all, she looked like someone who had dressed up for a Christmas party and was going all-out.

“Yes. Everyone seems to be fine,” Jack answered, having stepped out from the portal in the tree casually after everyone else had crashed upon their exit. He stepped out ahead of them and looked out toward the town. “Well, here we are!”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy turned to look out over the town. Kairi and Mickey gasped while Riku let out a smooth whistle and Aqua regained the smile that had been on her face when she was taking in the sights before Sora had crashed into her.

Sora grinned as he saw the excitement build up in Aqua and Kairi, until Aqua let out a cheer and started running down the hill. He turned to his friends, who were watching her go with amusement. “Well, let’s go!” he said, before running down after her.

As she ran, Aqua could see children ice skating around a towering evergreen tree, sledding down the hill, and engaging in snowball fights, all while laughing mirthfully. She jumped over snow piles, dodged around the trajectory of snowballs, and hopped over sledding kids before she misjudged her bound and landed in a snow pile, which she promptly clambered out of.

**_Aqua:_ ** _ What’s this? What’s this? There’s color everywhere.  _ [Grabs a rather large snowflake out of midair] _ What’s this? There’s white things in the air.  _ [Comes across three kids building a snowman and helps them straighten out the hat] _ What’s this? I can’t believe my eyes. I must be dreaming. Wake up, Aqua! This isn’t fair! What’s this?  _ [The kids laugh, and they all take note of three carolers riding on a sleigh and singing]  _ What’s this? What’s this? There’s something very wrong. What’s this? There’s people singing songs.  _ [Marches after the carolers while she sees more kids playing and having fun]  _ What’s this? The streets are lined with little creatures laughing. _ [Pats a little girl on the head]  _ Everybody seems so happy. Have I possibly gone daffy? What is this? What’s this? _ [Finds her way to a snowy field where kids are building snow forts and throwing snowballs. She dances around a light post that is striped like a candy cane]  _ There’s children throwing snowballs/ instead of throwing flames. They’re busy building toys and they love it all the same. There’s frost on every window. Oh, I can’t believe my eyes.  _ [She slumps down beside a house’s front door] _ And in my heart I feel the warmth that’s coming from inside. _

[She turns to look into the house and sees a woman kiss her husband]  _ Oh, look. What’s this? They’re hanging mistletoe. They kiss. <Sigh> Why, that is very sweet. They’re gathering around to hear a story, roasting chestnuts on a fire. What’s this? _

[Notices another family decorating a tree in their home] _ What’s this? In here, they’ve got a little tree. Evergreen. And who would ever think, and why? They’re covering it with tiny little things. They’ve got electric lights on strings.  _ [Turns around and jumps onto the roof to get a bird’s-eye view of the town] _ And there’s a smile on everyone. So, now, correct me if I’m wrong— This looks like fun! This looks like fun! Oh, could it be I got my wish? What’s this? _

[Lowers herself down and looks into a bedroom where two children are asleep]  _ Oh my, what now? The children are asleep. And look. There’s nothing underneath. No ghouls, no Heartless here to eat or scare them or ensnare them; only little cozy things secure inside their dreamland. <Sigh> What’s this?  _ [Jumps back down and runs through the street]

_ The monsters are all missing and the nightmares can’t be found. And in their place there seems to be good feeling all around. Instead of screeches I swear I can hear music in the air. The smell of cakes and pies are absolutely everywhere.  _ [Dances around and through a snowball fight, elegantly avoiding each snowball that passes her]  _ The sights! The sounds! They’re everywhere and all around! _ [Runs over to the center square and high-fives an elf loosening nuts on a merry-go-round]  _ I’ve never felt so good before. This empty place inside of me is filling up. I simply cannot get enough.  _ [Falls backwards and makes a snow angel] Oh,  _ I want it! Oh, I want it! Oh, I want it for my own!  _ [Throws herself to her feet and jumps high into the air, elevating herself even higher with a Doubleflight burst]  _ I’ve got to know! I’ve got to know, what is this place that I found? What? Is? This?! _

She stuck a three-point landing three inches into the snow. The people around her clapped and cheered. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jack walked up from behind her. Sora flashed a grin when she turned around to face them.

“I take it you’re having fun?” Sora jokingly asked. Aqua blushed and chuckled nervously.

Jack sighed. “Don’t be embarrassed. I reacted in almost the exact same way when I first came to Christmas Town,” he said.

Some of the children noticed Jack and turned to look up at him. A light-hearted laugh escaped a boy’s lips. “It’s Mister Skellington!” he announced.

Most of the crowd turned their attention to Jack. The kids laughed in delight while most of the adults tried to refrain from adopting a look of disappointment and horror. Jack only noticed the children’s laughter and cheerful greeting, but Sora, Riku, Mickey, and Donald saw the pained expressions on the parents. Sora raised an eyebrow. He remembered that Santa had not taken too kindly to Jack visiting the last few times, almost certainly due to something he had done during one of his earlier visits. However, he did not know the details, and could only assume from implied context that it had something to do with Jack trying to take over Christmas. Considering Jack’s general naïveté and lack of common sense, he could see how something would have gone wrong.

Jack smiled and knelt down to greet a group of kids. The rest of the children looked at the newcomers with curious interest. Sora knelt down to their level and gave them a friendly wave. Riku, Kairi, Aqua, and Goofy also stooped down to chat with the kids, whereas Mickey and Donald did the same at their normal height.

One of the more courageous adults, an exasperated-seeming police officer, tapped Jack on the shoulder, getting his attention. “Yes, sir?” Jack greeted.

“I don’t mean to be a bother, but I would like to ask the intention of your visit,” the officer said. “It’s just that, honestly, we sort of have you on our watch list after the first couple times you were here, and I want to make sure we don’t have anything to worry about.”

Riku listened to the conversation curiously. He wondered what Jack could have done to get the adults and especially the local police to be so paranoid about him.

Jack nodded, apparently understanding the cop’s concerns. “It is nothing to worry about, sir. I’m just bringing my friends for a visit,” he explained. “They actually passed through my town with the intent of coming here, hoping to help their friend with her nerves.” He pointed to Sora specifically when alluding to “they” and Aqua to identify her as “their friend”.

The officer looked from Sora, Donald and Goofy to Aqua, whom he had witnessed dancing and celebrating in the streets, then turned back to Jack and nodded. “Alright. Just be mindful of your conduct,” he advised.

Jack nodded. “Thank you, officer. I won’t cause any trouble,” he replied.

The officer nodded and stepped away. Riku stood up and approached Jack. “What did you do?” he questioned.

“Huh?” Jack asked, not sure what he meant.

“How did you get on the police’s watch list?” Riku clarified. “How did you get the grown-ups to be scared of you? What did you do when you were here before?”

Jack chuckled nervously. “Well, I was so fascinated by Christmas Town that I wanted to try my hand at it,” he answered vaguely. Riku raised an eyebrow, silently pressing him further. “Well, the thing is, I was growing bored of doing the same routine for Halloween for years, and I became so excited when I discovered something new and different.” He sighed. “Long story short, I made a big mistake, traumatized some people, and got blown out of the sky for my troubles. I realized the error of my ways and did what I could to fix the mess I made.”

Riku contemplated his words and the implications of his story, then let out a chuckle. “We could start a support group for good people who hurt other people in their well-meaning but misguided efforts. Something like, ‘It Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time’,” he joked.

Jack laughed. “Or ‘Accidental Bad Guys Anonymous’,” he suggested.

Riku shrugged. “I think something like that is already taken,” he said.

They turned around when they heard a mixture of many different voices laughing. Further up the hill, they saw Sora, Aqua, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, along with a dozen kids, running around and throwing snowballs at each other. Riku smiled and crossed his arms, and Jack clapped and laughed. After watching for a minute, Riku stooped down and packed a snowball together in his hands. He charged into the fray and threw the snowball at Sora, hitting him in the shoulder. Sora turned to see Riku running to join the fight and threw a snowball back at him, hitting him square in the chest. Riku was about to fire back when he was hit in the arm by another snowball, this one thrown by Kairi. Jack, meanwhile, had already been hit by two snowballs and was juggling five of his own, throwing one every few seconds.

The large-scale snowball fight continued for an hour before the kids dispersed, in part due to many of their parents calling them to come to dinner or bed. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, and Jack watched everyone leave, waving good-bye as they went. When everyone else had left, they simply sat on the hill, admiring the view once again.

“This is a better picture than any Christmas card,” Aqua mused.

Goofy nodded. “Can’t argue with that,” he agreed.

Inspired by Aqua’s statement, Mickey took his camera out of his pocket and snapped a photo of the snow-covered town. His curiosity sparked, Jack walked over to Mickey and, asking nicely to have a look, examined the camera, while Mickey explained how it worked.

Sora and Kairi laughed as he watched their interaction, particularly when Jack held the camera high up and looked through the lens so close that the projected lens stuck partway into his eye socket, and then clicked the button on top so that it took a picture of the inside of his skull and light flashed out of his other eye. Glancing over to their other friends, they saw that Donald was trying to build something out of snow, but he was having difficulty due to the fact that his hands and fingers were mostly-rigid sticks. Goofy packed together a miniature snowman, and Donald settled with drawing a face with the tip of one of his fingers.

Sora stood up and stretched, looking over the houses to a large building made with red bricks and featuring a towering chimney in the center. He remembered what he and the gang did on the first visit to Christmas Town, and his own excitement as they made their way to that building. He also recalled Aqua’s excitement at the prospect it beheld and how she jumped into the hole in the holiday tree in the hinterland.

He turned to address his companions. “So, how about we visit Santa’s workshop?” he asked.

Riku, Kairi and Aqua’s eyes widened as they considered what Sora was suggesting. Their whole lives, Santa Claus was just a story, and many adults had grown out of believing in him. But Sora was suggesting that they could just walk over and meet the man himself.

Aqua was the first to agree, with Kairi and also Mickey nodding one second after. “Let’s do it!” Aqua said, almost sounding like a cheer, as she jumped to her feet. Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy followed suit with a bit more patience.

Jack nodded. “Great. Come along,” he directed as he turned around and started walking down the hill. Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Kairi, Riku, Donald, and Goofy followed after him. They marched down the hill, leaving three-inch-deep footprints in the snow. They strolled through Candy Cane Lane and made their way to the central square, where elves continued to perform maintenance on the merry-go-round. Sora and Goofy waved to the elves as they passed, and the elves waved back.

When they approached the door, Jack raised his hand to knock, but Sora grabbed him by the opposite wrist. “Uh, maybe someone else should be the face of the group,” he suggested. Jack nodded, understanding, and took a step back. Sora knocked three times, and they waited for an answer.

A moment later, the door opened, and they saw a rotund old man wearing a large red suit with fur lining, black gloves, a black belt, and an iconic hat step into view. He had a long white beard that thinned near to a point and curved off before it reached the floor. As soon as the man saw Sora, he smiled, and the grin became more cheerful as he recognized not only his previous traveling party but also some new friends.

“Ah, hello. I’d heard that you were back in town,” Santa Claus greeted. “Come in, come in. It’s good to see you again, and to have new visitors as well.” He turned around and guided them into his living room. There were two sofa chairs near the back wall, as well as a coffee table in front of a lit fireplace directly across from the window.

When he was in front of the furthest chair, Santa turned to face his guests. “Now, let me see. I’ve directly met Sora, Donald, and Goofy, and of course Jack, in the past,” he said. “But, the rest of you are…?”

Kairi stepped forward. “Kairi,” she said, introducing herself.

She stepped aside and let Mickey step up. “Mickey Mouse,” he greeted.

Santa blinked. “Ah, yes. Of course. It is good to see you again, Mickey,” he replied.

Sora and Riku looked at each other in bewilderment. “Again?” they questioned simultaneously.

Riku was next, and he introduced himself accordingly. “Hmm… Riku?” Santa reached behind his chair and pulled out a scroll with a long sheet of parchment wrapped around it. “Ah, yes. According to my list, seven-and-a-half years ago, you convinced your friend of your claims that there was no such thing as Santa Claus.” He shook his head. “My, how unfortunate.”

Riku took a step back in shock. “What—?” Behind him, Sora burst out laughing. Kairi also shared in a giggle.

Santa glanced over at Aqua. “How about you, miss?” he asked.

The bluenette stepped forward. “I’m Aqua,” she introduced herself.

“Aqua?” Santa searched his Nice List. “Oh dear. It seems as though you missed twelve Christmases. What could have happened?”

The team told Aqua’s tragic tale.

“I see,” Santa said after hearing the story. “Then I suppose it was a good idea to come here. But, did you pass through Hallow—”

Sora raised his hand to interrupt him. “Yes, and we realized the error in that,” he interjected in an exasperated tone. Aqua giggled, sensing that, even though he was still apologetic about it, he was getting tired of having it pushed back into his face.

Santa chuckled in response. “Well, while you all are here, how would you like a tour of my factory?” he asked. “I don’t believe I ever gave you three a full tour, seeing as how each time you were here, we were all busy with one crisis or another.”

Sora nodded. “Sounds fun,” he replied.

Everyone else nodded in agreement. “Thank you,” Aqua said.

Santa stood up and began to walk to the door leading back into the factory behind the house. “Well, then, come along, now. And do try to not cause any trouble,” he advised.

Smiling in amusement, the party followed after him as they began their official tour.


	95. Chapter 94: Brimstone and Snow

The night waned down as the sun began to peek over the horizon. The town’s denizens had begun to wake up and bundle up to go about their business. Following breakfast, groups of children had started to go outside to get a head start on the snowball-fighting fun.

The morning was still quiet when a Corridor of Darkness materialized at the end of the street. Its conjurer stepped out into the snow, which turned to water and steam at his feet, though it was hard to see this as a wine-red robe brushed across the ground as he moved. The horned figure, with his hood lifted to shield his desiccated face from the emerging sun beams, glanced around at the houses flanking his path as he tried to locate his destination. After a minute, he groaned angrily and stomped angrily into the snow. He could not stand the refreshing cool of the weather, nor the ambient feelings of cheer and love that were omnipresent around him. Even for a skeletal being of the undead, so many good feelings almost made him physically sick; such was his disdain for life and light.

He stopped when he felt something hit him in the side. He looked down and saw a clump of white snow rolling down his robe. He turned to see where the snowball had come from and saw a giggling child, who had assumed that the newcomer was another one of Halloween Town’s spooky but lovable denizens. The Horned King glared in displeasure.

* * *

Sora, Aqua, Jack, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Santa stood on a balcony looking over the shipping and receiving wing of the factory. There were three systems with a covered lift which delivered toys and parts from the manufacturing room downstairs, a wide conveyor belt where elves assemble the toys and systems on both sides, and a square hole in the wall where the conveyor belt continues to deliver the toys to the wrapping room. The elves were hard at work, putting the pieces together so that, months down the line, toys could be delivered to millions of children across the worlds.

“So, this is what this place looks like when Oogie Boogie isn’t building death traps around the place,” Sora commented.

Santa nodded. “Yes. Putting everything back set us back quite a bit, but we were able to catch up and finish on time, even with that automaton stealing toys a few weeks later,” he said.

Aqua blinked. “Hang on, what?” she asked.

“Well, Dr. Finkelstein built a robot for…” Donald began to explain. However, he was interrupted by the sound of screaming. The elves immediately stopped what they were doing. One of them hit a button that turned the conveyor belts off when he realized that the unassembled toys were being carried past them.

The party all turned their heads toward the windows facing out toward the town. “Outside!” Riku said, confirming everyone’s suspicions as to where the noise came from. Without hesitation, they turned around and ran down the hall and made their way outside, though their swift pace left Santa trailing behind.

As they ran outside, they saw a crowd of concerned parents holding their cowering children. As they drew closer to the scene, Mickey noticed that they were all standing at least twenty feet around a six-foot-wide puddle in the snow, with only a few police officers daring to go any closer.

Sora tapped one of the onlookers on the shoulder and the group shuffled around to let him and his friends pass. Riku sniffed the air and detected traces of dark magic. He approached one of the cops. “What happened?” he asked.

The cop shook his head. “I’m not sure. One witness said that she saw an orange flash before hearing the scream, and one of the kids said something about a fire,” he explained. 

Riku blinked, looked down at the puddle, which seemed to be filled with white-and-black ash, and gulped.

Sora glanced around at the kids. Most of them were staring in shock, sniffling sadly, while two others were enveloped in their mothers’ arms, weeping, and a few were simply confused but agitated from the fear and sadness around them. He approached one of the staring children and knelt down to his level. “Hi. I’m sorry, but can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

The child sniffed, a bead of snot running out of his nose. “T-Timmy threw a s-snowball at a man with big h-horns on his head,” he said nervously. “The man looked at him, and…” The child let out an anguished whine. Sora’s eyes widened in horror. He turned to the puddle, putting together what had happened.

Two of the cops and three of the other adults glared at Jack accusingly. The skeleton threw his hands up. “I can assure you that, whoever he was, he wasn’t one of my people,” he claimed defensively.

Aqua shook her head. “Who, or what, could have done such a thing?” she muttered.

Kairi looked around, seeing the horrified eyes of the traumatized kids. She felt what seemed to be a nudging in the back of her mind, so she closed her eyes to focus on it. “What’s that?” she said, confusing those around her. “You can do that? Okay.” She opened her eyes and approached a mother and father holding their shocked son. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”

The mother nodded. “Ben and Timmy were friends. Our little boy just watched his friend…”

Kairi nodded sympathetically. “If you want, my… ahem, I can reach into his memory and take that link out,” she said. The parents gave her a weird look. “He won’t remember seeing that, but he’ll still be left knowing that his friend is gone.”

The parents looked at each other, silently debating Kairi’s offer. After a moment, they turned back to her. “Do it, please,” the mother said.

Kairi nodded. She knelt down and put her hand over Ben’s heart. Her hand glowed, and for a second her form appeared to shimmer, long blonde hair flashing in place of her red hair. Ben’s face relaxed, though it was still filled with sorrow. She stood up and looked the parents in the eyes. “Who else saw what happened?” she asked.

As Kairi went around to relieve the children of their trauma, Sora turned back to the boy he was questioning. “Did you see where the horned man went?” he asked. In response, the boy pointed past him. He turned to face the indicated direction and saw a light trail leading down Candy Cane Lane and up to the Christmas Tree Plaza, whose large green doors were slightly ajar. Dark smoke rose above the walls.

Sora turned back to the boy. “Thank you,” he said. He stood up and started following the trail. “Let’s go,” he shouted. Riku, Mickey, Jack, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy stepped away from the crime scene to follow after him. Kairi/Naminé finished removing the traumatic memory from the young witnesses and stood up to join them.

“What are you doing?” one of the cops asked.

Sora glanced back at him and summoned his Keyblade to his hand. “We’re going to find who’s responsible and stop him before he can hurt anyone else,” he replied. In turn, Riku, Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi summoned their Keyblades as well, and Donald and Goofy summoned their staff and shield.

The officers were left with no room to argue as Santa passed the party on his way to the scene. Santa turned to watch the party go in confusion, but he decided to ask the people at the scene of the panic. Armed for battle, the party ran through the center of town and stopped before the doors leading to the enclosed plaza. Mickey held up his hand, signaling them to wait. He crept forward and cautiously stepped up toward the somewhat-open door. He snuck forward and stuck his head out through the opening. After a moment, he pulled back and turned to his friends.

“Someone’s working up some dark magic and summoning Heartless,” he said. “I’d say that’s our guy.”

Riku crossed his arms. “What’s the threat level?” he asked.

Mickey shook his head. “He didn’t seem to be paying attention to his surroundings. It actually looked like the Heartless were messing around behind his back,” he stated. “It didn’t look like he was using spells that were too exotic. It just looked like a conjuring spell and fusions of Black Magic with dark power.”

Goofy peeked through the doorway, noticing that props were still spread around the perimeter. “We should hide and watch him, and see what we’re dealing with before we jump into anything,” he suggested.

Aqua nodded. “Good idea. Let’s go in one at a time,” she said.

Everyone nodded. Goofy went in first, and he ran to the side undetected. Mickey went next, followed by Sora, Riku, Donald, Aqua, Kairi, and Jack. True to form, the fiend did not notice anything amiss. A few Heartless turned around as if reacting to their presence, but they all seemed more curious as to what the horned figure was doing.

The skeletal sorcerer conjured a pair of floating fireballs, and with a wave of his bony hands infused them with black fire, causing the orbs to shift, contract and expand with the dark power. Donald could see the edge of his face, and shivered with fear and disgust when he saw the fiend’s skeletal green face and empty eye sockets. Aqua studied the Heartless’ reactions, and determined that they were not quite awed by the figure’s display of power. This was also noticed by Sora, who was encouraged by the fact that the power on display did not seem to be any more dangerous than the spells he had seen in the past.

Mickey made eye contact with the others and made a series of hand signals to direct a plan of attack. However, Sora, Kairi, Aqua, and Jack all looked at him, confused. Only Donald, Goofy and Riku seemed to have any idea what he was trying to tell them, but the others lacked familiarity with the king’s silent strategies to follow his suggestions. Realizing this, Mickey facepalmed. He looked at Aqua and held his Keyblade out while closing one eye to mimic aiming a spell, and pointed at the dark fire orbs. Aqua nodded, understanding what he wanted her to do. He pointed at Kairi, Donald and Goofy and then gestured out to the Heartless spread around the plaza. Kairi mouthed a silent  _ Ah _ and nodded. Mickey locked eyes with Sora, Riku and Jack, and pointed directly at the sorcerer. They nodded, understanding exactly what they were supposed to do. Once everyone had been given their tasks, Mickey counted to three with his fingers. At the same time, Aqua raised her Keyblade and pointed it toward the dark fire orbs, visibly charging energy up in the weapon.

When Mickey counted three, everyone leapt into action. Kairi, Donald and Goofy spread out and cut down the surrounding Heartless. Sora, Riku and Jack charged through the arena toward the sorcerer. As they drew near, the fiend finally noticed them and growled in surprise. Sora cast Blizzard at the undead foe, which the fiend countered with a Fire spell. In the meantime, Aqua unleashed a volley of light-magic lasers at the darkness-infused fire orbs while Mickey unleashed his own beams of light into one of them. As Sora, Riku and Jack came at him from all angles, the fiend was forced to duck out of the way of each attack and run. He tried to call his Heartless minions to defend him, but Kairi, Donald and Goofy had already defeated half of them.

When Aqua and Mickey had finished their magic volleys, the fire orbs shook and rippled as the dark and light magic within them wrapped through and clashed within them. Moments later, the conflicting power elements completely destabilized the orbs. They compressed into tiny balls, then exploded in a fiery blast. The party managed to get out of range or raise barriers to shield against the heat, while the fiend was sent sprawling.

The fiend pushed himself to his feet indignantly, gritting his teeth as he put his hands into the snow. “You dare attack me, the Horned King of Annuvin, successor of Arawn, and Lord of Death?” he shouted.

Sora and Riku traded glances. “Are we supposed to know what that means?” Sora asked.

The Horned King spat. “The insects with the key-like swords. The Faerie told me about you,” he said.

Riku raised an eyebrow. “So, you’re part of Maleficent’s club?” he realized.

Sora crossed his arms. “Wait… Maleficent’s a fairy?” he asked, confused.

“Not the same Court as Flora, Fauna and Merryweather,” Mickey clarified.

“Court? How do fairy politics work?” Aqua asked.

The Horned King threw a pair of small fireballs through the group, calling them to turn their attention back to him. “Insolent fools. None shall challenge my power and live!”

The heroes readied their weapons. “Hit us with your best shot, Skully,” Riku dared.

The lich studied his enemies and, although he would never deign to admit it, realized he was outnumbered and outmatched. He had seen their power when only two of them managed to destroy his dark fire orbs and three of them ganged up on him. While reluctant to admit defeat, he knew that he had to escape his enemies so that he may carry out his business in full. Besides, his objective was not in the walled-off gathering place, as he had finally realized that there was no significant power to be detected in this field before the wielders of the light made their appearance.

“I shall not have you interfere with my goals. Heartless slaves, arise and destroy them!” the Horned King commanded. Around them, six red-and-gray boxes appeared, which popped off their Heartless emblem-shaped latches and opened to allow humanoid Heartless dressed like beefeaters to pop out and aim their blunderbusses at the party. Eight more Heartless appeared, tiny armless creatures wearing pointed teal hats marked with yellow spiral-square designs over the eyes and limp sleeves attached, at the ends of which were yellow cuffs and weighted black gloves. Last to appear were four Heartless of a new variety, small black humanoids wearing brown glasses that lacked temples in the frame as well as striped blue-and-yellow pajamas. A red box with a wide yellow ribbon appeared in front of each creature, which the creatures excitedly opened to reveal bubbling masses of dark matter. While the party was focused on the new arrivals, the Horned King vanished into a Corridor of Darkness.

Kairi stared at the childlike Heartless in disapproval. “Isn’t it a little early to be peeking?” she teased. A few seconds later, the Heartless emerged from the box, holding a clump of dark matter in its hand. It tossed it in the air a few times before throwing it at Kairi. She quickly batted it away with her Keyblade and it exploded on one of the Toy Soldier Heartless, sending it flying backward.

“Whoa!” she shouted. “I guess he didn’t ask for a toy train!” She raised her Keyblade and cast Aero, launching child-figure and box through the air. She then jumped after it and dealt a string of slashes and stabs before she landed. A second after she did, she gasped in pain and dropped her weapon as she felt something shoot her in the upper arm.

Sora threw himself at the Toy Soldier that had just shot Kairi and dealt a fierce combo at it. When they both landed, the box closed up, and a few seconds later a new form popped out: an angry jack-o-lantern on a spring with two skinny arms attached to the sides holding a knife and an ax. It swung its arms at Sora, which for the most part he dodged or blocked while he dealt even more damage to the Heartless until it dissipated. A Tornado Step spun through the air toward him, but he grabbed it by the sleeve and, spinning around, hurled it toward another Toy Soldier, and then followed up on that attack with a Blizzara spell.

Donald and Jack used their magic to defeat the Peekers before they could cause too much harm with their dark matter blobs. After they had each defeated one, Jack picked up a rock and threw it at the fourth, blasting it to smoke with one solid hit, at the same time that Kairi defeated the one she had been fighting. “Nice children get presents, but naughty ones get coal,” the skeleton quipped.

Goofy used his shield to defend against the Toy Soldiers’ gunshots while Riku and Aqua attacked them. Mickey, and soon after Sora and Kairi, fought the Tornado Steps.

It was not long before the last of the Heartless had been defeated. Aqua spun around to try to find any sign of the Horned King, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’d he go?” she asked.

Goofy looked up and saw smoke rising above the wall. He pointed up to the sight, and everyone turned to see it. At that instant, they understood what was going on.

“Santa’s Workshop!” Jack declared. “Come on!”

Without wasting a moment, the party ran out of the plaza and stopped in front of Santa’s house. They could see fire pouring out of the workshop’s windows and black smoke ascending from the roof. Elves were running out from the door in a panic.

“I’m going to guess he’s in there,” Riku said sarcastically. The party ran into the building, and they made their way through the halls until they came upon the Shipping and Receiving room, which was swarming with Heartless of many different shapes, including the standard Halloween Town variety as well as Soldiers, Hook Bats, and Wyverns. The machinery was on fire, and a few elves were cramped in a corner, surrounded by Heartless.

“Yes! Let the flames consume all! Let all be swallowed by the overwhelming dark power!” a raspy voice shouted. The party turned around and looked up at the balcony above, and they saw the Horned King watching from above and issuing orders to the Heartless. “Their hearth and heart shall roast in the fires of death!”

Jack clenched his bony fist. “Enough is enough! Your sadistic games end now!” he yelled.

“You will die by my might,” the Horned King growled back before firing a bolt of lightning from his finger, which Jack jumped aside to avoid.

Jack looked around as he heard elves screaming as Heartless moved in for the attack, which Aqua stunned with a Shotlock. This opening allowed the elves to make a run for it, but more Heartless jumped in their path. The elves fell down and quaked in fear.

“I’m always one for fun frights and surprises…” Jack sighed, then turned to glare back up at the lich. “But this is horrific!” he shouted. “You’ll pay for this!”

“And your insolence shall be paid for as you face the burning torture of the searing of souls. Your parlor tricks are nothing compared to my cursed might, and all who dare to defy me shall suffer my immortal wrath from which not even death can offer any refuge!”

Sora groaned. “Does he ever shut up?” he asked aloud.

“We’ll just have to make him!” Mickey said. With that, he shot a Pearl spell up at the Lich. The Horned King saw the orb of light magic and screamed, jumping out of the sphere’s path in the least graceful way the robed corpse could manage.

“I guess the undead warlock doesn’t like light magic,” Aqua observed.

Jack’s eye sockets widened. “So, a dark fiend born of poisoned earth, huh?” he mused. Grinning wickedly, he flicked his wrist. On that cue, an amorphous green blob slid out of his sleeve and wrapped itself around his wrist.

Sora, Donald and Goofy stared at the unfamiliar substance in wonder. “What’s that?” Goofy asked.

“A little something the Doctor cooked up while studying the Heartless,” Jack answered. “This little guy can burn right through the Heartless’ essence, and works quite well against other entities of powerful dark magic.” He swung his arm and demonstrated the goo’s power by aiming it toward a Gargoyle, whereupon it stretched and stabbed straight through the Heartless’ back, destroying it. The elf it was terrorizing promptly ran for the exit.

The Horned King snarled in irritation. “Heartless slaves, destroy these fools!” he barked. On his order, most of the Heartless turned their attention to the heroes, although a few continued to pester the elves that remained, and moved in for the attack.

The party huddled up to discuss a plan of attack. “We’ll take care of the Heartless,” Sora said. “Your Majesty, Kairi, you get to Pointy and hit him with light magic.”

“And maybe give him a lozenge,” Riku joked.

Sora nodded. “Jack, you help them with your goo-thingy,” he continued.

“I’ll help,” Aqua said. “I have my own light spells as well.”

Mickey nodded. “Alright. Let’s stop this guy,” he said.

The huddle broke up, and everyone turned to see Heartless heading straight toward them. Sora, Riku, Goofy, and Aqua pushed back against them with strong blows, while Mickey, Kairi and Donald used their magic. The green substance stretched and took on the shape of a scythe, which he used to cleave through a Wyvern, destroying it.

Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy spread out to fight the remaining Heartless while Jack, Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi looked for a way to get up to the balcony. In the meantime, a Search Ghost appeared a few feet behind them and tried to lash its hands out at Aqua, but Jack felt it materialize and turned around to face it.

“Not today, spooky. Soul Robber!” Jack shouted. He lashed the Soul Robber out like a whip, snaring the Search Ghost around the neck, and then pulled his prey in, whereupon he blasted it to smoke with a Blazing Fury spell exploding out of his unarmed hand.

Within a minute, the experienced fighters vanquished the Heartless terrorizing the floor, allowing the elves to run to safety. Sora, Riku and Donald began dousing the fires with Agua.

The Horned King growled in anger as he saw his chaos quelled so easily. “Worthless bugs! I said ‘Destroy them’!” With that, he conjured more Heartless, but as they proved to be no more threatening than the earlier batch, he decided to pitch in by lobbing fireballs and shooting lightning, particularly as Mickey and Aqua began to make their way up the wall by jumping on the wall and using Doubleflight, respectively. Jack slung the Soul Robber so that it attached to the ceiling, and he and Kairi used it as a rope to climb up. The Horned King tried to stop them from ascending, but Mickey and Aqua blocked his attacks. They managed to reach the balcony and climb up, so they started to charge up light spells to attack him.

After a moment, Kairi and Jack joined them on the balcony, and Kairi pointed her Keyblade toward the lich. She willed herself to glow with the power of light within, and the Horned King raised his arms to shield himself from her radiance.

Down below, Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy remembered that other parts of the factory were under attack, and ran off to find the threats in the other rooms. Fortunately, they had just had a tour through the building and knew how to get around.

The Horned King tried to flee from Kairi’s light, but Aqua jumped past him and blocked the doorway, raising a spiraling blast of magic around herself to deter him. Irritated, the lich threw a fireball her way, but she called up her barrier to defend against it. Mickey struck him in the leg with his Keyblade and called a light sphere to fall onto him. The Horned King wailed in pain and thrashed his arms around, dragging fire with his fingers which forced Mickey to back up to a safe distance. As he pushed himself to his feet, Kairi slashed at his arm, leaving glowing cuts in the sleeve of his robe. The lich launched a fireball in her direction, hitting her in the chest and knocking her back. Aqua slashed her Keyblade across his back, letting lavender-colored magic swirls float about the tip. The fiend spun around and shot lightning at her, zapping her shoulder, but Mickey launched a Pearl spell into his face.

The Horned King roared in anger and raised his arms. Pillars of fire shot up around him, forcing his attackers to fall back. He grabbed Mickey by the neck and lifted him up above his head. “A pathetic rodent challenges the power of he who will be your god?” he spat. “The light upon which you thrive fades here.”

However, as he was about to squeeze, the Soul Robber lashed out and became wrapped around his wrist. The flubbery substance tightened its grip and the lich screamed in pain, releasing his grip and dropping Mickey.

“It doesn’t appear the little guy has a fondness for bullies who kill senselessly,” Jack asserted. He flicked his wrist and the Soul Robber returned to his hand, then wrapped itself around his fingers to form a gauntlet. He ran toward the fiend and punched him in the face.

The Horned King stumbled back into a corner. Using the wall to support himself, he grabbed his jaw and shifted it back into place. It began to dawn on him that he had been bested. Noticing a Shadow standing and watching a few feet away, he picked it up and began to wring its neck, screaming as he vented his rage upon the small Heartless. When he had choked the life out of it and squeezed it into nothingness, he turned to glare at his enemies. “You shall all burn,” he growled as he allowed himself to drop through a Corridor of Darkness.

Mickey, Aqua, Kairi, and Jack took a minute to catch their breath. A few minutes after the lich vanished, Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy ran through the doorway, their weapons raised. They glanced about before realizing that the fiend was nowhere to be seen.

“He got away?” Donald asked, disappointed and annoyed.

Aqua nodded. “But he didn’t put up too much of a fight,” she said, much to the returning group’s surprise.

“He had a really nasty reaction to light magic, and Jack’s Soul Robber was what ultimately forced him to flee,” Mickey clarified.

Riku smirked. “Then I guess he won’t be coming here again,” he said.


	96. Chapter 95: Santa's Gift

As it turned out, Sora, Riku, Donald, and Goofy had managed to clear out the rest of the Heartless and put out the fires before too much damage could be done. There was a large amount of rubble and wreckage, but nothing that could not be repaired or replaced. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, and Jack spent the next few hours helping the elves gather up the debris. The elves directed them on where to place the debris so they could then work on repairs. Sora, Riku and Mickey helped to repair the structural damage.

When they took a break from the clean-up work, they sat down at a table in the cafeteria. In the middle of their meal, Santa joined them, carrying a tray with mugs of hot cocoa. He sat down in one of the table’s remaining seats, passing the cocoa around. “Pardon me, but can you tell me what happened?” Jack turned to look at the others inquisitively, curious to hear what the deal with the Horned King was.

The party told the jolly man in red and the skeleton showman about Maleficent’s cabal of villains and the search for the mysterious artifacts. Jack’s expression made it clear that he was unfamiliar with the objects of their search, but he was quite intrigued. Santa, however, seemed to be trying to decide how to respond. Mickey was quick to pick up on that cue.

“So, seeing how I see you when you’re sleeping and know when you’re awake, you thought that I might be able to offer a few clues, am I correct?” Santa guessed. He met eyes with Sora, appearing to somehow deduce that it was Sora’s idea to ask him about it. Sora nodded, confirming both guesses. “Unfortunately, there is very little that I can do to help you directly.”

Riku sighed. “I figured as much,” he muttered.

Santa stroked his beard. “But perhaps there is a way I can be of assistance. After lunch, come see me in my living room.” With that, he stood up and, taking the tray, departed.

* * *

The party found Santa in the living room where they had first come in, holding a cherry box. A leather pouch sat on the coffee table. Santa flicked the box’s lid open, revealing a rod holding a thick scroll of old parchment wrapped around it.

“What’s this?” Aqua asked.

“It is my Naughty List,” Santa answered. “I use it to mark those who do not deserve my gifts and should receive coal. And, with the right magic in play, it can be used to locate them.” He handed the box to Sora, then reached down to grab the pouch and handed it to Mickey. “Just sprinkle some of this on and it will help you determine the present locations of the cruel people you seek to track.”

Mickey nodded. “Thank you, Santa Claus,” he said.

“You think we can use it to track their movements on the world map?” Donald asked.

Jack looked from the List to Santa uncertainly. “But won’t you need it? Won’t the elves notice it’s missing?” he asked.

Santa chuckled. “I appreciate your concern, but it will be fine. No one ever goes looking to see if they’re on the Naughty List,” he replied. “Although, you won’t be able to get any clues in regards to this ‘Zeromast’ character. Until recently, he has been such a reclusive hermit embroiled in his research that I have not been able to decide if he might be naughty or nice.”

Riku shrugged. “We’ll make do,” he said.

Aqua nodded. “Thank you for having us,” she said earnestly.

Santa smiled. “Of course, my dear. But there are a few things that I have for you. Follow me, Miss.” He walked out the front door, and the party, with Aqua at the front, followed him outside. When they approached a fenced-off field where reindeer grazed, Santa opened the gate and turned to the group. “Wait here,” he said before entering the field.

A few minutes later, they saw a red glow come into view. After that, two rows of reindeer were visible walking toward them, and they soon saw that they were pulling a large red sleigh, with Santa Claus at the reins. Everyone gaped in wonder, save for Jack, who had seen Santa’s famous sleigh up close more than once.

Santa scooched to the left slightly. “Come aboard, Aqua,” he said. Aqua could barely contain her excitement as she realized that Santa was offering to take her on a sleigh ride through the sky. Almost jumping with joy, she ran over and took her seat next to Santa. The jolly old man chuckled in amusement and flicked the reins. “On, Dasher. On, Dancer. On, Prancer. On, Vixen. On, Comet. On, Cupid. On, Donner. On, Blitzen. On, Rudolph.”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jack stepped out of the way as the reindeer took off running through the snow, dragging the sleigh with them. After running a few hundred feet, magic sparks shimmered around them and their feet began to lift off the ground. The reindeer continued to run as they rose up higher in the air, and the sleigh’s treads lifted off of the ground as well. The party watched the sleigh ascend above the buildings and trees and circle around over the town.

Aqua looked over the side of the sleigh and laughed as she looked down at the town far below. She could see ant-sized people looking up and waving at them.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Santa belted out in a booming voice. Aqua let out a laugh and repeated after him. “Ho, ho, ho!”

The rest of the party watched them fly around the sky for a while before the sleigh finally came back down and landed on the ground. The reindeer drew the sleigh back into the field and came to a stop. Santa and Aqua stepped out of the sleigh and petted some of the reindeer.

Aqua turned to Santa and smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Claus,” she said.

Santa chuckled. “You are quite welcome, my dear,” he replied. He turned to the rest of the party, and noticed that most of them appeared to want to go for a ride as well. “I’m afraid that will be all for now. But you might get your chance one day.”

The others nodded in understanding. They traded satisfied glances amongst each other and with Aqua. “Well, Santa, I suppose we should get going,” Mickey said.

Santa nodded. “Good luck on your quest, my friends,” he said. “But before you go, I have one more thing for Miss Aqua.” He went into his house, and a few minutes later came out holding a gift-wrapped box. “Consider it a belated Christmas present.” He handed the box to Aqua.

Aqua blinked in surprise, then nodded. “Thank you.”

The group walked up the hill, waving back at Santa and the elves who came out to see them off. “So long, Sandy Claws! I’ll see you next time!” Jack shouted. As they stepped far enough away that no one could make out the expression on anyone’s faces, Santa groaned.

* * *

When the party returned to Halloween Town, they stopped in the laboratory to see Sally again. The lab’s structure was made almost entirely of metal sheets and plates bolted together. In the middle of the room was an old metal operating table with various apparatuses hovering over and around it. On the left side, there was a set of bookshelves layered with tomes regarding scientific experiments, potion brewing, and classical literature. Opposite from the entrance was a table strewn with experimenting materials. When they got there, they met Sally’s creator, Dr. Finkelstein. The mad scientist was a small, frail man in an old metal wheelchair who appeared to be made of white plastic, with a strangely-formed head that appeared to have a duck’s bill partially filled with poorly-treated teeth. He wore a white lab coat, black sunglasses, black rubber gloves, and small black shoes. His scalp had a visible seam splitting it from the rest of his head, and the rim of the scalp was lined with several small bolts. Jack introduced the doctor, explaining that he created many of the contraptions which he used for frights in the Halloween festivities.

“So, you created the Soul Robber?” Mickey asked the doctor, remembering the substance that proved incredibly helpful against the Horned King and the Heartless.

Dr. Finkelstein nodded. “Yes, indeed. Though, truth be told, I’m not quite sure how it came about,” he admitted. “I was attempting to research the substances and compounds which constituted the Heartless’ physical makeup, and the creature materialized from some chain reaction in one of my tests and dissolved the Heartless I was using for study at a touch.”

“That’s really cool,” Sora said.

“But I guess that means you wouldn’t be able to make more to help us,” Donald surmised, realizing how much of an accident the flubbery goo really was.

“I’m afraid not,” Dr. Finkelstein answered, letting out a sigh.

Aqua studied a series of blueprints on the wall with interest. “Doctor, can you tell me what these are?” she asked.

The scientist pulled a lever that turned his wheelchair and craned his neck up to see the sketches. “Ah, yes. Those are the traps I had invented for the Halloween shows, and for other town-maintenance-related purposes,” he explained. “Some of them are still in place, such as the guillotine in the square and the sewer acid that would blast from the grates against the walls…”

While Dr. Finkelstein told Aqua about his various inventions, the rest of the group told Sally what had happened in Christmas Town.

Sally shook her head. “It is a shame that that demon had to spoil your visit,” she lamented.

“We were able to stop him before he could cause too much destruction,” Riku said.

“You know, he didn’t seem that scary up close,” Kairi commented. “For someone who claimed to be ‘Lord of Death’, I would’ve thought he would at least have some really strong magic.”

Sora nodded in agreement. “I bet Maleficent will be disappointed when she hears about this and realizes that the Horned King was such a patsy,” he quipped.

“Though it sure is a shame about that little boy,” Goofy added sadly. That comment brought the mood down around him.

Wanting to change the topic of conversation, Sally glanced to the box in Mickey’s hands. “So, that is supposed to help you find Maleficent and her allies around the worlds?” she asked.

Mickey nodded. “Yeah. He said that it will help us follow their movements as they jump around and search the different worlds,” he clarified.

“How are we going to do that, exactly?” Kairi asked.

Donald shrugged. “I guess we’ll see when we set it up,” he said.

Riku stretched his arms. “So, is everyone ready?” he asked.

Sora, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy nodded. “Well, I guess this is good-bye,” Sora said.

Jack nodded and grinned. “Come back anytime.”

Kairi glanced around the lab. “Hey, where’s Aqua?” she asked, noticing that the bluenette was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, she just went out to take a walk around town,” Dr. Finkelstein said with a chuckle. “I doubt she will be too hard to find.”

Mildly perplexed by the doctor’s attitude, Sora shrugged and the party calmly exited the lab, followed by Jack.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the square, Mickey noticed something resembling five orange circles on the ground, but he did not notice them soon enough to avoid stepping on them. As his and Sora’s feet made contact with some of the discs, the circles exploded beneath them, launching them both into the air and sending Riku and Goofy falling backwards.

As they shot through the air, Sora and Mickey saw a series of fan blades set up at different elevations throughout the square. The fast-spinning blades blew them through the air all over the place. They screamed in terror, having no idea what was going on. Donald and Goofy looked about, noticing the fans and the apparatus holding them aloft. They ran around to dismantle them to get their friends out of the wind trap. However, they were stopped in their tracks by white wisps that flew around them at rapid speeds. A few of them hit the ground and walls, exploding in smoky bursts. These bursts caused Riku, Kairi and Jack to stumble around, and Jack bumped backward into a cage-like structure. He turned around to examine it and saw that it contained a straw-filled burlap scarecrow. He looked around and saw that there were six more structures strewn about the square.

After a few minutes, the fans slowed down and turned off, and Sora and Mickey fell out of the air and crashed to the ground. They stood up just as square plates within the cage structures sprung upward, launching the scarecrows high into the air with a loud metallic clang. Jack could not restrain a surprised “Whoa!” as the scarecrows flew hundreds of feet in a few seconds, and his shock was shared by numerous townspeople who had come to the square to investigate the commotion. This was followed by a blinding-white fireball launching into the air and exploding into an enormous blast. When the mega-sized flare faded, the scarecrows fell back down, each one completely on fire. Everyone scattered about to avoid being hit as the flaming sacks hit the ground and exploded into flaming specks.

When everyone had reached a state of panic and confusion, a figure in shadowed armor materialized in front of Sora. The Keyblade wielder tried to retaliate as the figure thrust its hand toward him, but his weapon passed right through it as it stopped moving. While this image remained, the figure appeared behind Goofy and tapped him on the shoulder before striking a scary pose. This image remained frozen as the figure appeared next to Donald and tripped him, while at the same time the afterimage in front of Sora faded away. The figure appeared to torment Riku, the Clown-With-the-Tear-away-Face, and Jack, before it appeared ten feet above the center fountain and dropped into it, creating a huge splash.

A few moments passed to let everything calm down, before the figure rose up out of the fountain basin, the armor dripping with the green liquid. The figure stepped out and made its way toward the party, whose members were too shocked and disoriented to raise their weapons in defense. When the figure was only a few feet from Sora, it raised its hand to touch a point on the opposite arm.

Immediately after, the armor vanished in a flash of light, and all around could see that the figure was Aqua, who smirked at her friends. After a brief moment’s pause, she raised her hands and leaned forward, shouting “Boo!”

It took everyone a moment to regain their composure and realize what was going on, at which point they started to laugh mirthfully. The whole scare was set up by Aqua, using various machines and her own array of spells. “That was a good one,” Riku said, clearly impressed.

Jack clapped his hands, and some of the other Halloween Town residents joined in. “Marvelous! Spectacular! What a frightening display!” he commended. “Where did you find the inspiration for such a show?”

Aqua smiled at the reception of the praise. “I saw some of Dr. Finkelstein’s machine schematics, and I asked him if I could use a few of the devices he had leftover,” she explained. “I figured I’d make up for how poorly I reacted to everyone else’s attempts at a nice little scare with a prank of my own.”

Sora laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “Well, you really got us,” he said. “That was pretty cool.”

Aqua turned to face the townsfolk, who continued to cheer her on, then turned to Jack. “And with that, I think we’re ready to go.” She gave Jack a wave, and the Pumpkin King waved back. The gang said their good-byes and made their way down the street to the Safe Point at Guillotine Gate, where they beamed up to the Gummi Ship.


	97. Chapter 96: The City Above the Earth

“You sure we should put it in like this?” Sora asked.

“I think so,” Mickey answered.

“This look good?” Sora asked after connecting some wires.

“That’s great!” Mickey said, turning a three-fingered claw.

“Is it ready?” Donald asked.

Sora and Mickey stepped away and examined their work, before Mickey nodded. “It should be,” he replied. He and Sora had set the Naughty List scroll up on an apparatus where one of the handles on either rod of the scroll was held in a three-fingered claw. The claws would rotate when prompted, turning the rods and winding through the scroll like a film reel. Circuitry had been installed into the rods and wires connected to link the scroll to the Gummi Ship’s computer. The entire setup had it so that the rods were held five feet apart, with the intervening parchment held horizontally a millimeter above a metal crate. Everyone could see several names written in black ink on the parchment, including “Peter Pete, Sr.” and “Mozenrath”.

“Okay, let’s test it out,” Mickey said. Donald stepped forward, carrying the bag of magic sugar. He pulled to string loose, reached in, pulled out a handful, and sprinkled it over the two names.

“Wait, Pete’s full name is ‘Peter Pete’?” Kairi asked, amused.

“Pete has a kid?” Riku asked, surprised.

Goofy nodded. “Yep. P.J. is Maxie’s best friend,” he answered. Riku gave him a strange look, as if he had no idea what to think or how he should react.

Aqua blinked as a sense of recognition finally clicked with what they were talking about. “This ‘Pete’ is from your world? Is he a big fat cat in a colorful superhero costume?” she asked.

Everyone looked at her in confusion. “I mean, he is a big fat cat, and his suit is kind of colorful, but I don’t know about him looking like a superhero,” Sora said, struggling to avoid cracking up at the thought of Pete in tights, a mask and a cape.

“Oh, yeah. Minnie told me about that,” Mickey said, realizing what Aqua was referring to. “During the Dream Festival one year, coincidentally the year I returned to Master Yen Sid for training, Pete dressed up as two different superheroes, Captain Justice and Captain Dark, to try to get votes and win the Million Dreams Award. I guess that would have been when Aqua visited Disney Town.”

“Considering where he is now, I’m willing to guess it didn’t work in his favor,” Kairi said.

Aqua shook her head. “Everyone saw through the disguise, he ran off when someone actually asked him to save the Fruitball court from Unversed, and he threw a tantrum when he didn’t win and coldly disregarded the people who did vote for him,” she explained.

“Minnie sent him to a pocket dimension to cool off, but he disappeared by the time she went to check on him,” Mickey finished.

Riku nodded, understanding the chain of events. “I guess that’s where Maleficent came in,” he guessed. Mickey nodded in confirmation.

Jiminy, who was standing on the captain’s console, watched the machine setup and listened to a humming that was building up. “It sounds like it’s processing,” he said. “Let’s bring up the map and see if it works.”

Mickey nodded and typed a few commands into the console. A moment later, the holographic world map appeared in front of everyone. Almost immediately, a red dot appeared on the Radiant Garden icon, positioned at the “bottom”, where Villain’s Vale was located. Another red dot appeared on the Agrabah icon, in a nondescript area of desert.

“Hey, it works!” Goofy cheered.

“I guess Mozenrath’s brooding back at his palace of zombies,” Riku guessed.

Aqua groaned. “Great. More dark magic zombies,” she sighed.

“Marvelous,” Jiminy said, impressed. “Now, let’s mark off the rest of Maleficent’s gang.”

Mickey nodded and pressed a button, which caused the claws to turn and the scroll to wind up, revealing a new set of names. Donald sprinkled the sugar on the names, and Mickey continued to wind the scroll until the names of all of the villains they had met thus far, save for Zeromast, had been marked with the magic sugar. Sora was surprised that Loki’s name had appeared, given that the trickster had claimed to be from another realm entirely, and should have been out of Santa Claus’ sight. Once all of the dots had appeared, the party studied the map.

“Okay, it looks like most of them are in the fortress, I guess pooling their resources or holding a team meeting,” Jiminy said.

“The Horned King is there, too,” Sora added, a smirk forming. “I wonder how Maleficent’s treating him.” Kairi and Donald let out a laugh.

“Out of the villains we met thus far, none of them seem to be out in a foreign world, at least as far as can tell given our lack of understanding of their background,” Jiminy surmised.

“But there are still three others, right?” Donald clarified. “They could be anywhere on any of the other worlds.”

“Of course, they’re not so easy to find,” Goofy reminded him. “Kefka and Doctor Silly knew what the thing in Beast’s Castle was supposed to look like, but even then they couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“Goofy’s right. And besides, a lot of people across the worlds can handle themselves,” Sora agreed.

“With no clear leads available at the moment, the best we can do is continue exploring until we reach a development,” Mickey affirmed.

“So, how do you propose we go about it from this point?” Riku asked.

There was a pause as Mickey considered the next course of action. After a moment, he shrugged. “Pick a direction, I guess,” he suggested.

Sora shrugged. “Fine by me, your Majesty.” He planted himself in the copilot’s seat, silently indicating that Mickey should take the captain’s chair. Goofy took his position in the gunner’s station. Mickey put the ship in gear and gunned the engines. After flying straight for a minute, he turned the ship at a random angle and proceeded. Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Aqua strapped themselves into the passenger seats, and Jiminy made himself comfortable in the captain’s cupholder.

They had traveled for some time, pointing themselves wherever their path led and blasting any Heartless-controlled ships that challenged them, and for a portion of the journey no one had broken the silence within the cockpit. However, after a while, Aqua spoke up. “Thank you, guys,” she said.

The others looked at her, Sora, Mickey and Goofy keeping the consoles and the space ahead of them in their peripherals. “For what?” Sora asked.

“Christmas Town,” Aqua clarified. “It really did help. I feel like I have something to hope for again. So, thanks. For doing it for me.”

Sora grinned. “No problem. What are friends for?” he replied. He turned back to the console and maneuvered the Teeny Ships and fired them to blast apart an asteroid that had been floating toward the starboard flank.

Jiminy frequently checked a smaller version of the map of the known worlds on the main console’s heads-up display, but none of the dots moved, although some of them occasionally went up and down the fortress tower in Radiant Garden. He sighed, wondering if their current trajectory would prove helpful in their hunt, or if they would make no progress and receive no help from anyone who would have the authority to know what they were looking for while the assortment of villains tracked down more of the artifacts.

The passengers found some way to amuse themselves. Riku unbuckled himself and went down to have a snack. Kairi took her sketchbook out and drew the beautiful view of the cosmos outside of the cockpit window above her. Donald slipped back into the engine room to check up on the machinery. Aqua hummed Christmas carols while considering whether she should open the present that Santa gave to her.

* * *

Four hours later, they approached the next world. This land was wholly unfamiliar to everyone aboard, and its appearance was quite intriguing. The land mass was almost spherical, with large sections of grasslands and forest, along with a few interspersed towns and some mountain ranges. But what caught everyone’s attention was the structure built on top. It appeared to be an industrialized city elevated hundreds of feet off of the ground on a 7/8 circle plate, with a gated wall built around the entire lower section. Apartments and places of business were placed around the city on the plate, and a towering building that appeared to be a corporate headquarters sat in the center of everything. Spread out around the elevated city, the earth was black and barren as if drained of life by the energy fracking.

No one had seen anything like it. Rarely before had they seen any cityscape as technologically developed and industrialized as this. Aqua, for her part, was reminded of how Radiant Garden had appeared during her first visit, only this environment appeared to be a shady parallel to the former’s pristine beauty. Riku had seen a few cities such as this, but none of them had such a ravaged ecosystem surrounding it as the one he looked upon presently.

“Well, I’d say that warrants a look,” Riku said.

“Okay, let’s find a place to land and check it out,” Mickey agreed. He brought up a screen and selected a point to disembark, and the party beamed themselves down.


	98. Chapter 97: Army of Shinra

The gang stepped out of an alley and looked up to see that they were in front of a theater. The streets were crowded, the sidewalks fairly packed with pedestrians and cars driving smoothly on the roads. The automobile models appeared to be a few decades behind compared to what Sora, Riku and Kairi were familiar with. The civilians’ apparel was rather plain, consisting of T- or polo shirts and jeans or dresses and skirts, as well as sneakers or boots. The sun shone down on the city streets, although gray-green clouds obscured the afternoon sky. Looking up, the gang could see the huge tower overlooking the city, the structure ever-present as its great size emphasized how much power its inhabitants must have had over everything.

“Well, this is different,” Kairi commented.

“How’s that?” Goofy asked.

Kairi shrugged. “It’s less of a fantasy setting. Pretty urban,” she explained.

Sora and Riku nodded, seeing her point. Most of the other worlds they had visited, more so on Sora’s part due to Riku seeing more variety, looked like they had come out of a storybook or a fantasy movie. This was a technologically-developed city and an urban setting, filled with cars, stores, and plain businesses, with little that jumped out at them aside from the skyscraper. Even the atmosphere and ambient colors were muted, which was not much of a case in most worlds aside from Halloween Town and Port Royal.

“I guess our first order of business is checking out that tower,” Mickey suggested.

Riku shook his head. “I doubt they’ll just let us in, due to simple procedure,” he argued. “We can get closer and take a look, maybe see what we can find out.”

“Well, let’s see if we can find our way there,” Aqua said.

“A good way to find your way around is to wander aimlessly and see which ways gets you where,” Kairi said.

With that, the party strolled along the sidewalk, looking around as they took in the sights. Nothing was quite as impressive as the landmarks in many of the other worlds they visited, but the city had its own unique splendor. When they reached the end of the block, they turned and waited for the traffic to stop and the crossing light to turn. Aqua was the only one who was unfamiliar with traffic rules, but aside from a brief explanation of the right-of-way, she was able to figure it out easily. When the light turned from a red hand to a white walking stick figure, they took the crosswalk and crossed the street.

As they took the next sidewalk up the avenue, they took notice of a man standing at the corner at the next intersection. He wore a uniform consisting of blue jeans whose ankles were tightened by a pair of crossed-over belts each, a blue short-sleeved Kevlar shirt, brown combat boots, brown gloves, a brown belt with straps that wrapped over the shoulders, rounded metal shoulder pads, angled metal kneepads, a green scarf, a belt around his right thigh which held a metal baton with a perpendicular rod length to keep it from slipping out, and a metal helmet that seemed to obscure the eyes and had a triangle of three red lights on the front face.

“Check out Robocop over there,” Aqua said, addressing the sight.

“Looks a little scary for a police officer,” Riku argued.

“I guess these guys do things a bit differently,” Donald suggested cynically, glancing up at the skyscraper.

“Let’s try not to draw too much attention to ourselves,” Aqua advised. “We shouldn’t risk seeing how they react to outsiders.”

“Huh?” Sora blurted in slight confusion.

They continued on their way and turned at the corner, hoping that the officer would not pay too much attention to them. However, the officer turned his head in their direction and noticed that their garb was unfamiliar. He turned to get a better look at them. “Hold it,” he called.

Riku sighed, silently cursing their luck. Sora, Mickey and Aqua hoped that they would be able to talk their way out of any potential trouble. The party turned around and faced the officer. All passerby moved around the group and the officer, not wanting to get caught in the middle of whatever was about to happen.

The officer approached the group, sizing each person up, a stern expression on his face. “I don’t believe I’ve seen any of you around here before,” he said. “Who are you, and what business do you have in Midgar?”

Mickey made a mental note that the city was called Midgar, while Goofy noticed that it sounded like something Loki had said back in Agrabah. Mickey began considering what to say, having been in a few situations like this before, only to realize that it would be better to let Sora, Riku, Aqua, or Kairi do the talking, as if he were the one speaking, then the officer would focus on him and realize that he was of an unfamiliar species, and things might get more complicated for them.

Sora, figuring that their cover was blown either way, decided to be honest to a fair degree. “Uh, hey. My name’s Sora. You’re right; my friends and I aren’t from around here,” he said. Riku and Donald groaned, but he ignored them. “We were traveling and found our way to this city, so we decided to stop in and take a look around.”

Kairi giggled. Mickey and Aqua were not sure what to think of his simple but indiscreet explanation. Donald glared at Sora. Goofy was focused on seeing how the officer would react.

Since his eyes were obscured, all that they could make of his expression was an even mouth, so they could not determine what he was thinking as he mulled over Sora’s claims. However, it became apparent that he decided that he was not pleased, as he scowled, an expression made more intimidating by the red lights that glowed where they should have seen his eyes.

“Come with me,” the officer ordered, moving his hand toward his baton to emphasize that it was not a simple request.

“Is there a problem?” Riku asked, an eyebrow raised.

“I’m going to have to take you back to precinct and do a check. Make sure you’re not with them,” he explained cryptically. He walked past them, and they began to follow.

“Not with who?” Kairi asked. However, she received no answer.

They continued down the sidewalk, pedestrians stepping aside fearfully to let them through. They took a few turns and crossed the street a few times. Sora, Kairi, Aqua, and Goofy took the opportunity to get a look at the landmarks around the city. The party stopped dead when they heard a loud scream. They saw people running past them in a panic, and a few cars stopped with a squeal as their drivers slammed on the brakes. They turned to locate the source of the commotion, and none save for the officer were surprised by what it turned out to be.

The Heartless in the streets resembled Soldiers, but their bodies were green with black vests, they wore brown pointed combat boots with gray soles, their helmets had green tinted visors hanging over the eyes like on motorcycle helmets, and they carried twin handguns, each with a long blue barrel. Moments after a couple abandoned their car, one of the Heartless fired a purple energy bolt at it, blowing up the engine. Above them, similar-looking fiends flew around, the only difference being the blue glider webs on their backs, having a thin grey frame and being broken up into four shapes, almost reminiscent of butterfly wings. 

The officer turned back to the party. “Stay right here. Don’t do anything,” he ordered. They saw him take a small device out of his pocket, flip it open, and hold it to his head. “We have more of the creatures in Sector 8, Spriggan Road. I repeat: hostile creatures, Sector 8, Spriggan Road. Ground and airborne enemies, all armed. Requesting backup. Hey!” As he was waiting for a response from the other end of the line, the seven outsiders in his custody ran past him.

“We can help,” Sora said. He and his companions summoned their weapons. On seeing the strange swords that five of them held, the officer groaned.

Sora charged toward the nearest ground-based Heartless. The gun-toting Trooper, as Jiminy would momentarily label it and its ilk, aimed one of its weapons at him, so Sora ducked behind the driver’s-side door of the car that had previously been damaged. When the Heartless pulled the trigger and the gun fired, Sora pushed against the door to hold up against the blast. The remaining glass in the window broke and fell out and the door broke off of its hinges. Still holding onto the door by the inner handle, Sora stood up and ran toward his target, using the door as a shield against the next two shots and looking through the window to keep an eye on his foe. As the Trooper readied another shot, he drew his right arm back and threw his Keyblade. The Kingdom Key arced around the door and hit the side of the Trooper’s gun barrel, causing the Heartless to lose balance and fire to the side, hitting one of its compatriots. Taking advantage of its disorientation, Sora summoned his Keyblade back to hand, closed the distance between him and the Heartless, and struck it in the head with the car door. He then twisted to the side and brought the Keyblade down on its head. Switching back and forth using the door and the Key to deal damage, he sent it tumbling backward with a combo finisher. Two gunshots from an aerial fiend forced him to raise the door above his head to block, giving the Trooper time to stand up and fire a blast into his chest, knocking him back and causing him to drop his makeshift shield.

Mickey, Kairi and Donald focused on bringing the airborne Paratroopers down to a manageable level with Gravity magic. In the meantime, Aqua used Thundaga to target all Paratroopers, regardless of altitude. She halted this strategy when she realized that there were still civilians in the Heartless’ crossfire. She ran to a couple standing by a shop’s window, frozen in terror, and raised her barrier when the Trooper in front of them fired its gun.

“Guys! Cover the civilians!” she shouted. Riku and Goofy looked around, realizing the situation at hand, and nodded. They ran to the defense of the bystanders, with Riku warping across the distance and raising his Dark Shield to block the shots while Goofy made his way on foot and used his shield. Sora, after slicing through his initial opponent, launched himself in a cyclone butterfly kick at another Trooper that was targeting a man who had tripped and fallen. He swung his Keyblade underhand to force the guns upward, then blasted it across the street with a Firaga spell, after which Mickey destroyed it with a strike. He then helped the man to his feet, whereupon the man started running away from the scene.

While the fighting went on, the city trooper watched dumbfounded as he waited for his backup. He heard a storm of footsteps and turned around to see half a dozen more infantrymen approaching, each one carrying a rifle. Behind them, two robots, each with elongated yellow bodies, two arms with vertical circular saw blades attached to the front ends, and two legs with heavy triangular feet attached from the back of the machine body, marched along. The first troop greeted his allies and, seeing himself as insufficiently armed compared to the others, ran to the side.

The troops lined up and dropped to a knee, aiming their guns at the Heartless. Some of them aimed up at the Paratroopers. “Ready!” one of the troops shouted. “Aim! Fire!”

Goofy turned around and let out a yelp as the troops began to fire their guns. He raised his shield to avoid getting shot. His companions turned around and did everything they could to avoid the bullets’ path. Sora, who stood with a Trooper between him and the soldiers, raised his Keyblade to block a bullet that passed straight through the Trooper’s chest. Kairi dropped to the ground and watched as a bullet struck a NO PARKING sign. Donald heard three bullets hit a car, breaking two windows.

“You idiots! Guns don’t work on Heartless!” Riku shouted. But he could not make himself heard over the noise of gunfire.

“We’re getting collateral damage!” Donald called out. Mickey looked back and realized that the streets had not been fully evacuated, and even if they had been in light of the Heartless attack, the range of danger had increased greatly.

“There are civilians in the path!” the mouse king warned.

Sora destroyed his enemy with a Firaga spell, then turned to address his companions. “Goofy! Aqua! Cover the people and get them to safety!” he directed. “Everyone else, take out the guns so we can beat the Heartless without getting shot!” An inattentive troop fired his gun, causing a bullet to fly straight at Sora, but he raised his Keyblade and deflected it right back into the rifle’s barrel, causing the gun to explode and launch the troop backward.

Goofy and Aqua ran back to locate everyone still in the crossfire, using their shield and Barrier spells, respectively, to repel gunfire. Meanwhile, Sora, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, and Donald worked their way toward the line of troops, taking cover behind cars and mailboxes or using Reflect spells to survive the trip. Some bullets that were reflected back hit and injured a few of the troops, fortunately nonlethally, but the hail of gunfire persisted. From behind a mailbox, Kairi shot a jet of Agua magic to knock a troop onto his back. Two more were knocked down by blasts fired from the Heartless, which were able to act unimpeded.

Eventually, the troops realized that their efforts were not putting a dent in the number of Heartless in the streets, so they gradually stopped firing. One of them took his phone out and typed in a few commands, then beckoned for something to come forward. The robots began to march forward, their blades spinning viciously, as the troops ran to the side, some of them dragging their injured compatriots with them. As the robots moved forward, they twisted their bodies to swing their blades at the Heartless, then charged forward to carve through the fiends. Unfortunately, they also shredded through cars, street signs, and even a storefront.

Witnessing the robots obliterate two of their companions, the Troopers turned their attention to attempting to destroy the robots.

The party surveyed the turn of events. Goofy and Aqua ran up to rejoin them. They were glad to see that they were no longer being shot at, but it looked as though the robots were only causing more destruction.

“We need to get rid of the Heartless so they can stop these crazy things,” Kairi said. She pointed her Keyblade at one of the Paratroopers and cast Gravira, bringing the Heartless down so that it was floating only a short distance above her head. Mickey promptly destroyed it with a Pearl spell.

Riku shook his head. “These aren’t any peacekeepers I’ve ever seen,” he noted.

“Even the Organization was more subtle,” Sora agreed, partly drawing from Roxas’ memories.

Before they could discuss the troops’ methods any further, one of the Paratroopers dove down and struck one of the robots, knocking off a piece of its casing, before flying back up. Donald destroyed the Heartless with a Blizzaga spell.

The robot froze and began to shift erratically. After a moment where the soldiers looked at it, wondering what was wrong, it suddenly turned around and started to stomp around, swinging its spinning saw blades recklessly. It marched directly toward Riku and swiped at him, but he blocked it with his Keyblade and pushed it back.

The party could hear the troops talking amongst themselves. They could not be sure what they were saying, but one thing was clear: the robot was not acting as it should.

“Uh-oh. It’s gone haywire!” Mickey yelped, clearing up whatever confusion there may have been.

Everyone brandished their weapons. “We have to stop it before it hurts anyone,” Sora affirmed.

To start the fight with this new adversary, Aqua cast Thundaga, hoping to short it out or stun it. The spell caused it to falter, but did little else. The gang proceeded to move in and attack it from every angle, unleashing a variety of attacks while dodging the robot’s saw blades. Donald held back and cast Firaga and Blizzaga while Kairi made sure that she was either directly behind it or out of its range, attacking with her Keyblade while occasionally trying to use Stop, Slow, and Gravity magic. Everyone else used powerful melee attacks, hoping to find a weak point. Fortunately, they did not need to, as each strike formed cracks in the machine’s shell and jolted the robot. After a minute, the damage was great enough to cause one of the blades to stall and for the main body to start smoking and crackling with electricity.

After enough damage had been dealt to knock off most of the chassis, Riku jumped into the air and dove onto it, shoving his Keyblade into the engine. The force caused the robot to collapse forward. The rest of the party backed off as a loud metallic knocking and screech sounded from the machine. Riku extracted his Keyblade, the tip of which was drenched in motor oil. As electricity crackled and oil poured from the ruined engine, everyone raised some sort of shield, magical or physical, one second before the robot exploded in a fiery blast, spraying shards of broken metal everywhere. Some of the flying pieces, including the dented and melted blades, pierced and destroyed some of the remaining Heartless, although the majority of the debris was contained due to the Reflect, Barrier and Shield spells and Goofy’s shield.

The shields dropped, and Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua took a moment to catch their breaths. However, they could not relax just yet, as they heard one of the troops shout “Freeze!”

They turned around and saw that the troops who had not been debilitated in the earlier part of the battle were aiming their rifles at them. They still seemed to believe them to be enemies.

Mickey looked around uncertainly and realized that all eyes were on him. They were waiting on him to tell them what to do. He sighed and, not wanting any more trouble, unsummoned his Keyblade and put his hands up in surrender. Understanding his decision, the rest of the party followed suit.

No one noticed the other robot shaking abnormally, much like the other one had. It turned and began to march toward the party of its own accord, and it only drew their attention and surprise when it started to spin its blades. Before they could react, it increased its pace.

When the robot was only ten feet away from them, something suddenly dropped from above. In a split second, they made out a human figure carrying a large object, which he swung down as he dropped. The object cut right through the robot’s body like a knife in butter, as impossible as it should have seemed given the materials of both weapon and machine. The figure landed on his feet, his back to the party, and he slipped the weapon, which turned out to be an enormous sword that more resembled a thick block of metal filed on one side and the diagonal top into fine bladed edges, onto his back, where it clipped on magnetically. One second later, the front ends of the robot’s arms fell off, followed by the front end of the main body, all crashing to the ground.

Sora, Donald and Goofy gasped, recognizing the sword all too well. However, they were then confused, as when they looked further up, they saw a head of spiky hair, but it was not the same color or shape as they expected. Aqua, however, gasped, albeit uncertainly.

“Is that…?” Aqua muttered in disbelief.

The figure turned to look at them over his shoulder and flashed a confident and friendly grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference, this world will be called "Shin-Ra". Like the "Shin-Ra Electric Power Company" label seen in the games, but distinguished from what everyone else calls the company, "Shinra". (I still don't understand that, but I'm rolling with it for this)


	99. Chapter 98: A Familiar Face

The man appeared to be in his upper twenties, and he had a well-built physique. He wore a uniform consisting of black slacks, a short-sleeved black knit shirt interwoven with layers of Kevlar armor, a brown belt with clipped straps wrapping over his shoulders, a pair of wide-radius steel shoulder pauldrons, black zip-up boots, and black gloves. He had black hair that spiked toward the back, with a single bunch that hooked up and hung down in front of the right side of his face. On his left cheek, right next to the corner of his lips, he had a scar, apparently from a knife or sword. His bright blue eyes gleamed with recognition, and Sora guessed that Aqua was the target, since he had never seen the man before in his life.

“Zack?!” Aqua gasped, confirming Sora’s suspicions.

The man, Zack, chuckled. “Long time no see, Aqua. You know, when I offered that date, this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting,” he joked. Realizing that he was still in the middle of a pose, he let go of the long handle of his sword and turned around to face them normally. He gave a friendly wave to his old friend and the unfamiliar faces. “Hey, there. I’m Zack. Zack Fair. Nice to meet you.”

Sora grinned and pointed his thumb to his chest. “I’m Sora,” he said, introducing himself.

“Mickey Mouse.”

“Riku.”

“Donald Duck.”

“Kairi.”

“Goofy.”

“Huh. You’ve found quite the crew since I last saw you,” Zack noted. “And it hardly looks like you’ve even aged a day.”

Aqua rolled her eyes. “Don’t you know that it’s rude to talk about a woman’s age?” she teased.

Zack rubbed the back of his neck and chuckled nervously. Aqua looked him up and down, realizing how much he had grown since she had last seen him. She realized that it made sense, since from some perspectives twelve years had passed in the intervening time. She had no idea how much time passed on this world, but considering he appeared to be a couple of years younger than her when they last met, the time span must have been similar.

“So, how have you been?” Zack asked. “Did you get to find your friend?”

Before Aqua could answer, they heard the spatial shimmer as more Heartless appeared around them. The party summoned their weapons, and Zack reached for his sword.

“Drop your weapons! Stay where you are!” one of the troops ordered.

Zack turned around and realized that the troops were still aiming their rifles at the party. He waved his hands in front of himself defensively. “Whoa! Hey! They’re on our side!” he explained. However, the troops did not lower their weapons. Zack sighed, giving up on explaining anything to the troops. He turned back to the party. “No good. They’re not gonna listen. Follow me.” With that, he ran down the street. The party, with Aqua in the lead, followed after him.

They heard the troops run after them. Zack turned at a corner, and the part followed him down that street. After running some more and taking a few more turns, they ran down an alley and ducked into the side door of a warehouse. The building was dark and empty save for a few crates and a plush cat doll. They listened to the sound of footsteps outside and relaxed when they were sure that the troops were passing the warehouse, not noticing their last turn.

Riku shook his head. “What was with those guys?” he asked in an exasperated tone.

Zack shrugged. “Sorry about that. Shinra’s been trying to root out this resistance unit hiding within the city,” he explained. “But that only explains why the troops are on edge lately. Truth be told, Director Heidegger practically insists that they carry out police brutality.”

“Shinra? Is that the people in that tower?” Aqua asked.

Zack nodded. “Yeah. They pretty much run this world with the energy they provide, as well as their military power. Infantrymen, the Turks, my division, SOLDIER…”

Donald quacked in surprise. “You work for them?” he asked.

Zack nodded. “Yeah. I signed on to train and be a hero. It was a while before I started to see their dark side.”

“Train and be a hero…?” Aqua repeated. “But weren’t you training with Philoctetes and Hercules? What happened with that? What are you doing here?”

Zack let out a laugh. “Well, that is an interesting story,” he said. “There I was, standing at the coliseum’s plaza gates. Phil was running drills with Herc. I didn’t really have any errands to run, so I was just hanging around. Then, the funniest thing happened. I noticed a single black feather falling over my shoulder. I looked up and saw a man with a black wing like an angel’s sprouting out of his back. I asked him who he was, and he started spouting poetry that I hadn’t heard of then. He pulled out this red sword, and I drew mine, expecting a fight.

“I did the best I could against that guy, but he was really good with a sword, not to mention the fact that he spent part of the time flying out of my reach. The fight spilled out into the streets, so I guess Herc and Phil never realized anything was wrong. I climbed the walls and fought him across the rooftops, but he still had the upper hand. Eventually, I got lucky and parried a strike in pretty much the right spot, knocking him into a wall and sending him off balance and making him fall. I jumped down after him and swung my sword at him, but he threw a dark energy ball at me. After that, everything went black.

“When I could see again, I was lying flat on my back in a field. A few soldiers in purple and blue suits and these eye-obscuring helmets were gathered around me, checking to see if I was alright and probably wondering what they should do about me. Then this guy in a similar uniform, but black, helped me to my feet, and told me I was a few miles outside of a town called Gongaga.”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Donald burst out laughing at the last word. Zack waited for them to finish before continuing, remembering how much he himself laughed at the backwater name.

“I told them what had happened, and the guy in the black uniform, Angeal, told me that I had just fought a renegade SOLDIER, Genesis, who had deserted Shinra and taken a bunch of 3 rd -Class SOLDIERs with him to wage war on Shinra. Angeal and the SOLDIERs brought me back here, to Midgar, to report the incident to their superiors. I guess the director, who, by the way, wasn’t Heidegger back then—we got transferred under his command a few years later—I guess he was impressed that I went up against Genesis, and he asked what I wanted to do with myself. I asked if there was any way I could help out. He helped me enlist for SOLDIER, and I went through the physical to see if I was fit, and they put me through the procedure, where they use Mako energy to enhance your physical abilities and basically turn you into a super soldier. And I’ve been part of their military ever since.”

“Wow,” Kairi hummed in amazement.

“If only Philoctetes could see you now,” Aqua mused. “I’m sure you’re a great hero now, Zack.”

Zack sighed, a little less confidently now. “I don’t really know about that. Like I said, there are shadows in Shinra’s halls,” he said. “A lot of shady stuff goes on, and I guess in some way I’m a part of it all.”

Sora smiled reassuringly. “You’ll figure it out,” he insisted.

Riku nodded in agreement. “You can be led to do some less-honorable things when you’re trying to do what you think is right. But if you follow your heart and look for the light, I’m sure you’ll find the hero in you.”

“A-hyuck. That’s right. You just gotta believe in yourself,” Goofy advised. “You’ll find that strength.”

Zack contemplated their words, then grinned. “Thanks, guys,” he said. “So, Aqua, what happened to you after we saw each other last? And what brings you all here, anyway?”

Yada, yada, kupo, kupo.

Zack’s eyes widened. “Wow. That’s… wow. I’m sorry you had to go through that. How are you holding up now?”

Aqua shrugged. “A little early to say,” she answered. “I’m glad to be back out, anyway.”

Zack nodded. “Got it. Well, I’m here if you need to talk.”

Aqua smiled. “I appreciate that.”

“So, Zack, where did you get that sword?” Sora asked.

Zack glanced over his shoulder at the weapon and turned around to show it off better. “This? Why do you ask? Have you seen it before?”

Donald nodded. “Yeah. It looks like— WAK!”

A sudden tremor interrupted him, followed by the sound of gunfire. From outside, they heard a muffled voice saying: “Something’s wrong! It’s gone haywire! Retreat!”

Everyone looked at each other, eyes wide. “Looks like we’ll have to save this conversation for later,” Zack said. He turned and ran out the side door, with the rest of the party following.

Half a dozen Shinra troops were running away from a robot that resembled the previous two, save for the red color to the main body and the fact that guns were built into the arms rather than saw blades. There were a few large scratches across the side and the front grate was bent and dented. It turned and walked jerkily and fired its rounds wildly. One of the troops was shot in the back and fell to the ground, groaning in pain.

The gang summoned their weapons, save for Zack, who drew it off of his back, and charged into battle. Goofy focused on making sure that everyone was out of danger while Kairi approached the injured troop and cast Cure on him, then helped him to his feet so he could flee. With the robot firing bullets, everyone in front of it had to move quickly or cast Reflect or Barrier to avoid being hit. Sora remembered the few times he had been shot by cursed pirates wielding muskets in Port Royal, and recalled the immense pain from each hit, and knew that he would only fare worse if he were hit at a very close range, so he did everything in his power to not get shot. Fortunately, the fight was six against one, with most of the party to the sides or behind the robot, so it was almost a non-issue. It was less than two minutes before the robot crashed to pieces. With the enemy demolished, the party ran to a safe distance before the main body exploded.

Zack spun his sword in front of him and put it over his back. Everyone else simply dismissed their weapons. “Man,” Zack groaned, “what is with all of these robots going out of control?”

“A more pressing matter would be who your new friends are,” a new voice spoke. The party turned to face the direction of the voice, and saw five people approaching them. There were three men and two women. They all wore identical black business suits, although one of them had the shirt unbuttoned and forewent the tie which his associates wore.

“And you are…?” Riku asked.

“We are the Turks,” the man in the middle, with dark brown eyes, shoulder-length black hair tied in a ponytail, and a tilak in the center of his forehead, said. “We serve as the investigative unit of the Shinra Company’s general affairs. You may call me Tseng.”

“Investigative unit? Zack, didn’t you say that the Turks were part of their military divisions?” Mickey asked.

“They’re basically Shinra’s elite secret agents,” Zack explained. “Investigation, recon, espionage, the works. But they also pull off black ops missions.” He said this with a mildly cynical tone, but as he looked over at the Turks, his eyes did not convey any disdain. In fact, it seemed as though he trusted them, or at least some of them. “They follow the president’s orders directly, but you can count on them.”

Mickey nodded in understanding and turned back to Tseng. “So, what is it you want?” he asked.

One of Tseng’s associates, a young woman with blonde hair and blue-green eyes, glanced over the party, noticing Mickey, Donald and Goofy’s bizarre appearance. Sora stared at her curiously, finding something vaguely familiar about her, although he could not place his finger on it.

“The president has requested that you come up to meet him,” Tseng said professionally. “We are here to escort you.”

Zack leaned over to whisper into Aqua’s ear. “By that, he means they won’t take no for an answer,” he warned. Aqua nodded, guessing as much.

Sora looked at his friends to gauge their opinions, then turned back to Tseng. “Okay, sure. Maybe we’ll find something that can help all of us with what we’re looking for,” he said.

Tseng nodded, and the Turks turned around and beckoned the party to follow. Riku studied each of the Turks, taking note of their weapons. Tseng and the blonde girl each carried a gun holstered in their belts. The lanky man with messy red hair in a ponytail kept a collapsed baton in his left pocket. The burly, dark-skinned bald man appeared to have no weapon of his own, indicating that he fought hand-to-hand. The girl with long red hair had a folded-up Fuuma shuriken wrapped in a sheath and clipped onto her back. They each must have had a unique fighting pattern, and the variance would surely be ideal for different situations.

The Turks led the party down the streets, taking a few different turns, before they came up to the side of the massive building that served as Shinra headquarters. They marched around the building until they came to the front doors, which the redheaded man and the bald man opened for them.

The main lobby was well-lit, and bustling with employees in business suits and infantrymen in familiar uniforms. The floor and walls were the same metallic gray. The back wall behind the reception desk was a blue-green color, with a red diamond symbol with a white katakana, apparently the company’s logo, next to the word “Shin-Ra” on the wall. A set of stairs on either side curved and led up to a higher level, lined with a blue rug. Two more sets of stairs just past them, lined with a red rug, led up to another higher landing. Both landings had two elevator doors. Potted plants lined the balcony on the first landing.

The group walked through the lobby and went up the first flight of stairs, passing an employee tending to a cart of energy drinks and ignoring the reception desk. They went straight to one of the elevators, and Tseng pressed the UP button. After a few seconds, the doors opened and they stepped into the elevator, which was a round platform that had a Plexiglas window allowing a passenger to look outside. Tseng held up a keycard and pressed the button for the 70 th floor. The elevator closed and began to ascend.

After a moment, Kairi broke the silence. “So, this is your HQ, huh? I take it business is good.”

The redheaded girl with the shuriken nodded. “The Shinra Company mines for Mako energy through reactors and converts it into electricity, which it supplies to the people both in Midgar and outside of it,” she explained.

“I thought Mako was used to make people into SOLDIERs,” Donald argued, curious.

“Mako serves a variety of purposes,” the blonde girl clarified. “For instance, it can be condensed into Materia stones, which allow our people to use magic.”

The bald man adjusted his sunglasses. “Elena, you might do well to avoid divulging company secrets to outsiders,” he calmly scolded.

Elena blinked in surprise and embarrassment. “I—Erm, my mistake, Rude,” she said.

“How much did you tell them already, Zack?” the redheaded girl asked.

Zack shrugged. “Not much more than I figured I was allowed to, Cissnei,” he replied. “Just how I got here, how I became a member of SOLDIER, and a bit about the military structure of the company. They already got to see some of the weapons, and they already figured out how the city-bound infantrymen enforce the rules.” He tinged the last sentence with a slightly sour tone.

“Someone should probably tell them that, even if bullets did work on Heartless, firing rounds in the middle of a crowded street is a no-no,” Riku added bitterly.

Cissnei’s eyes widened. “Was anyone hurt?” she asked, concerned.

Sora shook his head. “Thankfully, we got everyone out of the way safely,” he said.

“So, whatever happened with that Genesis guy?” Goofy asked.

“After several months of fighting him and his allies, he was defeated and slain,” Tseng answered.

“It was actually Zack who beat him, though a Second helped,” the redheaded man added. “Though, we lost another guy, who I think was trying to help his old friend before it was too late.”

Goofy scratched his head in confusion. “Second?” he repeated.

“SOLDIER Second Class,” Zack clarified. “There are three levels: First, Second, and Third-Class. You can tell who’s in what level by the color of their uniforms. Third is a medium blue; Second is purple; and First—” he tugged at the collar of his shirt to demonstrate “—wear black. Well, except for when they exercise the privilege to wear custom clothes.”

“That other SOLDIER you lost…” Aqua began, changing the subject. “Was that Angeal?”

Zack nodded solemnly. “Yeah. Angeal, he… he died. He tried to help Genesis, but the guy wouldn’t see reason. He trained me as a SOLDIER, and taught me to follow my dreams and to protect my honor as a SOLDIER. Of course, in a place like this, what sort of honor can I have, especially since this world wasn’t even a place I called home?”

“I’m sorry,” Aqua said empathetically. She noticed Cissnei betray a similarly sympathetic expression while the other Turks maintained a professional stoicism. “Did you ever figure it out?”

There was a silent moment of uncertainty before Zack finally spoke. “Well, maybe. I had a friend who joined SOLDIER a couple years after me,” he said. “He told me about the world he came from and the people who fought to protect it and keep everything bright and hopeful. He was actually the one who—”

Before he could finish, the elevator stopped and the door opened. “I suppose you’ll have to save the rest for later,” Cissnei said. Zack shrugged, though Sora, Donald and Goofy were only more intrigued by Zack’s story.

The group stepped out of the elevator and into what appeared to be a large office encompassing almost the entire floor. There were numerous columns holding the ceiling up. The back wall was lined almost entirely with large Plexiglas windows looking out over the southern end of Midgar. The majority of the room was empty and opened up. Across from the elevator was a large semicircular desk. Behind the desk, in a purple chair, sat a man with pale blond hair wearing a white business suit with a black undershirt.

As the group drew closer, the man smirked. He pushed his chair away from the desk and stood up. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said, addressing the Turks. He then gave a respectful nod to Zack. “Good afternoon, Keyblade wielders.” The newcomers blinked in surprise, wondering how he could know about the Keyblades. “I am the president of the Shinra Electric Power Company, Rufus Shinra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After writing the scene where everyone just wailed on the robot until it was destroyed, I realized that I'm going to have to start splitting the party up into groups pretty soon to make fights like that, including one-foe boss fights, less of a mob fest.


	100. Chapter 99: Overreaction

Rufus stepped out from behind his desk and made eye contact with Sora. “I have been informed of the incidents that occurred, and which you quelled, after your arrival,” he said. “I would like to thank you for neutralizing the malfunctioning robots, and for disposing of the shadow demons.”

“They’re called ‘Heartless’,” Riku corrected. “And maybe you can repay us by telling your troops not to shoot into a busy street, or to try to arrest people without probable cause.”

Rufus sighed. “I apologize for that. The Public Safety department has been on high alert for a terrorist cell that has been vexing us for quite a while,” he admitted. “But I became rather fascinated when the officer reported that five Keyblade wielders were in my city. So, please, tell me for what purpose you have brought yourselves into Midgar.”

Sora and Mickey turned to Riku, indicating that they were deferring the role of expositor to him, figuring that he would best be able to explain as much as necessary. They did not know Rufus’ intentions, but they could tell that he was not someone they wanted to tell about the “remake reality” possibility, even though they had summed it up sufficiently for Zack.

Riku let out a sigh. “A coalition of villains from multiple different worlds is attempting to take over all of the worlds,” he said.

Rufus smirked. “Haven’t heard that one before,” he said sarcastically. Riku raised an eyebrow. “I am aware of Maleficent’s council and their efforts to swallow the worlds in darkness,” he elaborated. “However, they failed to find what they were after, and we forced them to retreat.”

Donald crossed his arms and tapped his foot irritably. “And your troops never got the hint that guns didn’t work on Heartless?” he asked snidely.

“The SOLDIER operatives were the primary opposition to the dark creatures,” Rufus explained. “And I suppose that, until only a few weeks ago, they had not been seen in years. Regardless, the threat of the sorceress had been expunged from this world long ago.”

“The same could be said for all other worlds,” Kairi said. “Maleficent and her allies were defeated nearly two years ago.”

Rufus’ eyes widened and he smiled with intrigue. “My, my. And who would be the one responsible for such a victory?” he asked. Donald and Goofy pointed to Sora. “Fascinating. To think such power could rest in the hands of one Keyblade Master…”

“But Maleficent is back, and she has a new club, with twelve other villains as opposed to five,” Riku said, redirecting the conversation to the initial subject. “And they’re using the Heartless as well as their counterparts, discarded bodies called Nobodies. They’re also not looking for the Keyholes, but an item of uncertain nature.”

Rufus stroked his chin. “And so you want to make sure they cannot find this item,” he surmised. “I notice that you haven’t mentioned what sort of power this item offers. You don’t want me to use it for myself, am I correct?”

Riku said nothing. The rest of the party held back their surprise at his quick deduction and tried to maintain blank expressions that betrayed nothing.

Rufus chuckled. “I suppose I can hardly blame you,” he said. “But you needn’t worry. I have a feeling that this sort of thing is a little far out of my depth. And regardless, I doubt you or your enemies would be willing to tell what the threat or promise is.”

“But I’m sure you didn’t call us up here only to ask what we’re doing,” Mickey said. “What is it you want?”

Rufus smirked. “A perceptive one, I see. Fine. I’ll get to the point.” He cleared his throat. “In the past three days, maintenance and security personnel have reported sightings of the creatures you call ‘Heartless’ roaming three of our Mako reactors on the perimeter of the city. However, the numbers had remained low enough that they did not manage to cause any damage, and the security personnel, armed with melee weapons to avoid causing damage themselves with misfires, were able to eliminate the intruders. However…” He turned to press a button on his desk, causing a holographic model of Midgar to appear in front of the party, aligned so that its southern side faced the office window. He pressed another button and one of the columns adjacent to the split in the city’s plate turned red. “Three hours ago, I received an alert that the creatures have appeared in the Sector 6 reactor. When security personnel failed to provide a status update in a timely fashion, I sent a squad of infantrymen to back them up. They have not reported back.”

“You want us to do your laundry,” Riku surmised.

“It won’t be any different from what you normally do, so it shouldn’t be a difficult request. I want you to clear out any and all of the dark creatures before they cause any lasting damage. So, do we have an arrangement?”

“Will we need any protection?” Donald asked.

“Mako does not emit any harmful radiation, so being near it will not cause any detrimental effects,” Rufus explained. “If all goes accordingly, you will not need to worry about physiological damage.”

Mickey traded glances with the rest of the party. He looked out the window and saw the reactor numbered “5”. It took more of those reactors to power the sprawling metropolis. He did not know what this “Mako” energy was, but he knew that if the reactor that mined and harnessed it suffered any serious damage, the results could be catastrophic.

“Alright. We’ll do it,” the mouse declared.

Rufus nodded. “Very well. I trust that Mr. Fair will escort you to the site. I will leave the rest up to you,” he told them.

Aqua nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s go stop the Heartless,” she said.

* * *

The party stood facing each other in silence as the elevator began its descent. They went down ten floors before Zack spoke up.

“You should be careful when working with Rufus Shinra,” he warned. “He’s the kind who will do anything to get what he wants.”

“I noticed,” Riku replied. “He was clearly trying to determine how he could make our arrival benefit him.”

Sora crossed his arms. “Then I guess we’re going to have to keep an eye out in case he pulls any tricks.”

Donald nodded in agreement, then turned back to Zack, his face expressing curiosity. “So, what is Mako energy?” he asked. “Aside from what Shinra uses it for. Where does it come from? How do they get it?”

“Mako is an energy drawn right from the core of the world,” Zack explained. “I don’t really know how the process works, but the reactors drill into the earth and mine for it.”

“When we came to this world, we saw that the soil around the city was barren and lifeless,” Kairi pointed out. “Is that what happens when you take out too much of this ‘Mako’?”

Zack nodded. “Yeah. Or, at least that’s what all the protestors are saying. I haven’t really had the opportunity to look into the details. But I have seen the results in the slums.”

“The slums?” Aqua repeated, curious.

“The middle and upper-class citizens live above the plate. Below it, on the ground level, are eight… seven more districts, each one less-well-off than the ones above. Plants don’t grow in the useless soil except for in a few places, and sunlight normally doesn’t reach down there, since the plate’s in the way. Beyond that, people are just dirt poor by comparison and they don’t get nearly as good supplies as the top half of the city.”

“That’s… That’s horrible,” Mickey said in disbelief.

Zack nodded. “Yeah. Not surprisingly, people down there don’t exactly have a high opinion of Shinra.”

Riku shook his head. “I’m starting to like this less and less, but for the sake of everyone above and below that slab of metal, we have to save that reactor.”

Sora nodded in agreement. “I guess we can worry about the environmental issues later,” he added.

* * *

The party of eight stepped off of the train and made their way out of the station, following the road to the entrance to the Sector 6 Mako Reactor. Looking up, they saw a towering cylindrical building with pipes running around the exterior. A large symbol, which translated to the number “6”, was printed on the side facing them. Beneath the symbol, a large, thick pipe stretched from the reactor all the way back to the structures surrounding Shinra Tower, evidently the method by which Mako was delivered to the tower for processing and conversion to electricity and other purposes.

As they opened the heavy metal doors and stepped inside, they took a look at the large pipes, rusting doors, and computerized consoles. An elevator could be seen on the opposite end of the room. On either side wall, they could see a set of stairs.

“If there are as many as Rufus said, we’re going to need to split up to cover more ground,” Zack advised. “I think we can manage teams of two.”

Mickey nodded and looked up at Sora. “You wanna team up?” he asked.

Sora nodded. “Sure thing, your Majesty.”

Zack took a step back. “M-Majesty?! Should… Should I have…?” he stammered, worrying that he may not have been showing proper respect around the regal mouse.

Mickey shook his head vehemently. “That won’t be necessary, Zack,” he assured. “You can just call me ‘Mickey’.”

Riku and Kairi looked at Donald and Goofy, thinking that their teams should have balance and speciation. “Riku, how about you go with Donald, and I’ll go with Goofy?” she suggested.

Riku shrugged. “Sounds fine, so long as no one has any stubborn objections that they refuse to elaborate on,” he joked, shooting a smirking glare at Donald.

The duck jumped slightly in surprise. “Uh, no objections…?” he murmured.

Aqua turned to Zack. “Then I’m with you,” she said.

Zack nodded. “Okay, then. We’ll take the bottom floors. Sora, Mickey, Riku, Donald, you take the upper levels, and be sure to go all around. Kairi, Goofy, start at the next floor down. When we’re done, we’ll meet back here. If one group doesn’t catch up, we’ll go find them and see what’s wrong. Sound like a plan?” Everyone nodded. “Great. Well, let’s go.

Zack and Aqua ran to the elevator while the other six took the stairs. Once inside the elevator, Zack pressed a few buttons on the console and pulled a lever, and the metal box began a squealing, rickety descent. Aqua was quick to notice his familiarity with the systems and layout.

“You’ve been in here before?” she asked.

“A few times, though it was a couple other reactors,” he answered. “There were remnants of an enemy army that Shinra conquered, Genesis’ forces, and an old eco-terrorist group, all attacking Midgar at one point or another.”

“Must be tough fighting so hard for a system you know is immoral,” she said sympathetically.

Zack shrugged. “I mainly focus on what would happen to the people if I fail,” he admitted. “Besides, it’s not all bad. Most of the other SOLDIERs are good people, and our old director was a pretty cool guy. We just do what we can to keep things bright, you know?” He removed his sword from his back and leaned it against the wall, then began to do squat exercises, a trait that Aqua remembered seeing him do when she had met him so long ago.

“So, do you have any way to find that Xehanort guy, now that you’re out?” he asked, changing the subject.

Aqua shook her head. “The others defeated his Heartless and his Nobody, but there hasn’t been any sign of him, even though the other Organization members returned to human form,” she replied.

“Weird. You think he’s got something up his sleeve?”

Aqua shrugged. “After everything he did with Terra, Ven and Vanitas, it seems strange that he would just cut all of his pawns loose like that. But from what I’ve heard, it sounds like there was supposed to be something happening, but he just dropped off the face of the Earth without anyone expecting it.”

Zack finished his squats. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Just like I’m sure you’ll find Terra, and wake Ven up.”

Aqua blinked in surprise at the statement, but saw in his eyes that he was earnest about his faith in her. She smiled. “Thank you, Zack,” she said.

At that point, the elevator grinded to a halt. Zack put his sword on his back again as he and Aqua turned to face the door as it began to open. They saw red emergency lights illuminating the hallway. When they stepped out, four Soldier Heartless materialized. Zack pulled his sword free while Aqua summoned her Keyblade. They vanquished the creatures in a few swift blows.

“Let’s get to work,” Zack said, his mouth widening into a grin.

* * *

Sora blasted a Neoshadow with a Blizzaga spell while Mickey performed a spinning slash to defeat a Yellow Opera. A Tornado Step spun itself at Sora and hit him from the side, but he promptly retaliated and cut straight through it. They ran out onto a catwalk and saw an Aerial Master hovering above them.

Mickey looked up at Sora. “Give me a boost,” he said. Sora nodded and stooped down, cupping his hands in front of him. Mickey ran a short distance away, then turned around and ran toward Sora. He stepped into Sora’s hands, and the boy stood up quickly, pushing him up as Mickey launched himself into the air. The mouse flew straight for the Aerial Master and proceeded to engage in midair combat with it.

Looking ahead, Sora saw a whirl of black-and-white thorns swirl about before vanishing to reveal a trio of Dusks. Sora brandished his Keyblade, daring the Nobodies to enter the fray. “You don’t show up for the heck of it,” he mused, recalling how Nobodies usually only show up in a world when their commanders are around and give them orders. If that was the case, then that confirms that someone from Maleficent’s group was already in this world. So, then, who was it?

Sora ran up to the Dusks and slid around them, confusing them with the reversal, then hit one of them with a combo attack. He pulled a few more Reversals when they figured out where he was and found himself in the middle of the group, but he still found them looking away. He promptly destroyed them with a revolving Fira spell. A few seconds later, Mickey dropped from above and landed on his feet, having defeated the Aerial Master.

“Nice work, Sora,” Mickey commended.

Sora grinned. “Thanks, your Majesty.”

Mickey sighed. “You know, you don’t have to keep doing that,” he pleaded.

“Doing what?” Sora asked, confused.

“You don’t—Look out!” Mickey leapt over Sora’s head and deflected a bolt that had been fired by a Trooper Heartless. When he landed, he launched a Pearl spell that sent the Heartless flying, then charged after it and slew it with a Keyblade combo. Sora followed after him and passed through the door to the next room, only to find that they were surrounded by more Heartless.

“We’ll continue this later,” Mickey said. Sora nodded. They each threw themselves at one of the Heartless.

* * *

Riku and Donald fought Soldiers, Armored Knights, and Yellow Operas. Riku locked blades with the Knights and cut through them while occasionally throwing balls of dark fire at distant foes, while Donald almost exclusively kept to a decent range and fought with his magic. The duck found the Yellow Operas to be more manageable than usual due to his newfound understanding of Agua magic, and he used a single stream to short out and drown all but one of the floating Heartless. To his annoyance, the spell dispersed and collapsed before he could reach the last one, and he realized that he was out of mana. Grumbling, he reached for an Ether in his pocket. A Soldier attempted to sneak up on him, but he turned around to see it and backed away. It closed in on him, so he swung his staff and hit it on the head. He continued to hit it until it became dizzy. When his opponent was unable to attack him, he opened the bottle and drank the Ether. Invigorated, he cast a Blizzard spell to destroy the Soldier.

Donald turned to Riku and saw the Armored Knight slash him across the chest, sending him tumbling backward. Quacking in shock, Donald cast Stopra on the Knight and ran over to Riku. He raised his staff and cast Curaga. Using his Keyblade as a support, Riku stood up, then dealt a slashing combo to the immobilized Heartless. A few seconds later, time resumed for the Heartless and it reacted to all of the attacks instantly, exploding into smoke.

Riku turned around to face Donald. “Thanks,” he said, smiling. He glanced up and his eyes widened. “Behind you!”

Donald turned around and saw the last Yellow Opera making its way toward him, its body enveloped in wild electricity. Before it could hit him, however, Riku raised his Keyblade and sent a Blizzara spell cutting straight through it.

The duck turned back to Riku. “Thanks,” he said, grateful for the assist.

Donald nodded. With the floor cleared, they made their way back to the stairs to go to the next floor. However, Donald frowned as he thought back on what Riku had said before they began their ascent. It had only been a joke, but it did allude to something Donald had done and said to his spite, something of which he was not proud. However, before he could think more on it, he and Riku found themselves fighting more Heartless in the stairwell.

* * *

Several floors below, Kairi and Goofy fought through Troopers, Red Nocturnes, and Blue Rhapsodies. As Kairi’s swiftness and magic proficiency balanced out Goofy’s brute force and stalwart defense, they moved together as a single unit, either one covering whatever bases the other left open. Kairi used her magic to defeat the floating spell-casters with their opposing elements while Goofy blocked the Troopers’ bolts and inched toward them, taking each one out once he was within range.

When the room was cleared out, Kairi turned to Goofy and let out a laugh. “We’re doing a pretty good job, huh?” she said.

Goofy smiled and nodded in agreement. “A-hyuck! We work pretty well together,” he replied.

Kairi looked around in dismay. “You know, we haven’t seen any sign of the infantrymen that Rufus sent, or anyone else who works here,” she said.

Goofy nodded. “You’re right,” he agreed somberly. “Though, they could be further down, but considering all the Heartless we’ve seen right now, it doesn’t look like it.”

“So they all had their hearts taken by the Heartless,” Kairi realized.

“Gawrsh, you think their Heartless might be here?” Goofy asked. “If we beat their Heartless and their Nobodies, they might come back.”

“Assuming they have Nobodies. What happens if you don’t have the strength of will to make a Nobody? If a Keyblade wielder defeats your Heartless, do you still come back to life?”

Goofy shrugged. “I dunno. We never actually knew you could come back from that until Axel and the others.”

Kairi sighed. “I guess we can only hope. And if that doesn’t work, pray.”

A moment later, six Creeper Nobodies appeared in a line in front of them. The small creatures, glinting like blobs of silver mercury, waddled toward them on their small shoe-arms. Kairi and Goofy raised their weapons to continue the fight.

* * *

Aqua and Zack ran across the walkway leading to the Mako energy core. Zack cut through Heartless and Nobodies with his sword while Aqua disposed of distant enemies that flew over the abyss with her magic. When she cast several spells, she began to glow with a pink-magenta aura. She let go of her Keyblade, allowing it to float in midair. She pushed outward to send it spinning toward a Paratrooper. She pulled it back and threw it in a horizontal spin, then drew it back to her hand, pointed it, and shot an orb of magic, which hit the aerial gunner square in the chest and destroyed it.

When he saw Aqua in her Spellweaver Power Style, Zack whistled. “Haven’t seen that in a while,” he said, impressed.

Aqua smiled with pride and cast powerful Blizzard and Fire spells at the flying fiends. However, there were still dozens more flying all around the wide chamber.

With each strike and spell, Aqua built up magic energy. She knew that she would need to gather more than she was used to in order to clear out the swarm of Heartless. Zack, meanwhile, was running out of enemies to fight on the ground, and had begun to throw Fire spells from his hand, a circle growing scarlet on his arm. However, he quickly ran out of juice for that and returned to waiting for something to come close, or blocking attacks with his sword.

Finally, Aqua felt a massive surge of magic power weaving through her body. Smiling with euphoria, she turned to Zack. “Wish me luck,” she requested.

“What?” the SOLDIER asked suddenly, confused.

Without answering, Aqua leapt off of the walkway and started spinning, glowing with a large flare of pink-white energy that spiraled around her. She floated in midair, spinning like a figure skater, her arms and Keyblade raised high as she maneuvered through the air at an incredible pace, the pink magic dancing around her and burning through the Heartless that were around, above, and even below her. She whirled around all over the place, revolving around the core and either blasting Heartless or pulling them into a vortex above her. At the end, she hovered above Zack and, swinging her Keyblade outward, released the last of her energy in an explosive burst, obliterating the last of the Heartless in a final blast. As the last of the magic aura faded, she dropped out of the air and landed on her feet next to Zack, who could only stare in awe.

“Whoa,” Zack exhaled. “You’ve definitely gotten stronger.”

Aqua nodded, brushing some of her hair behind her ear. “I had to if I was going to survive in the Realm of Darkness,” she replied. “I even managed to teach myself some fourth-tier spells. Speaking of which, when did you learn magic?”

Zack looked at her, perplexed. Then he remembered the spells he had cast and looked at his arm, which were marked with two faint red and yellow circles. “Oh, that? I just drew from the power of Fire and Thunder Materia,” he explained. “It’s not really magic by my power, although it takes some of my energy to use it.”

Aqua nodded, understanding. “Oh, yeah. I remember that Turk girl mentioning that. What was her name, Elena?”

Zack nodded. “Yep. The leader’s Tseng; the bald guy’s Rude; the guy with messy red hair is named Reno; and the other girl is Cissnei. Or, that’s what she goes by, at any rate.”

“Got it.”

“Now, let’s see if there’s anything wrong here,” Zack muttered as he turned around and made his way down the walkway.

Aqua raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” she asked, following him.

“Until now, the Heartless appearances have been sporadic at best, aside from when Maleficent first showed her pale green face. They haven’t even done much in the reactors. But here, not only did they overrun the place, but they camped out in the lowest, most critical chamber as if guarding something. Now, what might that something be?” He reached the core’s maintenance console and gasped, horrified. “Oh, that’s not good.”

“What?” Aqua asked, coming up behind him. She leaned to the side to get a look past him, and saw a large metal box with red blocks on all four sides, and a screen and a series of buttons on top. Pink-colored numbers appeared on the screen, apparently counting down.

“Someone’s planted a bomb here,” Zack answered. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. A short moment later, he began to speak into it. “Hey, Tseng. We’re in the core. We cleared out the Heartless, but there’s a bomb on the console. I’m going to try to disarm it, but I need you to get people to evacuate the surrounding area in case I fail. Yes, everyone. For, like, two miles away, at least. And make sure to get the people downstairs, too! They’re going to be where it hits hardest… Alright, thanks. I’ll do what I can.” He hung up and put the phone away, then turned to face Aqua. “I’m gonna try to disarm this. If this doesn’t work, then we’ll need to get out of here fast.”

Aqua nodded. “I’ll cover you,” she said.

Zack nodded in reply. He studied the buttons on the bomb’s face. The screen read 10:27 and counted down. He sighed. “Not gonna make it that easy, huh?” he muttered. He reached into his belt and took out a screwdriver. He removed the screws and lifted the plate, exposing the wiring and circuitry.

“You have experience disarming bombs?” Aqua asked.

“I had some training. It’s not really my specialty, but we don’t have the time to get an actual specialist.” Zack pulled out some wire cutters and tweezers as he examined the circuitry to see what he could work with.

Aqua sighed. “I wish I could help, but I don’t know how to do what you’re doing, and I don’t know what I’d do with the bomb if I could move it.”

Suddenly, they both heard a booming noise and felt the ground shake beneath their feet. They turned around to see a giant monster that resembled a robot, but it had a Heartless emblem on the front. Its torso was funnel-shaped and it had a short and wide cone on top with a smaller cone of normal proportions on top of that. A slot was opened at the top of the funnel to reveal glowing yellow eyes. A black rectangular gun was mounted on either side, so that the two weapons resembled boxy arms. It had four legs resembling those of a crab, spaced evenly around the base. The main body and the upper parts of the legs were colored a dull red while the bottoms of the legs were of a bronze color. The Heartless was large enough that its legs were contained barely between the railings on either side, allowing some wiggle room to let it walk.

Zack’s face fell. “Things just got more complicated,” he said.

Aqua summoned her Keyblade and held it down at her side. “I’ll take care of it. You just focus on the bomb.” She ran toward her foe and pointed her Keyblade forward and cast a spell, causing bolts of lightning to strike one after another in a line, closing in after the robot. When the lightning hit the robot Heartless, it stopped progressing and stayed in the same place, hitting it with several bolts of lightning in sequence.

Unperturbed, the robot fired a laser at her from both of its guns while the spell was still in effect. Aqua was hit and thrown back several feet. She returned with a reprisal, throwing her Keyblade at the fiend’s hull, causing it to momentarily lurch backward. She landed on her feet and ran up to it again, hitting it with her Keyblade and casting Thunder spells. After a few combos and spells, she felt a power surge and burst with electrical energy crackling around her in a yellow aura. She attacked ferociously, each blow fueled by the power of lightning. She continued attacking, only interrupted when the giant knocked her back with lasers. She finished off the lightning-charged assault by raising her Keyblade and unleashing all of the power in a Thunderbolt storm.

The relentless assault seemed to hurt the Heartless greatly, but it still fought back. After a moment, it scuttled back and shot a volley of lasers from both its guns and its eyes. Aqua raised a barrier to block each of the shots, but the moment it dissipated, the Heartless blasted her with another bolt, knocking her down. The Heartless scuttled forward and aimed its guns at her, but it was interrupted by a Keyblade bouncing off of its head.

Sora caught his Keyblade out of the air and jumped on the side railing, sliding across it to slip past the Heartless, then landed beside Aqua. He extended his hand. “You alright?” he asked.

Aqua took his hand and he helped her up. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“We all met back up at the entrance, but you weren’t there. We decided to come down and check on you,” Sora explained. As if on cue, Mickey came into view, slashing at the Heartless’ legs. He ducked under the Heartless and joined Aqua and Sora.

“What’s Zack doing?” Mickey asked.

“There’s a bomb here,” Aqua explained. “He was trying to deactivate it when this thing showed up.”

“Then let’s bring it down!” Sora declared. “Looks kinda like the Surveillance Robots, except big and with legs.

“It’s trying to stop us from disarming the bomb and getting out of here,” Mickey added. “What’s the time on that thing?”

“Seven minutes!” Zack answered without turning around. “So, if I can’t figure this out, you’ll need to stop that thing fast so we can scram!”

Mickey nodded. “Then let’s shut down this Impedance Machine!”

Sora nodded. “Not bad,” he said.

“Thanks.”

The three Keyblade wielders fought the Impedance Machine with fierce combos and magic spells, mostly consisting of Thunder and Pearl (particularly on Mickey’s end). Whenever one of them was injured, one of them cast a Cure spell.

Less than a minute in, Riku joined the fight, attacking from behind with his Keyblade. Because it was stuck between the railings, the Impedance Machine could not defend its rear, and even if it could turn around to fight Riku, that would only leave it even more open to its first three adversaries. It suffered even more when Kairi, Donald and Goofy joined the fight and had it surrounded on both sides, one of which being defenseless. It got to the point where the only thing it felt it could attempt in order to protect itself was to unleash an endless barrage of lasers at the enemies in front in hopes of dispatching them. The lasers from its guns and eyes got numerous hits in, while Aqua, Sora and Mickey blocked as many as they could.

Zack, having spent the last few minutes cutting safe wires and searching through the circuitry to find something that would stop the bomb from going off, checked the timer, which read 3:02. “Tch!” he remarked in frustration. He stood up and turned around. He blinked as he felt something click in his mind and a ripple go through his body. “Everyone, get out of the way!” he shouted. He turned sideways and held his arms to the side at right angles, his right arm pointing up and left arm pointing down. He put his legs in similar positions, to the best of his ability, with his right foot pointing down and left foot pointing backward. As Aqua, Sora and Mickey backed to either side, Zack pushed himself forward, balancing on his right foot, and rattled his arms. The three Keybearers could faintly see thin, transparent streaks fly past them at a rapid pace and hit the Heartless, leaving visible indents, as if one-thousand steel needles were flying through the air at it. When Zack ceased his action and once again stood on both feet, the Impedance Machine faded away, the armor around the kinetic stab points disintegrating first.

Everyone looked at Zack in amazement. “What was that?” Mickey asked.

Zack shook his head. “No time. I can’t take care of the bomb. We need to get out of here. We only have two-and-a-half minutes left,” he told them.

They required no further prompting, particularly once everyone had looked past Zack and gotten a glimpse at the bomb. They all whirled around and ran as fast as they could, Sora and Kairi casting Haste on the eight of them on the way. They climbed up the ladders and piping and ran up the stairs, bolting up every single flight, not stopping for a moment. Finally, they reached the floor leading to the entrance, though Sora nearly went up an extra flight, having lost count, before Kairi stopped him and told him that they were there.

They ran out the door and were several yards away when fire roared out of the stairwell and elevator shaft and poured out the door, releasing an explosive force that sent everyone flying. When they landed, they rolled onto their backs to see debris falling through the air and clouds of smoke and fire pouring from the top of the reactor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sulking back through the train station, the party stopped when they saw what appeared to be a short gumball machine hopping around the platform. Letting out a laugh, Sora ran after the Bulky Vendor, which scurried away when it saw him. He pursued it all over the place, squeezing past confused passersby and running behind benches and fences. As time went by, it picked up the pace, sometimes jumping to another area on the platform, where his friends had started to space themselves out to try to grab it. When Kairi managed to catch it, Sora shouted “Not yet!” She let go, and Sora chased after it for a little longer. Finally, he dashed up to it when it leapt into a corner and turned the dial on its face. Gears turned and the capsules held in its glass ball head spun around. Its mouth opened and a green pod fell out into Sora’s hand. The Bulky Vendor hopped up and down, moving out into the open. It then exploded into fireworks launching up into the air. White Mushrooms appeared around the station, dancing in congratulations, tossing sparkles into the air. Sora looked up in wonder as he saw the fireworks take the shape of letters and numbers.
> 
>  **HAPPY 100TH CHAPTER!**  
>  (Including the prologue, since it certainly counts as one)


	101. Chapter 100 [nominal]: Malfunction

“I must say I am disappointed by the results of your mission,” Rufus said. The party had returned to Shinra Tower and told them what had happened at the Sector 6 reactor. They had to explain the specifics of what occurred, but Rufus, the board of directors, and the entire city already knew about the outcome, as the explosion was visible for miles.

Rufus stood flanked by the rest of the board of directors. Directly to his left stood Heidegger, director of the so-called Public Safety Department. He was a large man with a bushy black beard, and he wore a green military uniform adorned with badges and red and gold details. To Rufus’ right was Scarlet, director of the Weapons Manufacturing Department. She was a blonde woman who wore her hair tied up, and she wore a long red satin dress with a plunging neckline and a slit in the side, as well as red high heels. Next to her was Professor Hojo, director of the Science Research Division. A slightly-hunched man who appeared to be in his mid-sixties with his graying black hair tied into a ponytail, Hojo’s attire of a white lab coat over top a business suit and thick round glasses marked him as a scientist. Next to Heidegger stood Reeve, director of the Urban Development Department. He had black hair tied into a ponytail and a small moustache and beard, and he wore a long dark blue coat with yellow lining, and pants of a slightly lighter shade of blue underneath.

The Turks stood behind the main party.

“Sorry, sir,” Zack said. “The bomb was outside of my capability.”

“On the plus side, we got rid of all of the Heartless,” Sora added.

“I suppose little could have been done about the bomb,” Reeve consoled. “The presence of the incredible numbers of Heartless made it impossible for specialists to reach the core. We had not even been made aware of a bomb until it was too late. Fortunately, no one was grievously harmed in the explosion.”

Aqua turned her gaze down as she became lost in thought. “Who could have placed that bomb?” she wondered. “And who would have destroyed that reactor and put so many people in danger?”

“Gya haa haa haa!” Heidegger laughed hoarsely. “I’d think it would be obvious. It’s that no-good AVALANCHE!”

Donald looked at him in bemusement. “What’s Avalanche?” he asked.

“It is an eco-terrorist unit that stands in opposition to Shinra’s practices,” Elena explained. “Usually, they have been short on resources, and their activities had been limited to public protest and low-scale vandalism. But when they are suitably armed, they have been known, or at least suspected, to attack robots and initiate attacks on our factory and generator sites.” She approached Kairi and took her sketch book, showing it to the gathered group. “And, based on Kairi’s drawing from her brief glimpse, and what Zack described of the circuitry, the bomb shares some key elements of technology that AVALANCHE had used in its previous attacks.”

“There are similarities, but there are also noticeable differences,” Cissnei corrected. “Suspecting them would be a reasonable assumption, but we cannot prove that they were responsible.” Next to her, Reno’s phone vibrated, so he took it out of his pocket and answered it.

“Besides, from what you just said, I doubt a ragtag gang like that would be able to control hundreds of Heartless, particularly when there were also dozens of Nobodies among them,” Riku argued, doubting Heidegger and Elena’s theory.

“Nevertheless, I would say that it is a reasonable conjecture,” Rufus insisted. “I say that, until any further developments prove otherwise, we should prioritize locating AVALANCHE and arresting them.”

Reno hung up on his phone and flashed everyone a grin. “Well, I guess that’s my cue,” he bragged. “I just received word that a member of AVALANCHE has been sighted in Sector 4.”

“Well, then!” Heidegger shouted. “I say we send in a squad of my troops to capture the suspect and bring him in for interrogation.”

Mickey raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Or we could do things a little more discretely,” he suggested. “If we send a bunch of people after one guy in the streets, it’ll cause a panic and give him a chance to run. Besides, with your soldiers being as trigger-happy as they were earlier today, they might cause unwanted casualties and maybe even kill the suspect.”

“You seem to know quite a bit about tactical operations,” Tseng said, impressed.

“I spent a few years as a Royal Musketeer,” Mickey explained offhandedly.

“But he’s right,” Zack affirmed. “How about we have a few people go there to secure the area without raising too many red flags, talk to the guy, and find out what he knows?”

Tseng considered the suggestion for a moment, then nodded. “That would be a less-risky method, with less chance of going wrong, and it would be less costly if it turns out our suspicion proves to be little more than a conjecture.”

All eyes turned to Rufus, seeking his approval, since he held the highest authority in the room. He sighed. “Very well. Mr. Fair, I suppose you would like to lead your friends in the search?”

Zack turned to face Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy. “All in favor?” he asked.

Kairi raised her hand uncertainly. “Actually, you guys go on ahead,” she said. “There’s something I’d like to look into while we’re here.” There was a beat as the board directors and the Turks eyed her uncertainly. “With permission and a chaperone, of course.”

Reno chortled. Sora and Riku stared at the redhead in bewilderment, wondering why he seemed so familiar.

Reeve nodded. “I see no problem with that, within reason,” he said.

“Alright if I stay back to help her?” Riku asked. He turned to his friends. “You can handle it yourselves, right?”

Sora, Mickey and Goofy nodded. Tseng nodded in affirmation. “Very well. The Turks will follow along to canvas the area and gauge the situation,” he said. “We will contact the local troops if the investigation gets out of hand.”

Zack nodded. “Got it. Everyone else ready?” he asked the rest of the party. Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy nodded.

“Great!” Reno said. “The AVALANCHE guy was spotted on Kitase Street in Sector 4. The troop who reported it said he had brown hair and he was wearing a green T-shirt, brown cargos, and a red bandanna. If you hurry, he won’t get far.”

Zack nodded. “Then we’d better go take a look,” he said.

* * *

After Zack, Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and the Turks had left, Rufus sent the directors to return to their usual business. Reeve took Riku and Kairi and gave them a tour of the building, barring the sections that were classified. Soon, he led them to visit his office, a small room with a desk decorated with a desktop computer, office supplies, a photograph of a woman who appeared to be Reeve’s mother, and a stuffed cat wearing red shoes and a crown.

“So, this is the Urban Development Department?” Riku asked.

Reeve nodded. “Yes. My team works on maintaining the city of Midgar, building homes, providing the people with energy and clean services, and ensuring that everyone is able to enjoy a solid standard of living,” he explained.

“And what about the people ‘downstairs’?” Riku asked, raising finger quotes around the word “downstairs”.

Reeve nodded. “Yes. I know. I have made efforts to improve the condition in the slums, but the president, both our present and past CEOs, shot them down,” he said regretfully. “They have been more interested in the performance of the upper city than that of the old towns below.”

“So, you’re responsible for repairing any damages suffered across town?” Riku asked for clarification.

“Yes. And I know what you’re going to say next. I am indeed stuck having to deal with repairs for whenever Heidegger’s ‘Public Safety’ units inflict collateral damage in their dealing of ‘justice’.”

Kairi tilted her head. “Sounds like you’re not a big fan of your colleagues,” she surmised.

Reeve sighed. “None of us particularly care for one another, although we have different reasons for our mutual distaste.” He paused and shook his head. “All save for Hojo. He just creeps us all out.”

“Sounds like you have it rough,” Riku said sympathetically. “It also sounds like you’re the white sheep of the board.”

Reeve nodded. “It’s not the nicest job I could imagine, but I do what I can. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

Riku and Kairi traded glances. “Actually, would it be alright if we had a look at the Weapons Development areas?” Kairi asked.

Reeve’s face fell. “I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.

* * *

The street-level party meandered along the sidewalk, searching for the suspect. The avenue consisted mostly of factories and shops. Most of the passing civilians were interested in entering or exiting shops.

Zack fingered an earpiece communicator. “Any sign of him?” he asked.

“Negative,” Tseng answered from his vantage point on a nearby roof.

“'Fraid not,” Reno affirmed, squinting through his binoculars. “There is a pretty brunette exiting the jewelry store. I wonder what—”

“Focus, Reno,” Tseng, Rude, and Cissnei interjected simultaneously.

Reno sighed. “Fine.”

As the party proceeded in their search, waiting for the Turks to provide an update, Goofy found himself distracted by Zack’s sword. “Hey, uh, Zack? Aren’t you worried that your sword will draw too much attention?” he asked.

Zack stopped and turned to face him. “Actually, it hasn’t really been much of an issue,” he replied. “I spend a lot of time in town, and I always have my sword with me in case I run into trouble. Besides, the Firsts all get their own fan clubs, so seeing me around doesn’t raise suspicion or make people afraid all that much. And the sword probably wouldn’t be as much of a distraction as a walking, talking mouse or duck, anyway.”

They had to concede the point. The group fell silent for a moment before Aqua posed a different question. “So, what was that you did earlier?”

“What do you mean?” Zack asked, not sure what she was referring to.

“When you took out that giant robot Heartless,” Aqua clarified. “When you took that funny pose and aimed yourself at it, and it was hit with those little things. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Say, uh, y’know, that pose you did looked kinda like a Cactuar,” Goofy added, chuckling as he recalled the shape.

Zack nodded. “Yeah. That’s what it was. I don’t quite get it myself, but I have this ability to internalize the power of a Summon Materia and use its abilities for myself,” he explained. “For example the Cactuar can shoot a thousand needles at once, so I fired a thousand needles of what I’m told is some kind of compressed kinetic energy. I can do others, but I can’t really decide which ones I do when.”

“Summon Materia?” Donald parroted.

Sora raised an eyebrow. “As in, Materia that conjures the spirits of powerful beings with strong hearts?” Donald, Goofy and Mickey gave him surprised looks. “Like the Summon Gems that called up Simba, Mushu and Bambi, and those charms that connected me with Peter Pan and Chicken Little.”

Zack nodded. “Yeah. Kinda like that. Although I don’t need most of the Materia stones in me anymore to use the power. At points, during periods of stress, the combat-type, something just flares up inside me, and I can pull off some powerful stuff. But it’s not something I can fully control. I can’t even do it often, which in some cases is a good thing. Hojo called it an ‘emotional stimulus wave’. Things line up in my brain, and the power courses through my veins. He says it has different effects depending on my state of mind, but other than that, I can’t make sense of how it works.”

Sora shook his head. “I don’t think I follow. You can use it but you can’t?”

Zack shrugged. “The best way I can describe it: think of it as the world’s dumbest slot machine. It runs on its own, and it will match up when you least expect it and fail when you think you need it most. Or not. It feels totally random.”

“Well, don’t tell Riku, but I prefer to know what I’m doing with my power,” he joked.

The conversation faded again. Sora stood on his tip-toes to peek above the crowd in hopes of locating the target. Zack spoke into his comm link to check if the Turks had seen anything, but with the same result as before.

“So, the sword never gets in the way?” Mickey asked, returning to the earlier topic of conversation. “We could teach you to store it in a pocket dimension, if you want.”

Zack crossed his arms, considering the offer. “That might actually be helpful. Though, half the time I barely notice it,” he admitted.

Aqua’s eyes widened in bewilderment. “You barely notice a two-hundred pound sword hanging off of your back?” she asked incredulously. Zack simply shrugged.

“Where did you even get that sword, anyway?” Donald asked.

“Oh, that was—” he began, only to be interrupted almost immediately.

“Hold on. I think I see him,” Elena reported. “Just around the next corner from you guys.”

Zack fingered his earpiece. “On it,” he replied. He looked up at the others. “Target sighted.” Sora, Aqua and Mickey nodded. The whole group continued down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, not wanting to raise any alarm by moving too fast. They turned at the corner and walked down the street, glancing around in search of their quarry.

“Fifty feet ahead,” Elena said over the comm link. At this point, Goofy noticed a figure matching Reno’s description.

Sora, Aqua and Zack noticed him as well. “I see him,” Sora said.

Mickey and Donald looked around to try to see what Sora could, but to no avail, as they were too short. “Where?” Mickey asked.

“This way,” Aqua replied simply. The human party members continued along, maintaining their brisk pace, with the mouse and duck following.

They were twenty feet away when the AVALANCHE member saw Zack. It took a second for him to register that the SOLDIER was walking toward him, and a few seconds more to guess what he was doing. He cursed and ran across the street. Cars screeched to a halt to avoid hitting him, and one driver honked his horn.

“Target is on the move,” Elena reported.

Zack rolled his eyes. “We can see that,” he answered irritably. The party chased after the suspect, dodging around civilians to avoid running anyone down.

The AVALANCHE member slipped into an alleyway. He moved toward a fire escape, thinking that he could escape up to the rooftops, but then realized that it would only leave him cornered, and there were probably reinforcements up above as well. He continued through the alleyway, but the party pursued him. Mickey jumped up to the first level of the fire escape and ran over everyone, then jumped off and landed in front of the suspect, forcing him to stop in his tracks. A few moments later, the others had caught up to him.

“Hey! What are you doing? I didn’t do nothin'!” the young man protested.

“We’ll see about that,” Zack said plainly. “But right now, we have a few questions.”

“Such as: two hours ago, the Sector 1 reactor was blown up,” Aqua stated.

The AVALANCHE member gulped. “Oh, yeah. I saw that. Was-was anyone hurt?” he asked nervously.

Mickey shook his head. “Thankfully, no fatalities were suffered in the explosion,” he answered. Curious to see if the suspect would spill any details by mistake were he involved, he left out the details regarding the employees who had lost their hearts, or the presence of Heartless.

The young man breathed a sigh of relief. “Glad to hear that, man,” he said. “As I’m sure you could figure out, I ain’t the biggest fan of Shinra, and I’d actually be glad to see something put a stop to them draining the planet, y’know? But man, if I wasn’t scared when I saw it blow its top!”

Goofy scratched his forehead uncertainly, starting to think that he might not actually know anything about the bombing. Sora took Kairi’s sketch out of his pocket and unfolded it, showing it to the suspect. The young man blinked in surprise and his face contorted into a fearful expression, but then it faded as he noticed certain details.

“Hang on. This almost looks like something we would be able to make,” the young man said. “But this here is kinda different. I don’t think I recognize these components, but I think I saw one of these types in pictures at that big ol’ fun park.”

Aqua raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying that this isn’t the work of AVALANCHE?” she asked.

The member shook his head. “Couldn’t be, lady. Couldn’t be,” he replied. “Wait. You guys got a look at this thing?”

Zack nodded. “Yeah. When we got to it, there were ten minutes on the clock. I tried to disarm it, but failed.”

The young man blinked. “Funny. I’m pretty sure that you’d be able to disarm ours pretty easy. I think someone did on one of our factory hits.”

Mickey and Donald looked at him, dumbfounded. They were trying to wrap their heads around the fact that he had just confessed to at least one of AVALANCHE’s attacks without provocation, and he did not seem to realize his blunder.

Zack, Sora and Aqua traded glances. “I’m starting to think we’ve hit a dead end,” Zack surmised.

Before they could discuss the matter further, they heard a scream. The AVALANCHE member jumped in fright.

“Heartless in the street right ahead of you,” Cissnei reported over the comm link.

Zack turned to the man they had been interrogating. “Stay here,” he ordered. With that, he and his six companions ran out into the street, where they saw more than twenty fiends running or flying around.

* * *

Director Scarlet sat in a chair filing her nails as she watched her employees assemble machines and weapons through a window into the workshop below. She swiveled around when she heard three pairs of footsteps. She put the nail file down and stood up. “Now, what are you doing here?” she asked sharply as Reeve, Riku and Kairi entered her office.

“These two wished to investigate something of concern,” Reeve explained. He looked down at the two teenagers, opening the floor to them.

“We ran into a few of your robots in the streets earlier today,” Kairi prefaced. “At first, they seemed to do what they were supposed to, whatever the troops told them to do.”

“But then, all of a sudden, they went out of control,” Riku continued. “A few Heartless caused some damage to them, and they just went haywire, attacking wildly and turning on the troops.”

“We wanted to know how that could have happened,” Kairi finished.

Scarlet glared at them, but Riku and Kairi simply stared back, waiting for a response. After a long moment, Scarlet sighed. “Fine. I suppose that malfunctioning weapons won’t be able to get the job done, and that would certainly be bad for business. Come along, children. Let us take a look.”

The four of them took the stairway down into the workshop. Scarlet led her visitors to a group of men assembling circuitry. When the electricians felt Scarlet’s stink-eye, they stopped what they were doing and turned to face her.

“Freddie, tell these two about how you program the robots,” Scarlet ordered.

“It’s Frank, ma’am,” the electrician whom she addressed said sheepishly. He promptly recoiled from her glare and cleared his throat. “Of course. You see, the circuits are designed and put together so that the computer ‘brain’ sends the commands directly to each part of the machine, and the ‘brain’ only sends commands based on what remote controls order it to do.” He pointed to direct the guests’ gaze to a blueprint mounted on a nearby wall. “As you can see, the computer is housed in a fortified section near the back. If the surrounding circuitry is damaged, the commands following the damaged paths are lost, like if you suffer spinal injury and are crippled, you won’t be able to use or even feel your legs.”

Kairi put her hand to her chin contemplating what this would mean. “So, if the circuits are damaged, the robot wouldn’t move around erratically, but it would stop working,” she surmised.

Frank nodded. “Precisely. We take our programming very seriously, especially since most of the machines we build in this workshop have guns and saw blades mounted on them.”

Riku crossed his arms. “So, if the damage the Heartless dealt didn’t cause the robots to go haywire, what did?” he wondered aloud.

Frank shook his head. “Now that is the million-Munny question.”

* * *

Up on Floor sixty-seven, Professor Hojo examined a set of test results while comparing them to previous results and statistics. Suddenly, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He let out a wheezing chuckle. “I was not expecting a visitor,” he said. “If you want a tour, I’d suggest you join the club downstairs.”

“I am not interested in viewing your company’s claustrophobic cubicles,” the visitor said in an accent that informed Hojo that he was not a local.

The scientist turned around and looked down to see a large gerbil with rabbit ears and a red cape standing in front of him. “Well, what would bring a unique specimen such as yourself to my laboratory?” he asked, already wondering what sort of twisted experiments he could run with this bizarre creature.

Dr. Hämsterviel chuckled. “Today, I had developed an interest in your colleague’s inventions and your company’s energy supply. But I have also heard rumors of your innovations in genetic science,” he said. “I also happen to be a pioneer in genetic engineering,” he added proudly.

Hojo grinned. “So, you are the one responsible for recent events,” he guessed. “I would then assume that you are also behind the presence of the Heartless?”

Hämsterviel smiled. “Indeed. And I am quite curious about their physical properties.”

Hojo let out a high-pitched, wheezing laugh. “Well, then. How about we swap notes and take a look for ourselves?” he suggested.

* * *

Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Zack, Donald, and Goofy proceeded to fight the Heartless in the streets. In the meantime, they worked to evacuate the civilians, with help from the Turks. After the majority of the civilians were out of the way, Reno and Cissnei entered the fray, brandishing their baton and Fuuma Shuriken, respectively. Troopers, Paratroopers, Neoshadows, and Morning Stars rampaged around the avenue, but the eight fighters made sure that they would not be able to cause significant damage.

Sora carved through a trio of Neoshadows at the edge of the battlefield, guiding the last of the bystanders out of the crossfire. While he was busy with the Neoshadows, a Morning Star came up behind him, aiming for a surprise attack. He heard a thud and a slashing noise and turned around to see the Morning Star fall down, split cleanly in half with a large sword down the middle. He followed the length of the silver blade up to its towering owner.

The newcomer stood nearly eight feet tall, the exposed sections of his arms rippling with muscle, and he was fully garbed in red, silver and gold armor blended with a red coat, evoking the image of a samurai. A large red sash was wrapped around his head and chest, and he also wore gold boots and black fingerless gloves. His belt had a circular bronze buckle designed to resemble a demonic face. His skin was a medium grey tone, and his face was drawn with red makeup lines. More amusingly, his legs were covered in gray cloth pantaloons with red polka dots.

“Well, then! We meet at last, warrior friend!” the samurai shouted in a deep, booming voice. He hefted his sword up and raised it high in the air while locking his solid white eyes on Sora. “I have traveled far and wide to enter this challenge, and I hope neither of us will be left disappointed.”

Sora cocked his head to the side. “And who are you?” he asked.

The giant warrior laughed. “I am a swordsman of legend and revere, traveling the universe for challenge and adventure! I have heard tales of your heroic exploits, and I believe that the legends you leave in your wake may be almost as great as mine! Now, allow me to face you in a duel of champions!”

Sora shrugged. “Listen, I appreciate the offer, but this isn’t really a good time. How about we do this some other time?” he suggested.

The warrior shook his head and brandished his sword, conjuring a naginata in his left hand as well. “Nay, Keyblade master! Our epic standoff starts now, for you now face the master swordsman, Gilgamesh!”

However, before he could make another move, Gilgamesh found himself being barreled over from behind as a Shinra robot plowed into him from behind. The robot, consisting of a floating black orb for the bottom half, a torso, two armored and clawed arms, and a head with a foot-long spike with a cross-shaped cross-section jutting out of the “face”. The robot stopped to regain its balance after knocking into Gilgamesh, then turned to chase after the Heartless.

Gilgamesh used the naginata as a support in pushing himself to his feet. He looked at Sora sheepishly. “Or maybe you’re a bit preoccupied at the moment. I should try to engage you later,” he said. With that, he jumped so high so fast that he quickly vanished from Sora’s sight even as the boy looked up to try to follow his path.

Sora turned his focus back to the action when he heard Reno scream “Oh, come on!” He saw that a Neoshadow was on top of the robot, which was flying around and attacking the Turk and Donald. Donald cast Blizzard and knocked the robot, designated Moth Slasher, back through the air. Reno swatted at its arm. Goofy threw his shield, which sliced the Neoshadow and knocked it off of the Moth Slasher. Sora blinked curiously as he saw something pink attached to the back of the robot’s head. He threw his Keyblade, letting it spin horizontally as it flew toward the robot. It cut right through the point where the torso met the orb. Donald and Reno backed away as the Keyblade passed them. Sora summoned his weapon back to hand as the top half of the robot slid off of the orb and crashed into the ground.

He turned to see that Mickey, Aqua, Goofy, Zack, and Cissnei were defeating the last of the remaining Heartless. When Aqua sliced through the final Neoshadow, the party regrouped. Donald stooped down to rip the pink deformity out of the Moth Slasher’s head, then shoved it into his pocket.

“Well, that was a bit of a complication,” Cissnei declared as she folded her shuriken up.

“Wasn’t really much of an issue,” Mickey argued. “I think we got what we came here for, anyway.”

“I’d actually like to ask that guy a few more things, though,” Aqua said.

Suddenly, Zack, Cissnei and Reno heard a report over their comm links. “Suspect has been apprehended. Bringing him back to HQ for interrogation.” They turned to locate the troop who had spoken, and the others followed their gaze. They all saw a trio of Shinra troops dragging the AVALANCHE member down the street, the young man sporting a fresh bruise under his eye.


	102. Chapter 101: Underneath the Rotting Pizza

The party stood outside of the Public Safety Division’s detainment room for an hour waiting for Heidegger and the two officers who accompanied him to finish their “interrogation” of the AVALANCHE member. Everyone in the party doubted the nature of the interrogation, as all they could hear was the echo of what was undoubtedly a large number of punches. The other directors and the Turks maintained stoic expressions, although Elena was clearly uneasy. Kairi, Mickey and Goofy winced with each pound.

After several agonizing minutes, which probably were not as agonizing for some people as they were for others, the door opened up and Heidegger stepped out, with the officers following behind him. Riku and Aqua peeked past them into the detainment room and felt glad that they had not had dinner. The AVALANCHE member was covered in bruises. He was coughing up blood and clearly had a broken arm and jaw.

“Gya haa haa haa!” Heidegger cackled. “Good news, everyone. I got a confession out of him. AVALANCHE is guilty of blowing up the reactor.”

Sora, Riku, Donald, and Zack crossed their arms and glared at him dubiously. Kairi put her hands on her hips and let out a “humph”. Goofy scratched his forehead while Mickey simply sighed and Aqua shook her head. Even barring the fact that the suspect had told them, in apparent honesty, that AVALANCHE was not responsible, it was obvious that Heidegger’s claims were suspect at best.

“So, I suppose you’re going to send a squad of heavily-armed soldiers to their base to crush their alliance?” Aqua asked sardonically.

Tseng shook his head. “Unfortunately, we do not know the location of their current hideout,” he said.

“Current?” Kairi parroted, wondering what could have happened to their base in the past.

“We do believe that their base is in the slums beneath Sector 4,” Rufus added.

“Kya ha ha!” Scarlet laughed. Reeve pinched the bridge of his nose. Riku and Kairi looked at him sympathetically, imagining how tiring it must be to hear his coworkers’ laughs on a frequent basis. “Then I suppose we’ll have to send the soldiers and my weapons in there to take them out!”

“Gya haa haa haa! And if they’re not there, we’ll just keep running through looking for them!” Heidegger added.

Mickey, Kairi and Goofy gasped in horror at their callousness. This only caused Scarlet to widen her smirk.

Sora balled his hands into fists. “Don’t you think the overkill strategy is a bit much?” he asked. Realizing that it was useless to try to appeal to their human decency, he decided to try to appeal to their pragmatism. “How about this? If you go in all guns blazing, you’ll give them a warning and the time to either escape or prepare and fight back. If that doesn’t happen, you’ll only inspire more people to be like AVALANCHE and act out against you. And this time, they might  _ actually _ pull deadly stunts like reactor bombings.”

Rufus crossed his arms. “You sound rather skeptical about AVALANCHE’s culpability,” he observed.

Sora turned his glare to Rufus. “Considering that the guy told us that AVALANCHE couldn’t have done it, and he didn’t seem like he was that good at keeping secrets, anyway…”

“Not to mention, when you came out of that room, he didn’t look like he would have been able to say anything, let alone any sort of ‘confession’,” Aqua added.

Rufus raised an eyebrow. “Very well, then. Perhaps you would rather go down and seek them out yourselves, and determine the truth for yourselves,” he suggested snidely.

“Maybe we will!” Sora shot back.

“Then by all means,” Rufus dared. “You all go ahead. And report back to me once you get your ‘answers’.”

“Hold up!” Donald interrupted. All eyes turned to the duck. “There’s something you need to see. The robots weren’t malfunctioning.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the pink block. “I found this on the last robot, and it doesn’t look like it was always supposed to be there!”

Mickey blinked in surprise. “Is that a Gummi block?” he asked.

“So, you are familiar with the meteor fragments?” Reeve inquired.

Goofy nodded. “We got here in a spaceship made out of them,” he replied.

“That is something we call an Entice-G,” Scarlet explained. “We’ve discovered that it has the capability to hack into and allow a separate user to override programming in a computerized system.”

Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald’s eyes widened and they looked at the Weapons Development director with suspicion.

“What are you looking at me for?” Scarlet asked in mock offense. “We have one that we’ve been studying, but it’s locked in a secure vault. And it only works when it’s been plugged into the computer in question. And after the reports of the initial malfunctions came in, I checked on the block. It’s still in containment.”

“So someone else has these Gummi blocks and is using them to control your robots,” Mickey determined. “What for?”

“That, I doubt we will be able to determine at this point,” Rufus argued. “Presently, I believe the crimes of AVALANCHE are a higher priority. You said that you wanted to investigate on your own. So, unless you would prefer that I allow Heidegger and Scarlet to do things their way…”

“Fine!” Zack interrupted. “We’ll go.” He turned around and started to lead the party out.

Riku stopped and turned back to face Rufus. “I’d suggest that you not pull anything while we’re gone,” he warned.

Rufus smirked. “I give you my word that we will not act until you report back to us,” he assured.

Riku, and Donald as well, continued to glare at him and his associates as the party left the room, and they soon exited the building.

* * *

The group walked through Sector 8 and climbed onto the train at the Sector 1 station, where Zack explained that they would ride it to the Sector 5 slums, and they would go to the Sector 4 slums directly from there. They remained silent for the first stretch of time between the train starting up and its arrival at the next station. After the train started moving again, Aqua spoke up.

“These Shinra people have a funny way of dealing with their enemies,” she noted bitterly.

Zack nodded gravely. “I can’t argue with that,” he conceded. “AVALANCHE isn’t even that big of a group. Like Elena said, they rarely even have the resources to even blow up a warehouse. But Rufus likes to intimidate people into submission, and Mister Gya-haa-haa and Miss Kya-ha-ha love responding to anything they don’t like with excessive force. There was this one time a couple years ago, back when Rufus’ father was still alive and running the company, when the Turks found AVALANCHE’s base in the Sector 7 slums, a few days after the band, which was made up of only half a dozen people, lit up a factory after hours.”

“What happened?” Mickey asked.

“You see the split in the plate when you flew in?” Zack asked. The others thought for a moment before nodding. “Shinra activated a destruct sequence in the pillar holding the plate up, and dropped it on the slums below, saying that AVALANCHE did it. Under orders, Reno carried it out, though I don’t think he was happy about it.”

The others merely stared at him in shock. They attempted, to varying degrees of success, to wrap their heads around the cruelty of this world’s leaders. Destroying two districts of a city just to kill half a dozen people. For Mickey’s part, he had heard the adage “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”, but that seemed to be far too many eggs that were broken to complete one objective, especially since the  _ enemies _ they had been trying to quash were supposed to be terrorists.

“How… How do you do it, Zack?” Aqua asked. “How do you continue to fight in this?”

Zack shook his head. “All I can do is try to find the light,” he said in a dejected tone. “Find the good to stand up for in this twisted mess, and find other angels to stand up with me. It’s tough when the world is run by the monsters, but I look for the light where I can find it.”

Aqua leaned over and pulled Zack into a hug. She wrapped him up and swaddled his pain, sadness, guilt, kindness, and hope in the warmth of her embrace. Tears rolled down her face as she could only feel sympathy for her friend who had faced all of this on his own.

Listening to Zack’s tales about the evils of Shinra, Aqua felt immense sympathy, and she also felt as though she gained some perspective. When she was in the Realm of Darkness, all she had were memories to keep her company, and tantalizing questions regarding the fate and well-being of her friends to torture her. But Zack, he dealt with reality each day, a reality where a corrupt organization ruled its world with an iron fist and unleashed brutality upon the people on a whim, all while having to work for said organization because that is the only real way he can effectively help people to the best of his ability. While Aqua struggled to hold onto hope that her friends might be safe, Zack was left to try to fight for good in a world where the most powerful people sought to crush it into the ground. They both desperately looked for a reason to keep pushing forward, but while she was simply fighting for basic survival, he dealt with a severe moral dilemma every single day. And his struggle was something that persisted and escalated for twelve years, as opposed to her unknown amount of months.

Aqua released him and pulled away, leaving her hands on his shoulders for a brief moment supportively, then backed away and wiped the tears from her face.

Zack sighed. “When I found out what President Shinra wanted to do, I tried to go and stop it, but Heidegger’s troops held me back, until it was too late for me to do anything,” he recounted. “When I was done lashing out at everything in punching range, I… I wanted to kill him. Everyone tried to stop me, but they only managed to slow me down. On the way up, I took my anger out on the Heartless that appeared in front of me. But when I got up there, there were Heartless flooding the office, and the guy was dead on his desk, a set of yellow-and-blue daggers in his back.”

Sora raised an eyebrow. “Yellow-and-blue daggers?” he asked, not sure why that rang a bell. Kairi gulped from a reflex that she could not quite make sense of.

Zack nodded. “A few hours later, Rufus flew in and took over,” he continued. “After that, my anger left me and I lost the strength to keep lashing out. I locked myself in my room to wallow in grief and self-pity. Cissnei came in to try to comfort me, though it mostly ended up being just us wallowing… together…” He trailed off momentarily, a slight look of embarrassment crossing his face. Riku and Kairi traded curious and intrigued glances. Zack cleared his throat. “She told me that the Turks weren’t happy with having to do it either. Reno hit the bar to cope, and she would’ve joined him but she thought it wouldn’t be fair to me, with my SOLDIER metabolism and all. It was still awful, but I knew that there were still people who wanted to do the right thing.”

Sora shook his head. “Then why don’t you do something about it?” he asked. “Why don’t you all join forces and put a stop to this? Put someone who knows what’s right in that office instead of someone as cruel and ruthless as Rufus or Heidegger or Scarlet?”

Zack shrugged. “Tseng doesn’t think it’d be wise. The troops are desensitized and accepting of the brutality the execs preach, so even if we did something, they might not be too receptive of it, and Reeve told me that Rufus put a lot of contingencies in place in case something happened to him,” he explained. “In the end, all we could agree to do was try to make sure that stuff like the plate dropping and police overkill are kept to a bare minimum.”

Riku shook his head and looked Zack straight in the eyes. “Listen to me, Zack. Even when things look rough and there are bad people in charge, you are not powerless. Everyone has the power to make a difference. The only question is if you have the will to see that change made.”

They heard a voice come in over a loudspeaker, presumably by the conductor. “Now approaching the Sector 5-Below Station,” the voice said. At that point, there was only a handful of other passengers on the train. They felt the train begin to slow down, hearing a soft squeal as the driver put the brakes on. Less than a minute later, the train stopped and the doors opened.

“Well, here’s our stop,” Zack said. He and his friends stood up and climbed off onto the station platform one at a time.

Aqua turned to face Zack. “Okay. So, which way to Sector 4?” she asked.

* * *

They walked through a street lined with ramshackle houses that appeared to have been constructed and reconstructed with wooden boards and sheets of metal, while others had been built out of cannibalized materials from old and rusted construction equipment. Each step was met with a soft crunch as they walked over dried-out dirt. A few of the townspeople appeared nervous when they saw Zack, apparently recognizing his SOLDIER uniform.

Kairi looked up into the air, where all natural light was blocked by the heavy steel plate hundreds of feet in the air, feeling sad as she was unable to feel the sun’s warm glow or see the sky’s calming blue. “These people never see the sky?” she asked sympathetically.

Zack shook his head. “There are a few busted patches where sunlight shines through, but otherwise no,” he replied.

“Why’s the plate even there, anyway?” Goofy asked.

“I don’t know the full details, but from what I understand, when Shinra built the reactors, they came up with a city design that would supposedly be a better setup for the Mako flow mechanics, which involved raising the piping and generators up to about the halfway point. When the reactors began to drain the earth around the city, Shinra officially commissioned the plate and moved most of the people up on top. By most, I’m referring to themselves and the people who were most able to pay for what they sold, while leaving the poor down in what was left of the old towns.”

“That’s awful,” Aqua said, empathetic to the people who suffered without feeling the warmth of the sun on their skin. She imagined that there were some people who never felt the sun’s rays or even seen the sky.

“And the thing is, most people up top don’t even know how bad things are down here,” Zack added. “The majority of them don’t really put much thought to the fact that there are people living under the plate in sections that are actually called ‘slums’. They’re a bit more concerned with their own issues, while Shinra’s propaganda keeps them from realizing there is a problem.”

They continued on in silence, passing multiple houses and noticing the difference between the more makeshift or haphazard structures with candles in the windows or old, flickering lights and the sturdy brick and metal homes with working electricity and most likely plumbing above the plate. At a few points, they came across some Heartless, but made short work of them. Soon, they left the residential part of the sector and came into what appeared to be the best approximation of a downtown district, with what appeared to be drug stores and cafés.

“So, where should we look?” Donald asked. “It’s not like anyone’s just going to point them out to us.”

Zack shrugged. “Standard procedure? Find a store or eatery, sit down, and make small talk, then wait for someone to slip up,” he advised.

“Where were they the first time around?” Kairi asked.

“In a bar, from what I heard,” Zack replied.

“Let’s try something else,” Sora protested. “Riku, Kairi and I are underage.”

“Same here,” Aqua added.

“How about that diner?” Goofy suggested, pointing to one of the buildings.

“Sounds good. I could go for a meal,” Riku agreed, feeling his stomach grumble.

“Ahem.”

They all turned to see the source of the voice, and saw a muscular dark-skinned man glaring at them from the shadows of a side alley. He had short black hair and a full beard, and he had a scar on his right cheek and a tattoo on his left shoulder. He wore a green tank top wrapped around with straps, a brown unzipped jacket with the sleeves ripped off, green pants, brown boots, and a fingerless glove on his left hand. What stood out the most about the man was that, at the end of his right wrist, rather than a hand, he had a cylindrical steel block with smaller cylindrical tubes sticking out of the face, which a few of the party members realized was some sort of gun attachment.

“This way,” the man ordered coldly. Nervously, they followed him as he led them around and behind the diner. He then stopped and turned to face the party, keeping his icy glare. “Now, what are you SOLDIER numbskulls doing here, looking for my crew?”

“Oh, so you’re with AVALANCHE?” Goofy surmised. “And you just came up to tell us you were here?”

The man shrugged. “I overheard you talking about your strategy, so I figured I’d just cut out the middleman,” he admitted. “And I’m its leader. Now, I’ll ask again: what are you numbskulls doing here?”

Zack held his hands up in a placating manner. “Sorry, Barret… er, Mr. Wallace. Honestly, it was either this or let the higher-ups lead a squadron of soldiers and military robots to destroy everything in their path until they crushed you and your men,” he explained.

“What’s this all about? What have we done to get them so riled up?” Barret asked, frustrated.

“The Sector 6 reactor was blown up,” Sora replied. Barret glared daggers at him and gritted his teeth. “Or at least that’s what Shinra seems to be sure of,” Sora added quickly as he heard what sounded like a gun cock coming from Barret’s right arm. “And Rufus and Heidegger are perfectly fine with pinning it on you and using it as an excuse to strike you down. They tortured one of your men and claimed that they got him to confess.”

“Porkins?” Barret asked. Zack nodded. The AVALANCHE leader cursed. “Poor guy. Course, he wouldn’t need to be tortured to make a confession if it were legit. Kid can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“We noticed,” Riku snarked.

“Come with me,” Barret ordered. He led them around to the side door and let them in. He guided them to a counter and had them sit down, then walked around so he stood on the other side.

A little girl who appeared to be about five years old sat in a nearby chair, having been momentarily playing with a stuffed cat doll. She had light skin and brown hair, and she wore a pink dress with an orange bow at the collar. “Hi, daddy,” she said to the man with the gun arm. Barret smiled and rubbed her head lovingly. The girl looked at the party, mostly at Zack. “Hi, Zack. Are these your friends?” The newcomers smiled warmly at her, and Kairi and Aqua each gave her a friendly wave.

“Now, to business,” Barret said assertively, turning all eyes back to him.

“Okay,” Zack affirmed. “I guess we should start with:  _ did _ you do it?”

Barret shook his head. “No, we didn’t. I heard about it, though. One of the Turks led a group to clear the area before it blew,” he said. “Surprised they cared to make sure the people down here were safe.”

“I called it in and told them to make sure you guys were safe as well,” Zack explained.

“You wouldn’t know anything about the Heartless—the shadowy creatures, would you?” Kairi asked.

Barret gritted his teeth as his eyes lit up in anger. “Those things have been causing trouble all around the neighborhood! They’ve been trashing stuff and chasing people down!” he yelled, the mention of the monsters striking a nerve. “AVALANCHE has been trying to clear them out, but I can’t do a thing about them!” He held up his right arm to show off his gun prosthetic. “I fire everything I got at them, but it doesn’t do jack!”

“It’s not exactly that they’re immune to bullets,” Mickey clarified. “They pass right through them, but they leave such small holes that the wounds close up almost immediately.”

Barret stroked his beard in contemplation. “That explains why clubs and rocks have been doing more work. But that leaves me a sitting duck, and I’m ashamed of that since I’m supposed to be the guy they look up to. The only thing I can do is throw a few grenades, but the shrapnel could cause unwanted casualties.”

“You could punch them,” Sora suggested.

Barret shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a shot. Now, why were you asking about those things?”

“When we got to the reactor, the place was crawling with hundreds of them, especially in the core where the bomb had been planted,” Zack explained.

Barret sighed. “So, those things are flying around whoever was behind the bombing. Question is, who was it?”

“Also, how are we going to convince Shinra that you’re innocent?” Goofy asked.

The girl raised her hand to draw the group’s attention as if she was in a class answering a teacher’s question. “If they’re so eager to frame AVALANCHE, why did they let you come here to try to prove they’re innocent?” she asked in an innocent and sincere tone.

Riku’s eyes widened as her words sunk in. “Aw, crud!” he cursed under his breath.

Everyone froze as they heard the shuffling of footsteps from outside. Amidst that noise were the grinding of metallic gears, the stomping of robotic feet, and the grumbling yelps of random civilians who were no doubt being roughly shoved aside. Then their blood chilled on hearing a sound that confirmed everyone’s suspicions.

“Gya haa haa haa!”

Barret reached across the counter and lifted Zack by the collar. “You led them here?!” he accused angrily.

Zack gulped. “Unwittingly, apparently,” he choked.

“Come on!” Sora called, beckoning for everyone to head outside.

Grumbling, Barret let go of Zack and turned to one of the bus boys. “Get Marlene into the back, and tell everyone to take cover,” he ordered. The bus boy nodded and picked the little girl up before heading through the door leading into the kitchen. Barret, along with Zack, Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Riku, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy ran out the front doors, where they were faced with Rufus Shinra, Heidegger, Tseng, Reno, Cissnei, a couple dozen infantrymen, and three saw-armed Cutter Machine Robots.

“Hello,” Rufus greeted with a smirk on his face. “Thank you for reporting back to me so quickly. Now, shall we get to business?”


	103. Chapter 102: Shinra Ambush

Zack glared at Rufus. “You used us to lead you here!” he accused.

Rufus nodded. “And you helped us determine the location of AVALANCHE’s hideout, of which I am appreciative,” he replied confidently.

“Now, let’s squash these vermin!” Heidegger cheered.

Barret held his right wrist and prepared to aim his gun arm at the Shinra executives. “Y’all Shinra are the vermin, killing the planet and busting up people as far as it conveniences you!” he accused. He focused his glare on Rufus. “And you’re their president! That makes you King VERMIN! The dirtiest rat in this trash hole!” Sora, Kairi and Donald could not help but to snicker.

“They didn’t do anything!” Zack argued. “You know they didn’t!”

“The people won’t care, so long as there is something to placate their anxiety,” Rufus claimed calmly. “The sight of the reactor blowing up pushed them to the brink of panic. Hearing that justice has been served will calm them down.”

“But that’d be a lie! You’re just using it as an excuse to persecute people who don’t agree with you!” Sora shouted back.

“People are ignorant,” Rufus replied. “They’ll feel better as long as someone is punished.”

“Some Public Safety department,” Riku quipped bitterly. “You don’t care about the well-being of the people.”

Rufus frowned and brushed his bangs aside. “I thank you for vanquishing the Heartless threat in my city, but from here onward, you are dismissed. I would suggest you leave, and let us handle our business,” he said coldly. He turned to speak to Heidegger, but turned back when he heard the five Keyblade wielders, the wizard, and the knight summon their weapons. Zack pulled his sword off of his back, and Barret raised his arm up and pointed the gun prosthetic at Rufus and Heidegger.

“We can’t let you do that,” Zack declared.

Rufus raised an eyebrow. “You would turn against us now?” he asked.

Zack’s eyes narrowed. “A SOLDIER First Class has the privilege to refuse orders if he so chooses,” he said. “I stuck with this even when Shinra did unspeakable things because I wanted to help people and do the right thing to the best possible ability. But now, the best position is right here, and the wrong side is right in front of me.”

“And you’re gonna be the hero now?” Heidegger spat.

Zack smirked. “It’s what I always wanted. And better now than never, right?”

Rufus turned around and strolled through the crowd of infantrymen. “Burn AVALANCHE to the ground,” he ordered calmly.

Behind his bushy beard, Heidegger grinned maliciously. He pointed forward. “Charge!” he yelled.

One of the soldiers prepared to simply open fire, but Aqua cast a Fire spell to blast the gun out of his hands, which also sent him flying. Eight troops charged forward to engage, so Sora, Riku, Zack, and Goofy ran up to meet them. The troops attempted to strike them with their batons as well as use close-range fire, but the swordsmen swiftly overpowered their foes with a few combo strings while Goofy easily blocked the gunfire with his shield, even at one point pinning his shield up to the end of the barrel of one of the guns, causing the firearm to explode in the troop’s hands while Goofy did not budge.

Aqua glanced around and saw that there were civilians on the scene. She turned to face Barret. “Mr. Barret, we need to get everyone out of the way safely,” she said before running off to help some of the people out of the crossfire.

Barret stared after her, somewhat dumbfounded. “Who you callin' Mr. Barret?” he mumbled. “That don’t sound right.” Nevertheless, he got to work, shouting for people to get clear while keeping his gun arm trained on the Shinra soldiers. One of the troops turned to target him, but he quickly shot him down with a few spinning rounds.

Some of the troops fired at the diner, but Mickey and Kairi used Reflect to deflect the bullets while Donald cast Thundaga to disable the attackers. The three proceeded to use magic to dispel any troops that attempted to shoot up the diner and any AVALANCHE members inside.

While the fight went on, a figure crept up to the scene from behind the forces of Shinra. Holding an Entice-G in his hand, he snickered as he made his way to one of the Cutter Machines. He had asked the gerbil what he intended for the hacking Gummi blocks, to which he said that their use on the Shinra-made machines were only for practice with the technology. He also wanted to use the machines’ scanners, which were used to determine friend from foe, to gather biometric readings on the Keyblade wielders and their companions, such as the First Class SOLDIER. The scientist, impressed with this research, requested an opportunity to personally gather an up-close real-time study of the visiting warriors. And so, he determined that he would take advantage of Shinra’s plan to attack the AVALANCHE base to get his reading on the eight persons of interest.

A stuffed cat doll with black and white fur, wearing a gold-colored crown and red shoes, and carrying a miniature megaphone, the same toy that Marlene had been playing with earlier, slipped out of the diner’s side door and, moving autonomously, ran up to get a closer look at the scene. It glanced around, surveying the danger.

From his surveillance point in his office, Reeve studied the image projected via the robotic doll’s camera eyes. He sighed in exasperation. He had had a feeling that Rufus and Heidegger would attempt to trick Zack and the new guys. Now, he was wondering what he could do about it. Then, in the corner of the screen, he saw a shifty figure in white clothing, hiding behind some garbage.

“What’s this?” he muttered to himself as he squinted to try to identify the figure. “What is that man doing?” He watched as the figure stepped up to one of the robots, unnoticed by all others, and reached up to jam the pink block into the robot’s rear circuitry. “Oh dear. He’s using another of those blasted Entice blocks!” He typed into his keyboard and toggled a joystick to make the cat doll move.

Zack knocked down a troop, but another one closed in behind him and pointed his gun at the back of his head. However, Aqua struck him in the head, then dealt a few more blows to knock him out. Zack turned to her and grinned. They both turned when they saw Cissnei approaching them, holding onto her collapsed shuriken.

“What is this?” the Turk asked. “Why are you fighting against us?”

“AVALANCHE didn’t blow the reactor up,” Zack told her. “Heidegger just tortured the guy and made that whole ‘confession’ up so he and Rufus could use it as an excuse to gun them down.”

Cissnei blinked in surprise. “Are… Are you sure?”

Aqua nodded. “They didn’t make the bomb. They  _ couldn’t _ have made the bomb.”

Cissnei’s eyes widened as she tried to process this information. She shook her head in disbelief, coming to understand that Shinra was not even doing something unethical under legitimate pretenses. This was just wrong.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw two infantrymen running up and aiming their guns at the diner. Stepping past Zack and Aqua, she opened up her shuriken, which was made of red and silver steel and consisted of a circle with four pointed blades, and raised it over her opposite shoulder. With a flick of her arm, she threw the shuriken, which looped around and struck the troops’ guns, knocking the weapons out of their hands, then came back to hit them both in the face, making them stumble back.

Cissnei caught her shuriken and turned back to face Zack and Aqua. “We can’t let that happen,” she said resolutely. “Not again.” She ran off and jumped, delivering a flying kick to another troop’s head.

Tseng approached her, a puzzled look on his face. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Our orders were—”

“Until now, our superiors have been straight with us on our missions,” the redhead interrupted, her tone showing restrained anger. “But here they deliberately concealed how wrong this sting is. Our mission directly implied by the ‘orders’ was to take out the terrorists responsible for the reactor bombing. But the intention behind this strike involves the murders of countless innocents in their desire for control. And I cannot stand for this injustice any longer.” Tseng’s expression remained unreadable. Cissnei stared coldly into his eyes. “I don’t want to cross you, Tseng, but you can step back from this, or you can go down like that guy.” She pointed at the troop she had kicked in the head to emphasize her point. When he tried to push himself to his feet and reached for his gun, she stomped him in the crotch, causing him to grunt in pain and slump back down, all without taking her eyes from Tseng.

Several seconds passed without Tseng making any change in expression, rendering it difficult to tell what was going through his head. Finally, he took a small step back. “The paperwork is going to be trouble,” he muttered. He stepped further backward, leaving Cissnei to her decision.

Sora and Riku tag-teamed on an infantryman until they knocked him down and Riku heavily damaged his gun. Another troop raised his gun and aimed to shoot Sora from behind, but the spiky-haired boy whirled around just as he was pulling the trigger and raised his Keyblade to deflect the hail of bullets. A nearby generator exploded as the bullets found their new destination. The troop gulped in fright as Sora thrust himself forward and slammed him through the air with the head of his Keyblade.

Everyone who was not presently occupied with combat turned in surprise when they heard the mechanical spinning of a saw blade. One of the Cutter Machines shook wildly, as if its programming knew that something was wrong and was trying to fight back. It marched forward, at first slowly but then faster. It swung its arms, nearly shredding a few troops with its spinning blades.

Barret was bewildered. “What is going on?” he asked incredulously.

Mickey ran up to him. “It’s been hacked,” he told him. “We need to get everyone to safety.”

“The lad is right.” They turned to see the robotic cat doll approaching them and speaking to them in a Scottish brogue.

“Uh, why is Marlene’s Cait Sith doll walking and talking?” Barret asked, simply confused.

“It’s actually me, Reeve, controlling this robot remotely,” the doll explained. “And for the record, it’s not pronounced as it’s spelled. It’s actually supposed to be called ‘Kett SHEE’.”

Barret blinked. “Reeve? The Urban Development director?”

Cait Sith nodded. “Aye, chap. Someone’s got control over the Cutter Machine, and we need to do something about it.”

“We could destroy it,” Barret suggested.

Tseng approached the trio, drawing their attention. Barret raised his gun arm, but Tseng held up his hand, silently indicating that he need not use violence. “That would seem to be a viable option, but frankly, I am tired of having to deal with these out-of-control robots,” he said. “We need to come up with a lasting solution to the problem.”

Mickey and Cait Sith put their hands to their chins, contemplating what they could do. Mickey blinked, thinking of an idea. “Maybe we could hack back into it and turn the tables,” he suggested.

Cait Sith nodded. “Brilliant! I saw someone plug it in from behind, though I couldn’t make out who.”

Barret thumbed his gun prosthetic. “Then how about we take the sneak out ourselves?”

Cait Sith shook his head. “If he sees us coming, he’ll probably hightail it,” he argued. “Mickey’s right. If I can use my megaphone as a conduit and amplifier, I can take control of it right from my computer. But we’ll need something that can let me bypass the Gummi block’s innate firewalls.”

Mickey reached into his pocket and pulled out the Gummi Ship remote. “This should work,” he said.

“Give me a moment,” Cait Sith requested. A moment passed as Reeve set up a connection to the remote. “There we are! Now, let me see if I can override the remote that’s already linked.”

In the meantime, Rufus ordered a troop controlling the other robots to attack the diner’s defenders while everyone else moved to avoid the rogue robot. Zack moved to destroy the hacked Cutter Machine, but stopped when Tseng relayed the plan over the comm link. He instead focused on fighting the other two robots, promptly slicing off one of the saw arms.

Kairi sent three troops flying around with an Aerora spell while Donald blasted two others with a Blizzaga. Goofy took four out with his tornado spin. Aqua defended against gunfire with her Barrier and took a few more troops out with melee and magic attacks. Riku assaulted one of the robots, slicing its circuitry with his Keyblade and using a ball of Dark Fire to blow up its engine.

Sora threw his Keyblade to knock out a troop that aimed his gun at Mickey and Barret from a distance, then turned around when he heard a gruff chuckle. He found himself facing Heidegger, who was holding a submachine gun and pointing it at him.

“Game’s up,” Heidegger taunted. “Gya haa—”

The Keyblade returned to Sora’s hand and he promptly brought it down on Heidegger’s gun, slicing it into two pieces.

“Huh?” Heidegger gasped in surprise and bemusement.

Sora reared his left fist back and punched Heidegger in the face, sending him stumbling backward and causing him to drop his broken gun. “How about you stop that stupid horse laugh?” he muttered irritably.

Back by the corner of the diner, Cait Sith jumped with an audible cartoonish bounce. His megaphone hummed and beeped. “Got it!” he announced. He turned and held the megaphone in front of his mouth as if he was about to shout something. “I’m taking control of the robot.”

On cue, the jittery robot stopped its rampage and turned around. It marched away from the main area of the fight, making its way toward where Reeve knew the enemy hacker was hiding.

Hojo continuously mashed buttons on his tablet, wondering why the Entice-G was not responding to his controls. When he heard the robot’s saw blades spin, he gulped. He got to his feet and, bending over to avoid being seen, shuffled away from the crate that he had been crouching behind.

Reeve snickered. “Let’s try the Death Joker,” he hissed as he typed in commands to initiate the robot’s self-destruct system.

A few seconds later, the Cutter Machine was engulfed in a fiery explosion. Reeve lost connection to the robot as the Entice-G was consumed in the blast. Hojo was thrown off of his feet. He lost his grip on the tablet, which hit a wall and broke to pieces. Hojo’s glasses also fell off and shattered on the ground. Turning to see that everyone’s attention was taken by the flames, the scientist decided that it would be best if he made his escape.

Barret let out a triumphant scream. Mickey jumped with joy. Cait Sith hopped and cheered while Reeve slouched back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head in satisfaction. Tseng simply smiled and nodded.

As Heidegger regained his senses, he looked around to see the robots all destroyed, Zack and Cissnei having destroyed the last one, and his soldiers beaten and disoriented. He saw some of the slums’ civilians returning to the scene to see what was going on. A few of them picked up trash and started to throw it at the Shinra operatives, yelling and jeering as they did so. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists in anger. “MEN!” he shouted. “GUN THEM—”

“Enough!” Rufus interrupted. “Stand down. It would be best that we retire from this venture.”

Heidegger looked at his boss in disbelief. He attempted to protest, but Rufus glared at him, shutting him up. Sighing, he turned to address his troops. “Pull back, men,” he ordered reluctantly. The infantrymen stood up, with some difficulty, and followed Rufus and Heidegger as they retreated from the field.

The civilians cheered and shouted. Barret let out his own yell. “Yeah! You better run, you vermin!”

The party regrouped, trading high-fives and laughing. “Okay, that felt good,” Zack said with pride.

“We should probably go up with them,” Mickey advised, “and make sure they leave AVALANCHE alone.”

“And let Zack and Cissnei keep their jobs,” Aqua added.

Donald cocked his head in confusion. “Why would they want that?” he asked.

“They might keep Shinra in line,” Riku replied. “And they’d be able to do more good working in Shinra instead of being hunted by Shinra.”

* * *

Back in Rufus’ office, the president of the Shinra Corporation sat at his desk, clasping his hands together as he leaned against the desk, considering his options. Sora, Riku, Aqua, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Zack stood across from him. Heidegger, Scarlet, and Reeve flanked the desk, with Hojo having apparently refused to come up from his lab to join the meeting. The Turks flanked the party. Tseng and Rude kept their stoic expressions while Reno looked around nervously and Elena failed to hide her curiosity. Cissnei tried to keep a straight face, but could not help but smirk when her eyes met Zack’s.

“Well, today has been quite interesting,” Rufus began. “First, you did us all a favor by defeating the Heartless attackers, but then you turned against us and fought our soldiers.”

“That’s because you—” Sora started to protest, but Kairi put her hand on his shoulder to calm him down, shaking her head to tell him to leave it be.

“On the other hand, you aided in countering the hacker’s attacks, and we can assume that he was either killed in the explosion or he was discouraged from resuming his abuse of the Entice Gummi Blocks as you had turned the technology against them. So I suppose I should extend my gratitude.”

Scarlet chuckled. “Regardless of how the assault went, we now know where AVALANCHE is hiding out,” she said confidently. “Next time, we’ll—”

“You won’t be doing anything,” Riku interrupted, shaking his head.

“What do you mean by that?” Rufus asked.

“He means that if you try anything like you did tonight and endanger innocent people, or if you go after AVALANCHE without a legitimate justification, you’ll be in even deeper trouble than you were all day today,” Sora replied.

“Care to elaborate?” Rufus pressed, growing annoyed.

Sora smirked and shrugged mockingly. “Those rogue robots caused a lot of chaos and destruction. You weren’t happy about them, and neither were the people who were caught in the middle of this mess, above and below the plate. It would be a shame if everyone found out about the Entice-G’s that caused the mess, and the fact that you’ve been experimenting with them.”

Scarlet gasped and Heidegger growled. Rufus glared at Sora and Riku. “You expect us to take your threats kindly?” he asked sternly.

Zack shrugged. “We could tell them now, if you like,” he said. Reeve pulled his phone out and tossed it to Zack, who caught it and flipped it open. “Although, I can’t imagine AVALANCHE will be happy.”

There was a moment of tense silence as they found themselves at a standoff. Finally, Rufus sighed. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“Let that AVALANCHE guy, Porkins, go. He didn’t do anything you can properly charge him for,” Riku said. “Leave AVALANCHE alone, and don’t go after them unless they do anything severe that deserves justice, and not to any extent disproportionate to what is deserved. So, if they happen to blow up a factory after hours with minimal casualties, don’t do anything such as dropping one section of the city onto another section of the city. And when you’re taking on a situation in the streets, make sure that your soldiers don’t inflict collateral damage and endanger civilians. Got it?”

Heidegger scoffed. “And if we refuse?”

“Heidegger…” Rufus groaned.

“You know what, never mind. You can keep your Entice-G locked up,” Sora said in a tone of blatant false reassurance. “And we should also hang onto the one we got ahold of.” Donald took the Gummi Block that he had collected out of his pocket and showed it off to the executives. “It would be a shame if it fell out somewhere and landed in the city streets, or in the slums for anyone to find.”

There was another moment of tense silence. Mickey, Zack and Aqua beamed at Sora and Riku with pride. Kairi had to cover her mouth with her hand to hide a wide smile. Reno grinned with amusement.

Rufus finally ended the standoff with a nod. “Very well. We agree to your terms,” he said.

“What?!” Heidegger and Scarlet were flabbergasted.

Rufus stood up. “If our business is concluded, you may go now. I’m sure you have work to do elsewhere.”

Sora grinned. “Thank you, President Shinra,” he said. With that, he, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, and Zack turned around and made their way to the elevator.

* * *

It was not until they reached the ground floor that they began to chat amongst themselves about the events on the top floor. Kairi, Donald and Goofy burst out laughing, with Sora, Zack, Aqua, Mickey, and Riku soon following.

“I can’t believe you just blackmailed those guys!” Kairi said in between laughs.

Riku shrugged. “Had to do something to get them to listen,” he replied as if it was no big deal.

Sora let out another laugh. “What about all that legal jargon? You really sounded like you meant business!”

“You really think they’ll clean up their act?” Aqua asked.

“If they know what’s good for them!” Donald answered haughtily.

Zack nodded. “News of the robots going nuts and the attack on the AVALANCHE diner won’t help with public opinion,” he explained. “And with the panic from the reactor blowing up, they won’t really be able to afford more of a scandal. And with the Heartless making waves again, I doubt they’ll really want to have you as enemies.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Everyone turned to see Reeve and the Turks exiting one of the elevators and making their way over to them. Reeve carried one of his Cait Sith dolls, which Mickey guessed was also a robot. “We had a conference after you left,” the Urban Development director continued.

Tseng turned to face Zack. “In spite of the insubordination in which you participated to do the right thing, the president stated that he will allow you and Cissnei to retain your jobs,” he explained. “He did not appear to be in the mood to go through the complicated and secure procedure of dismissing you.”

Zack nodded. “Good to hear,” he replied.

“And we are going to start making sure that the president and the SOLDIERs enforce the less-brutal police work that Riku advised,” Rude added.

“That’ll take a load off your shoulders, huh?” Kairi told Reeve, sympathetic of his earlier complaints of having to clean up the troops’ messes in the city.

Reeve gave a soft smile and nodded. “And I wanted you to have this,” he said, handing the Cait Sith doll to Sora. “In case we need to communicate, we can do so through this friend.” There was a brief pause as he thought of another option. “You don’t have phones, do you?”

Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy shook their heads, though Sora and Kairi cocked their heads in confusion.  _ Was that what those were that they were using? Portable telephones? _ They then shook their heads along with Aqua.

Reeve shrugged. “Oh, well. I doubt they would work outside of this world’s borders. But now that Mickey has supplied an uplink to your Gummi technology, Cait Sith should still work as a transceiver so long as it is in your ship.”

Sora looked down at the Cait Sith doll in his hands, his gaze focusing on the whimsical expression on its face. Kairi giggled as she admired the stuffed animal. Jiminy slipped out of Sora’s pocket and hopped up to his shoulder to get a look at the doll.

“Thank you,” Mickey said.

“Well, I guess we should get going,” Riku said.

“Take care!” Goofy said, waving.

Zack nodded. He turned to face Aqua, although he addressed everyone else to some extent as well. “Good luck finding what you’re looking for. I know you’ll find it. Just remember to embrace your dreams. And no matter what happens, protect your honor, as a Keyblade Master and a hero,” he advised. He put his fist over his heart. “It’s what’s in here that counts.”

Aqua smiled. “You too, Zack,” she said. She took a step forward and reached up to give him a kiss on the cheek, then took a step back. Cissnei let out a slight chuckle. “Take it from someone who’s had to walk around in empty hopelessness: there is always a light to guide you in the darkness. Oh, and I’ll let Philoctetes and Hercules know that you made hero if I see them.”

With that, the party backed away and began to take their leave, waving good-bye to Zack, Reeve, Tseng, Cissnei, Reno, Rude, and Elena. Kairi reached over to grab Cait Sith’s arm and make the doll wave good-bye as well, earning laughter from Sora, Reeve, Zack, and Reno. They located a Safe Point in the corner of the lobby and used it to beam up to the Gummi Ship. Reno, Rude and Elena’s jaws dropped and eyes widened when they saw them vanish in a column of light.

* * *

Sora set Cait Sith on the floor of the cockpit, with Donald declaring that he would put together a better place to put it.

“Well, that was something, wasn’t it,” Jiminy said as he sat in the cupholder, writing down the events that occurred on Shin-Ra.

“We never actually found out who was responsible for the hackings and the bombing, did we?” Goofy realized.

Mickey shook his head. “I suppose we’ll have to leave the investigation to the Turks,” he said. “But I have a feeling that the hacker isn’t from that world. With luck, we managed to drive him off by using the same trick against him.”

Sora blinked and slapped his forehead as he remembered something that he had forgotten about. “We never got Zack to tell us where he got that sword!”

When Donald and Goofy realized what he was talking about, they sighed and slumped slightly. However, Riku and Kairi looked at Sora with confused expressions. “What’s the big deal about that sword?” Kairi asked.

Sora shook his head in self-directed disappointment. “It looked like the same sword that Cloud had,” he explained.

Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Jiminy’s jaws dropped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you were worried that Cloud didn't appear in this arc, don't worry. When we get back to Shin-Ra, he'll be a central character. Hojo's insane experiments will also be explored further in that period.


	104. Chapter 103: On the Radiant Side

Dilan closed the door in the interrogation room and sat down in the chair across from Braig. The one-eyed former Nobody wore an orange prison jumpsuit, and his arms were cuffed to bars built into the table. A silver band was wrapped around his ankle, with an obsidian stone embedded in it to prevent him from teleporting anywhere. Dilan looked at Braig with his usual scowl, but Braig returned with his patent-pending cocky grin.

Dilan cleared his throat. “Are you ready to answer the questions we left you with?” he asked.

Braig shrugged his shoulders. “Are you ready to quit asking stupid questions?” he shot back dryly.

Dilan chose to take that as a simple “no”, and work from there. “It doesn’t seem as though imprisonment has done much for your attitude.”

Braig chuckled. “Well, I spent the last eleven years being surrounded by idiots. Some of these guys have about as much personality as they did in the first few. Cafeteria food’s not much worse than ‘the slop that never was’; you and Vexen weren’t much of cooks.”

Dilan nodded his head to the side, conceding the point. “You know the funny thing about those idiots?” he asked. “They’ve all woken up as people, and they’ve gone back to being regular people. All except for one.”

Braig let out a mock gasp. “You don’t think a part of him might still be running around, do you?” he teased.

Dilan shook his head. “You and everyone else knows that both Xehanort’s Heartless and Nobody have been slain. Therefore, under normal circumstances, he should have reformed in the same place where he had first split his heart from his body.”

“So? You think I’d know if the old goat had anything up his sleeve? As if!”

Dilan raised an eyebrow, noticing Braig’s choice of words. He had just referred to Xehanort as an “old goat”, but the version that they all knew, whom Ansem had taken under his wing, was younger than Braig by at least a decade. Dilan had been told of the actions of the old Master Xehanort, who, according to the mouse king, was the same person as the younger Xehanort who had become Xemnas. If Braig knew as much about the man as the other former apprentices had until recently, he would not have known about the elder Xehanort. This proved that Braig knew more about Xehanort than he was letting on. Studying Braig’s face, Dilan noticed a small twitch in his brow and a slight gulp in his jugular, signifying that he had realized his folly. This had both positive and negative implications: Dilan may be able to get Braig to slip up and reveal important clues, but the fact that he had caught his own mistake meant that he was likely to be more careful with his wording from now on.

“I remember how, after we first found Xehanort, you spent a lot of time hanging out with him, in spite of his quiet demeanor,” Dilan recounted. “None of us really gave him much thought, aside from Ansem, until he convinced us to conduct our forbidden research in secret. But even before that, you acted unusually close with him. And then, when we became Nobodies, ‘Xigbar’ was the last one to materialize aside from Xemnas himself, and yet you became Number Two in the Organization and his most trusted subordinate, until Saïx was promoted.”

Braig snickered. “Then you should go ask Saïx, since Xemnas clearly trusted him more highly in the Organization than he did me,” he argued. “Xemnas kept his secrets. There was a lot that he didn’t tell me. I even did some eavesdropping to see what else he had going on. Zexion can back me up on that.”

“But now, wherever Xehanort went, rather than rejoining us in the castle on reformation, he left you behind,” Dilan continued. “Whatever stake you had in his plans, past or future, he threw away as he cast you aside. And now, the rest of us are rebuilding our old lives, fixing what we destroyed. And where are you in all of this? Ah, yes. Rotting in a mildew-infested prison cell, putting up with poor hygiene, plastic cutlery, and humorless thugs who won’t react too well once they are made aware of your involvement in the ruination of their former lives and the loss of ten years of normalcy. You don’t even have your powers, so you must learn to sit still for more than an hour, unable to jump to security when you provoke someone with your terrible jokes. Perhaps your aim will deteriorate as well over time, and then you will be nothing more than Number 213568.” He shrugged. “Perhaps that is already the case. Perhaps Xehanort threw you away like rubbish because he realized that is exactly what you are.”

Braig’s eye burned with rage. He tried to throw himself at Dilan, but his restraints prohibited him. “I am not rubbish!” he spat angrily. In spite of his outburst, Dilan did not flinch. Braig slowly realized that Dilan had intended to incense him like that. He took a deep breath and regained his composure, leaning back into his seat lazily. “Yeah, it is a shame. I don’t know what to tell you, pal. Can I go back to my plastic cutlery and prison slop, now?”

Dilan nodded. “I suppose. Although I hope you’ll change your mind and tell us in due time, before Ansem answers our questions and you lose all possible benefits and pardons that a simple confession would gain you,” he said, standing up from his chair.

Braig looked at him, confused. “Ansem?” he parroted.

“Yes, Master Ansem the Wise. He is alive and well,” Dilan explained. “And he was rescued from the Realm of Darkness, along with a woman named Aqua.”

Braig’s eye widened in shock, and he could not prevent himself from letting out a gasp. He calmed himself quickly, but it was too late. Dilan smirked as he left the room. He had not gotten the answers that everyone desired, but he had gained evidence that Braig knew far more than he was letting on. The only question was how he would deal with the information that he had admitted in between this session and the next.

Dilan turned down the hall while two guards went into the interrogation room to uncuff Braig and escort him back to general population.

* * *

In the castle’s computer room, Even ran another program of his design over the computer’s software. When the process was completed, he tried to open one of the corrupt files, but a window popped up proclaiming “THE DATA IS CORRUPT”. Even cursed.

“No such luck with that algorithm, it seems,” Ansem noted solemnly.

Even sighed. “I have done everything I can think of to clean up the corrupted code, even inventing new anti-malware programs to root out blind spots, but this—this mess is indecipherable!” he complained. He raised his fists to slam down on the keyboard console, but a message popped up on screen, saying “PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT”, which guilted him into restraining himself.

Sighing in defeat, Even turned to Ansem. “Would you happen to have faced this problem and developed a solution?” he asked. He had devoted himself to repairing the files on his own, but by this point his ego had been bruised to the point where he was finally willing to branch out for assistance.

Ansem stroked his short beard in contemplation. “I do believe that such errors ring familiar,” he admitted, before shaking his head dejectedly. “But alas, my memory is still a blur. Some things I remember, some I cannot, while others come and go. I am afraid that this is one such challenge that I cannot overcome on my own, with my current state of mind.”

Even groaned and pulled down under his eyelids. “Of course the forces of Kingdom Hearts would have that sort of humor,” he muttered. “Can it not see that an application of your knowledge would prove beneficial to those under its eyes?”

Ansem let out a chuckle. Even turned to face him, bewildered. “What is it?” he demanded.

“I don’t quite know. I may not remember you or the others completely, but your outbursts at the failure of your ‘pure genius’ experiments twinge deep in my heart,” the older man replied. “Another thing this also brings to memory: when conventional studies fail, it helps to think outside of the box. You might find your answer in the strangest of places.”

Even breathed a short laugh. “That brings back memories as well,” he mused. “You were always there with a word of wisdom, even when things seemed bleak, or we did not want to hear it. Especially when we did not want to hear it.”

The scientists shared a brief laugh. After a moment, Even raised his eyebrow as something occurred to him. “Well, perhaps I should check the remaining files, in case my programs did serve to repair even a small amount of the corruption,” he decided before scrolling through the list of files.

* * *

In the castle library, Shera walked down the rows of bookshelves, running her finger along the spines of books. She stopped when she saw a title that piqued her interest and pulled it off of the shelf to examine the cover.

“Well, fancy seeing you here,” a voice said. Shera turned to see Ienzo standing at the end of the aisle near the bottom of the stairs. “What brings you here?”

Shera smiled. “Oh, hello, just looking for some light reading,” she replied, holding up the book that she had drawn. “A little something for tea time. What about you?”

“I’m trying to find something that might tell me about the crystal that Zeromast had. The one that caused Aeleus’ axe sword to disintegrate,” Ienzo explained.

Shera nodded. “It was unnerving to hear about that. Any luck?”

Ienzo shook his head. “None yet. I’ve been combing through whatever writings I could find on magical artifacts and crystology, but it seems none of those scholars have come across such a gem. Then again, I suppose that if something of such power has fallen into mainstream research, it would have been exploited quite a bit throughout history.”

“Of course. And there’s also the possibility that it was from another world.”

“That I cannot determine based on our knowledge of this Zeromast, which just so happens to be next to nothing.”

“He could also be in possession of the only text on the subject.”

“Which leads us right back to that other mystery,” Ienzo said, sighing.

“Still can’t repair the files?”

“Afraid not.”

Shera clicked her tongue in disappointment, and the conversation trailed off. She opened her book and skimmed the preface and first few pages, then closed it and put it under her arm. She glanced back up at the bookshelf to find another book to read, but she stopped and turned back to Ienzo.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked

“I don’t see any problem with that,” he replied.

“What was it like being a Nobody?”

Ienzo cocked his head to the side. “Why do you… Oh. You never developed a Nobody, did you?”

Shera shook her head sadly. “No, I didn’t. The last thing I remember was being smothered with the Shadow creatures, and everything after that was a swirling, indecipherable haze, an unshifting nothing for a really long time. I didn’t even have any sense of time. I didn’t have a sense of anything at all. From what I’ve been told, if your heart is especially strong enough that your body and soul create a Nobody, your primary consciousness continues on in the Nobody, with all of your memories intact. But I… I never had any of that.”

Ienzo shook his head. “I’m not sure if I should pity or envy you. Of course, if you had formed a Nobody, you most likely would have become a Dusk or something, and I never really understood the human condition of the Nobodies that did not retain human appearance.”

“What was it like for  _ you _ ?” Shera reiterated.

There was a pause as Ienzo gathered his thoughts. “Can you imagine a state of being that is about the same as normal human activity, but nothing provokes an emotional reaction? Everything else is normal, but you can’t feel anything around you. You can think, you can remember, you know what it is to feel, but you feel nothing. You just feel empty. Nothing provokes more than the plainest, most basic reaction. You just ‘exist’, but it is a state of being that so contradicts what you think you know about yourself that you start to question even that.”

“That sounds scary,” Shera replied.

“That’s the thing. We couldn’t even be scared. We couldn’t feel sad about it. We couldn’t feel anything. Just… just… beh,” Ienzo said, unable to properly define the situation.

“How did you deal with it?” Shera asked.

“We settled on a purpose. Something to give us a reason to keep going, and something to do instead of just sitting around doing nothing.”

“Getting your hearts back,” Shera guessed.

Ienzo nodded. “It seemed a logical enough idea. It was actually Xemnas’ suggestion. Go figure.”

“Did you know that the Organization was hurting others in their mission?”

“Some of us noticed, but in the state we were in we didn’t care. Perhaps I felt a twinge of something, but I didn’t know what it was. I’m not sure that I had developed enough of a heart to feel any guilt over my actions. I probably would have had to have built up some sort of connection with individuals outside of the Organization to feel anything toward them.”

There was a pause as Shera tried to think of a way to respond. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, “for what you had to go through.”

Ienzo nodded. “I am also sorry, for my role in what happened to this world, and to you.”

Shera shook her head. “Don’t blame yourself. You were just a boy,” she protested.

“I still participated in the experiments, those twisted, cruel experiments. I conducted them with as much knowledge and culpability as my colleagues. Xehanort may have led us into performing them behind Ansem’s back, but we all chose to do so. I was the one who advised Ansem to construct the laboratory where we did so, the containment cells and hidden research facility below the manufactory. And for what? A pursuit of knowledge? A nagging curiosity? Some other ambition?

Shera put her hand on Ienzo’s shoulder comfortingly. “I don’t blame you, Ienzo. I don’t think Ansem would either, if he still remembered,” she said. “What’s done is done, and it’s in the past. We are all human again, and you’re out from under Xehanort’s thumb. What we do from now on is up to us.”

Ienzo nodded. “Thank you,” he replied.

* * *

The blacksmith stopped hammering at the heated steel when he heard the door open. Putting his materials down safely, he stepped out of the workshop and appeared up front to greet the prospective customer. When he saw who it was, he rubbed the ash out of his fire-and-soot-blackened face to make sure he was seeing things right.

“Lali-ho! Do me old eyes deceive me? Is that really Aeleus?” the bearded blacksmith asked with a grizzled voice.

Aeleus nodded. “Hello, Giott. It has been far too long,” he greeted.

Giott laughed heartily. “You could say that again, my friend. How has that Skysplitter been treating you?”

“It has served me well, thank you,” Aeleus replied.

Giott blinked in shock. “Hold, friend. Served? As in the past tense?”

“Afraid so. It was destroyed in a recent battle.”

“Bah! I was certain that it would withstand almost any fearsome force! What sort of monstrous blow pushed it to its limit?”

Aeleus shook his head. “Nothing of the sort. It suffered from the destructive magic contained in a cursed gem. It was reduced to nothing at a touch.”

Giott shook his head. “I see. How unfortunate. I fear there is nothing I can do to ensure that does not happen again. Sorcerous resilience is not one of my specialties. Magic and I don’t really go well together.”

“I understand. Could you perhaps construct a new axe sword for me?”

Giott let out a hearty laugh. “I would be happy to! But you know that such a job would take a month, correct?”

“I am known for my patience, or so I am told. Viking should suffice as an arm in the interim.”

“You won’t be throwing boulders larger than your biceps with that hunk of steel,” Giott scoffed. “That Ansem never put me to the test, only asking for simple arms of stainless steel.”

“I can imagine that Master Ansem would not have wanted the castle to be destroyed with an earthquake whenever I incapacitated an intruder,” Aeleus argued.

Giott snorted. “True enough. Tell you what. I am in the process of working on a weapon just as great as Skysplitter. I’ll have it done within two weeks. Come back a fortnight from now, and I’ll let you have it.”

Aeleus nodded appreciatively. “Thank you, Giott.” With his business concluded, he turned around and exited the shop. Giott returned to the workshop and proceeded to reheat and shape the metal that would become a sword, eager to finish this commission so that he may return his attention to forging the new axe sword.

* * *

In the Restoration Committee’s training grounds, clashing metal and heavy breathing could be heard as a sparring match went on between Leon, Yuffie, and Lea. Leon chose to attack at close range, having already determined that shooting fireballs was useless against the flame-throwing assassin. Yuffie, as usual, kept at a distance, throwing her shurikens at both of her rivals and teleporting in puffs of smoke to avoid punishment. Lea, however, was skilled in both close- and long-range attacks, and his twin chakrams and mastery over fire allowed him to cover both fields at the same time.

Aware that he could not keep Leon at bay for long, Lea held tight to one chakram and used it to block Leon’s Gunblade attacks and deal his own strikes while he threw the other one around, sometimes with and sometimes without flames, to attack Yuffie. Since he was her primary threat at the moment, Yuffie directed the majority of her attacks on Lea, although some of her shurikens still went toward Squall.

“Come here, I’ll make it all stop!” Lea taunted seconds before he conjured a pillar of flame around himself. Leon jumped back to avoid getting caught in the blaze. When the fire died down, Leon threw himself onto the offensive, dealing several rapid slashes that forced Lea onto the defensive. As he was forced to use both chakrams to hold back Leon’s attacks, Lea was left vulnerable to Yuffie’s shurikens, and the slicing stars made it harder for him to stand up against Leon’s strikes.

Lea chuckled. “Now that’s more like it!” He started to build up power, which he released in radial fire bursts when Leon was on the recoil from an attack. This knocked Leon back a few feet, and Lea returned to the offensive. “Burn, baby!” he shouted as he threw one flaming chakram at Leon and the other one at Yuffie. He caught both weapons when they returned and lunged at Yuffie with a trail of fire behind him, then knocked the ninja down with a spinning attack. Yuffie groaned and clutched her side as she fell on her rear. Lea then threw a flaming chakram at Leon, who deflected it with his Gunblade. However, this left him vulnerable as Lea launched himself at him, enveloped in flames, and struck him hard enough to send him flying back into the wall.

Laughing triumphantly, Lea calmed down and dismissed his weapons, willing the fires he left behind to die down. Yuffie stood up and focused her chi into restoring her vitality, healing her burns and scrapes. When she was well enough to walk, she ran over to retrieve a Hi-Potion, which she then brought over to Leon for him to drink and restore his own energy.

When he could stand, Leon’s gaze met Lea’s and he smiled, impressed. “That was a good round,” he said.

Lea let out a laugh. “I got  _ that _ memorized! You almost had me there for a minute,” he replied. He walked over to Leon and Yuffie. “I’ll admit, it’s good to spar with you guys. It’s better than dealing with Xaldin or Xigbar. Don’t tell Dilan I said that.”

“Well, in the Restoration Committee, we need to strengthen our bonds with one another, and the defense patrol needs to keep in top shape,” Leon clarified.

“He’s also saying it was fun,” Yuffie interjected, translating the Leon-compliment. “It’s fun to have more people to train with, too. We don’t usually get to go at it with other friends outside of the Coliseum cups.”

Lea scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. I guess you didn’t have much of that in the last bunch of years if it was just you two on the front lines.”

Leon shook his head. “We sometimes trained with Aerith, but it’s not quite the same,” he admitted.

“Not that that’s a bad thing,” Lea argued. “You two work really well together.”

Yuffie giggled. “Thanks! But you know what would be really fun?”

“What?” Lea asked.

Yuffie put her fists up, mimicking a boxer. “Buddy duo versus buddy duo!” Lea looked at her in confusion. “I mean you and Isa,” she clarified. Lea looked away nervously, causing Yuffie to give a pout. “Oh, come on! He never hangs out with us!”

“Isa’s not really opening up,” Lea said semi-defensively.

“He’s your friend,” Leon argued. “Or, he was, anyway. You should try to get through to him.”

“I’m trying, but every time I try to start a conversation… And I want to press so we get somewhere, but…”

Yuffie leaned in and angled her head to look straight into his eyes. “But what?”

Lea shook his head. “I dunno. I feel guilty and just give up. I feel like… I feel like I let him get like that. I feel like I let him become Saïx.”

Yuffie stood up straight and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Lea sighed. “When Xemnas was getting into his head, and he was becoming colder, we drifted apart. He blamed me, saying I changed, and whether he was right or wrong, our friendship deteriorated. But I feel like I could have done something. I guess it’s all in hindsight colored by the fact that I now know that we could have grown our hearts back. If I hadn’t given up on him, maybe I could have helped him get his back, and he wouldn’t have gone down that road.”

Leon crossed his arms and closed his eyes, thinking of his own lingering guilt. Yuffie turned to get him to say something helpful, and noticed his expression. She looked back and forth from Lea to Leon. “You know, you two are starting to look a lot alike,” she commented.

Leon and Lea looked at each other, wondering what she was talking about. Leon decided to ignore her. He looked Lea straight in the eye. “What happened is in the past. Here, now, you have a chance to fix things,” he advised. “Talk to Isa. No one ever said fixing broken bonds would be easy. But if anyone can do it, it’s you.” He then smirked and tapped his temple with one finger. “Got it memorized?”

Lea let out a laugh, accompanied by a giggle from Yuffie. “Thanks, Leon,” he replied. His grin then turned into a contemplative expression. “You know, I may be remembering from years ago, but I thought your name was Squall. What was that about?”

Leon’s smile faded, and he began to walk away. “Another time,” he said curtly. Lea stared after him in confusion while Yuffie gaped in disbelief.

* * *

It was dinnertime for the prison inmates. The main population gathered in the cafeteria to get their meals. However, those with special dietary needs remained in their cells to await guards to bring them trays with suitable meals, assuming that the meal processed in the kitchen was unsuitable for them, before they could join the others in the cafeteria.

Isa was on call to deliver a gluten-free meal to Braig’s cell. He walked down the cellblock hallway, hearing a few rude jeers from some of the more rowdy prisoners, the sound of metal-on-metal as some guards rattled their clubs between the cell bars to order the prisoners to quiet down, and dripping water from eroded sections of the foundation. Ignoring each of these, he continued his trek.

When he reached Braig’s cell and turned to look into the scoundrel’s eye, he was shocked by a disconcerting sight. Inside the cell, he could see a bed with an iron frame and a simple mattress and a toilet, but no occupant. He glanced upward in case Braig was simply playing a dumb joke and was actually holding himself to the ceiling. However, he was not there either.

Dropping the dinner tray, he fumbled for his keys and opened the cell door, then went in and searched every inch for some trick that would either prove that Braig had not gone anywhere or explain where he could be. To his dismay, there was no such revealing clue, and it appeared for all intents and purposes that the Freeshooter really was gone.

He ran back out into the hall and located the nearest guard. “We have a situation,” he said in a tone that indicated absolute urgency.

“What’s the problem?” the guard asked.

“Braig is nowhere to be found.”

The guard’s eyes widened in horror and he ran back to the cell with Isa to verify. He raised his walkie-talkie up to his mouth. “We need to lock down the prison!” he shouted into the radio device. “Prisoner 213568 has escaped!”

Moments later, this was followed by the blaring noise of alarms going off. The remaining prisoners in the cellblock grumbled as they were forced back into their cells to eat their dinner.

Isa and the guards ran up to the control station to assess the situation and begin the search of the prison grounds for the escapee.


	105. Chapter 104: Feet in the Sand

All was calm aboard the Gummi Ship. Aqua washed the dishes from the party’s waffle breakfast. Sora, Riku and Kairi worked on their homework. Mickey, Donald and Goofy remained in the cockpit, keeping enemy ships and stray asteroids from damaging the ship. Jiminy attempted to construct a relationship diagram that was to help determine the nature of the artifacts and who might be guarding them, which included a majority of the photographs he had taken, but he was having little success.

After their separate business had been completed, Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua joined the others in the cockpit. When they all sat down in the passenger chairs, Donald turned around to address the islanders. “How was your homework?” he asked.

“It wasn’t too bad,” Kairi replied.

“A bit of a challenge, but we got through it,” Riku added.

“Alright, fellas. Where to next?” Mickey asked.

This left them all stumped. Sora crossed his arms as he was deep in thought. Donald raised his hand, finger pointed up, three times, retracting it each time as he tried to think of something, then simply gave up and slumped in his seat.

“Anything on the Naughty List scanner?” Kairi asked, stifling a laugh as she realized how silly that sounded aloud.

Mickey shook his head and brought the map up to full view so everyone could see. “There are a few blips jumping around, but it looks like they’re just solitary, as if they were just taking a look at the worlds in general,” he explained. “At one point, there were two dots on one world, and they did some moving around, but they went back to Radiant Garden before you came up.”

“That means they have another artifact,” Riku realized.

“How do we even know they haven’t already won?” Donald asked dejectedly.

“Don’t go and lose hope just yet,” Jiminy advised. “Remember, there are a lot of worlds out there. It took a decade for Ansem and Maleficent to get as far as they did with the Heartless invasion, and they didn’t even consume most of the worlds. It took nine years to find seven people. They’re looking for dozens, maybe hundreds of pretty well-hidden objects. Sure, they somehow seem to have a good idea on where most of them might be, but remember that they couldn’t find the ones in Agrabah and Beast’s Castle. And as long as we can keep them from getting ahold of every single one, we have a chance to stop them.”

Goofy grinned and nodded. “A-hyuck. Jiminy’s right. We can do this. We just need to believe in ourselves!”

This lifted everyone’s spirits, but this only made the following silence more awkward. Aqua finally spoke up, addressing the concern on everyone’s minds. “So, where are we supposed to go from here?”

There was another pause as the crew members tried to come up with ideas. Donald considered simply going from world to world at random to see if they would find new information. While he knew that they would all love to explore new lands, he felt that he was getting tired of that pattern, especially when it yielded almost no results.

Sora, Riku and Kairi traded glances, appearing to have a covert silent conversation between them, which was actually a continuation of a conversation they had had earlier while doing homework. When they had reached a decision, they turned to address the others.

“We were thinking that we might go to Destiny Islands,” Sora suggested. “We could visit our families and friends, and we could show you around.”

“And, if things work out, we can find out a thing or two about the artifact on our world,” Riku added.

“So, what do you say?” Kairi asked.

Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, and Jiminy traded glances and smiled. Mickey turned back to Sora, Riku and Kairi and nodded. “That sounds like a great idea,” he said.

“You know, we never really got to see much of the place,” Donald noted.

“I was only there for about an hour. I would love to see it again,” Aqua added.

“I would like to get my own impression of the islands,” Jiminy mused. “Maybe take a few pictures for the album.”

Sora let out a laugh. “So, are we set?” he asked, a little too enthusiastically.

Mickey chuckled. “Sounds like it. Now, let’s plot a course.” He proceeded to do just that.

“Then we can hand our homework in personally,” Kairi added, mostly to Sora and Riku, but indicating to the others that they had not already submitted it through the mailbox. Aqua and Jiminy realized that they had discussed going back home while they were doing their homework.

Sora crossed his arms behind his head and sat back in his chair. “You know, I always wanted to know what our world looked like from orbit,” he mused.

“When I first went there, I couldn’t see anything past a bright light, and by the time everything came into view, I was already too close to get a full view,” Aqua told him.

“That’s funny,” Mickey said. “When we flew there to pick you guys up, we could see it fine.”

“You think it was because Sora’s Keyblade was in the heart of the world?” Aqua wondered, recalling how she and Mickey had found the Kingdom Key D behind the door on the island remnant.

Mickey shrugged. “Maybe.” He took a moment to prepare the flight path, then turned to speak directly to the passengers. “Okay, fellas. Strap in and we’ll get ready to go!”

Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua excitedly buckled their seatbelts. Mickey gunned the engine and launched the ship through space.

* * *

The party beamed down onto the beach, causing a few people to do double takes when they noticed them, only to promptly shrug it off. They closed their eyes and let out a relaxed sigh as they felt the sea breeze.

“Feels good to be back,” Kairi said.

“Yep,” Sora and Riku agreed.

“Let’s go say hello,” Kairi advised.

They made their way into town. Sora, Riku and Kairi waved to friends and neighbors in passing. They split up into three groups when they reached an intersection. Sora, with Donald and Goofy tagging along, went to his house, comparing the local time to their schedules and determining that his parents were home. Riku, followed by Mickey, went to check and see if his parents were home, but an overheard conversation informed him that they were at the courthouse. Kairi, accompanied by Aqua, went to city hall.

As he approached his house, Sora glanced at the windows and noticed that some of the lights were on. Satisfied to see that his parents were home, he stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the door. Ten seconds later, his mother opened the door. Suta gasped and smiled with delight.

“Hi, Mom,” Sora greeted, sporting a cheeky grin. They hugged each other tightly.

When they separated from their embrace, Suta noticed Donald and Goofy standing behind him. The duck and dog waved cheerfully, and Suta waved back.

A moment later, Kumo appeared at the door as well. “Hey, son,” he greeted.

“Hi, Dad,” Sora replied. He and his father hugged.

“I see you brought your friends,” Kumo noted as he and Sora separated. “Well, come on in. Tell us what you’ve been up to.” He and Suta beckoned Sora, Donald and Goofy inside, where they sat around the dinner table and Sora told them what had been going on since he had left. At a few points, Sora trailed off as he noticed that his parents looked confused.

“Is something wrong?” Sora asked.

Kumo shook his head. “No. It’s just that… There is a lot to keep track of,” he said. “You’re looking for these things that are all over the place, but you don’t know what they’re even supposed to be, or how they’ll help these bad guys change… reality?”

Sora shrugged, while Donald groaned and drew circles over his temples with his fingers, clearly not enjoying having to try to wrap his head around the confusing plot. “Honestly, we’re still trying to figure it all out,” Sora admitted.

“So, you’re still on your quest?” Suta surmised. “You’re not all done?”

Sora shook his head regretfully. “We still have a ways to go. I don’t think we really made that much progress. Maleficent and all of her friends are still running around. The most we really did was take out some of the Heartless under their control. Oh, and we let Yzma get turned into a little kitty cat.” Kumo and Suta laughed at this. “But we figured we’d come back to say hi.”

“Well, that’s really thoughtful of you,” Kumo said appreciatively. “I’m sure you could use some time to relax from all this.”

Sora nodded. “Thanks, Dad.”

“So, Sora, what happened next?” Suta asked.

Sora continued with his story, starting with Port Royal, which only led to more confusion as he tried to explain the deal with Davy Jones’ heart.

* * *

“Hold on, Riku. Should you be telling us all this?” Iwa asked. “Isn’t there a rule against letting others know about other worlds?”

Riku chuckled. “When I was working undercover with DiZ, I made sure that I wasn’t noticed, but Sora and Mickey have ignored it as much as they possibly could,” he replied.

“When we’re trying to save the worlds from monsters born from darkness and negativity, keeping a secret isn’t as much of a priority,” Mickey said, defending himself.

Riku and Mickey sat with Iwa and Chikyu sat at a table in the courthouse following the denouement of the day’s trial, where Riku and Mickey told Riku’s parents what had happened out in the worlds.

“Besides, we can’t really get any information about the artifacts without talking about them. I think half of the people we talked to about it didn’t know about them beforehand,” Riku added. “Almost everyone else just pretended not to.”

Chikyu sighed. “I know the feeling. I’ve had my share of cases where people just don’t tell us important information. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Thanks,” Riku replied. “But right now, we’re hoping to just stay here a few days and rest from all the action.”

“By the way, have any more Heartless shown up after we left?” Mickey asked.

Chikyu shook his head. “None that have been reported,” he answered. “So that means that either they haven’t appeared at all, or there have only been few enough that the lucky and skilled ones managed to dispatch them.”

“Well, everyone did see us fight the Shadows and Darkside,” Riku recalled. “The Aurochs helped take the Darkside down with harpoon lances, and it wasn’t just Keyblades that beat the Shadows. A lot of people fought back even when all they had were a Blitzball, a fence post, or martial arts. If they know how to handle themselves, and have a weapon strong enough to hurt the Heartless, they could manage against a few of them.”

“But that does make me wonder,” Mickey said. “If they didn’t show up afterward, why did those Heartless attack at the beach? Were they really here just to fight us? What drew them here?”

Riku shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. I don’t really understand how the Heartless act or decide to act on their own.”

“If there really is one of those artifacts somewhere around here, we can assume that their controllers will be around here one of these days,” Iwa determined. “But for now we should keep quiet about what’s going on past the islands. Like you said, outside of opposing the apocalypse, the code of secrecy between worlds should be maintained as best as possible.”

Mickey nodded. “That’s a good idea,” he agreed.

Riku and Mickey continued to summarize their adventures. Whenever they mentioned meeting a new villain, Chikyu scribbled in a notepad, making notes of each of them in case, as Iwa had mentioned, they came to the islands one day. Noticing this, Riku and Mickey made sure to describe the villains thoroughly so he could fill in the notes.

* * *

“What was that about a Keyblade?” Mayor Braska asked. Kairi had started her story around the same time as Riku had, as Braska had paperwork and procedures to run through before he could take her aside to hear her piece.

Smiling giddily, Kairi raised her hand above her head and summoned her Keyblade. Braska let out a laugh in amused delight. Aqua giggled. Kairi let him admire it for a moment longer before dismissing it.

“Okay. That is really cool,” Braska said. He had only seen a Keyblade a few times before, including during the fight with the Heartless on the beach, and seeing his daughter hold one of the fabled weapons of light was very impressive.

Kairi continued telling her story, with Aqua also listening intently, as she had only gotten a quick summary of what was going on before she joined the party. Kairi recounted the adventures on all of the worlds that she had visited by that point, only receiving simple responses and a few inquiries of clarification as she spoke, until she got to the part where the party rescued Aqua.

“Hold on a moment,” Braska interrupted. “How did you already know Aqua, exactly?”

“She saved me from monsters when I was a little girl back in Radiant Garden,” Kairi explained.

“When I sensed the light within her, I cast a spell that would protect her from danger and take her to someplace safe, where there would be someone to help her,” Aqua added.

Braska directed a warm smile at Aqua. “Well then, thank you for keeping my daughter safe,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” Aqua replied.

Kairi continued telling how she and the others found Aqua and brought her back to the Realm of Light, while at the same time Aqua explained what she was doing there in the first place.

“I am so sorry you had to go through that,” Braska told Aqua sympathetically.

Aqua nodded. “Thank you.”

“But wait. You were there for over a decade. And yet you’re still a young woman, not that much older than Kairi now?”

“Time passes much more slowly in the Realm of Darkness, it would appear,” Aqua explained. “It felt like only a few months had passed, while it was much longer for everyone else.”

“I see. But still, any amount of time with that torment is far too long.”

Kairi continued the story and filled her adoptive father in up to the present.

Braska chuckled. “Well, I see you all have been busy. And I know it will only be for a few days, I’m glad that you’re back.”

Kairi smiled. “Thanks, Papa. I’m glad to be back.”

Braska stood up from his seat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I ought to get back to work. But I’ll see you tonight. He made his way around the table and kissed Kairi on the forehead. Kairi returned a kiss on the cheek. “It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said while shaking Aqua’s hand.

“Likewise,” Aqua replied.

“See you later,” Kairi said as she watched Braska return to his office. She turned to Aqua. “Come on. We’ll go meet up with the others, and then I’ll give you a tour of the town.”

* * *

Sion jabbed at the punching bag, with his friend Volt holding it still. Beads of sweat rolled down his face as he practiced his punches while Volt encouraged him. After a few minutes, Sion stopped and took a deep breath. He took his towel from over his shoulders and wiped the sweat from his face, then drank from his bottle of vitamin water.

He and Volt turned to see Sora approaching them. Sion grinned while Volt gave Sora a respectful nod. Sora gave Volt a friendly wave and high-fived Sion.

“What’s up, Sora?” Sion greeted. “You’re back in town?”

“For a few days,” Sora replied. “And, actually, I wanted to talk to you about something while I was here.”

Sion nodded. “Shoot.”

“So, the other day, we ran into this guy who’s gotten Maleficent and a bunch of these other villains together. He’s basically kind of behind everything we’ve been going up against,” Sora explained. He scratched the back of his neck, feeling embarrassed about what he was going to say next. “I fought him, but he kicked my butt. Everything I threw at him, he saw coming and countered.”

“Ouch,” Sion said sympathetically. Volt shook his head.

“We were thinking that it was like he knew everything I knew, not like he could do all of that too, but he knew every single attack I could think to use, and he knew exactly what he should do against them. Except one.”

Sion crossed his arms. “What do you mean?”

“The roundhouse kick you taught me,” Sora answered. “He actually seemed surprised that I knew that, and he wasn’t prepared to counter it.”

Sion beamed with pride, while Volt appeared to be deep in thought. “So, he knows all of your skills, up to before you left on your quest,” the large bouncer surmised.

Sora shook his head. “I don’t know what else he knows about me or what he doesn’t, but he seems to know a lot about my earlier adventures. So, anyway, we were thinking that I might be able to do better next time if I learned some new moves.”

Sion’s eyes widened and he let out a laugh. “You want me to teach you new moves?” he asked.

“Well, I was actually going to ask Volt,” Sora joked. Sion laughed, while Volt let out a mere “hmph”, which the spiky-haired cousins knew was as close as they would ever get to hearing the man laugh.

“Alright. Let’s see what I can do for you,” Sion said. He adjusted his stance. “Okay, get into position. Find your center and settle your body weight.” Sora did so, recalling Sion’s instructions in Kenpo and having practiced from previous sparring and practice sessions. “Now, show me what I taught you.”

Sora threw a few quick jabs, but Sion blocked them with open hands, then stepped to the side to deal a jab to the back. Sora twisted around and elbowed Sion. He turned around to face him and dealt a few punches, followed by a knee to the stomach.

Sion grinned. “Okay. You could work on your form, though,” he told Sora. “I saw you cock your fist a few times. You should deliver it perfectly from the point of origin, aiming as you go. That way, you won’t telegraph your moves. Got it?”

Sora nodded and got back into position. He threw the first punch, but Sion slapped it aside with his forearm and dealt three blows, followed by a spinning kick to Sora’s shoulder. Sora ducked and delivered a punch, knocking Sion off balance. He then grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him to the ground.

Sion laughed as Sora stood over him. Sora helped him to his feet, and the two bowed to each other.

“Not bad,” Sion complimented. “There’s room to improve, but you’re getting better with your technique.”

“Thanks,” Sora replied. “I had a good teacher.”

“Now, let’s show you some new moves.”

* * *

“There’s the track and field. And up here is the basketball court,” Kairi said to Aqua, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Her tour of the town had led them to the school grounds. She shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare and peered at the court. “And it looks like someone’s there.” They approached the court and saw Riku, Wakka, Tidus, Irvine, and two other boys, playing in a three-on-three game. Selphie, Lulu, and a few other students sat on a nearby bench watching them play. Riku blocked Tidus, but the younger boy passed the ball to Irvine, who made the shot perfectly, eliciting cheers from the audience. One of the other boys retrieved the ball and was about to bring it back for the next play when everyone took notice of the visitors. Kairi and Goofy gave them friendly waves.

Wakka let out a laugh. “Hey, sista! Good to see you! And you guys, too!” he greeted. He noticed Aqua behind her. “Hey, who’s your friend?”

“I’m Aqua,” the bluenette introduced herself. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Wakka walked up to her and shook her hand. “I’m Wakka,” he replied. “And right back atcha. A friend of Kairi’s is a friend of mine, ya?”

Tidus stepped forward and flashed her a cocky grin. “Name’s Tidus. I’m the star player around here.” Kairi struggled to hold in her laughter, while Lulu rolled her eyes in annoyance. Irvine pushed Tidus aside with a playful poke to the side of the head and introduced himself, and everyone else gave Aqua a proper greeting as well, as well as to Mickey, Donald and Goofy.

“So, how have things been here while we were gone?” Kairi asked.

“It’s all going well,” Selphie replied. “Festival preparations are going according to schedule. The teachers are all glad that you, Riku and Sora have been getting your homework and quizzes in on time. I think they’re also impressed with how well you’ve been doing on them without actually participating in classes.”

Riku smiled proudly. “We do our best,” he said plainly.

Aqua eyed the basketball under Irvine’s arm. “Say, you mind if I join in on a game?” she asked.

Irvine blinked in mild surprise, then smiled. “Sounds fine. Anyone have a problem with it?” The other players shook their heads in a negative. “Great. Of course, we’d either have to kick someone out or add another person.” He looked at Goofy and sized him up. “Goofy, right? Care for a game?”

Goofy nodded. “Sure,” he replied, stepping forward onto the court.

“Alright, then. Pick your teams.”

Aqua joined Riku’s team while Goofy joined Irvine’s. The spectators, now joined by Kairi, Mickey and Donald, sat down on the bench to watch their friends play. Irvine bounced the ball to Aqua, who bounced it back, and then the play really kicked off.


	106. Chapter 105: Lilo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Towards the end of this chapter, I had a scene planned out, but I did not know how to really write it. It would involve Lilo's rival Mertle, but I did not know what to say in the conversation. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to offer assistance in filling in the scene, I would very much appreciate it. Until then, the scene will be left out, and I will put in the "deleted scene" when it is ultimately completed.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, and students began to pile out of the school doors. Sora went to meet up with Mickey, Donald and Goofy. Riku stayed after to watch the water polo team practice. Kairi left the school with Selphie, the two girls discussing preparations for the Destiny Festival.

While they walked, Selphie bumped into someone. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. It was then that she recognized the young woman, who stood a few inches taller than both girls with a slender, somewhat muscular frame and an olive skin tone. She had brown eyes, medium-length wavy black hair, and a round nose. She wore a pinkish-beige short-sleeved belly shirt with a red heart design, blue jean shorts, white socks, and brown hiking boots. “Oh! Booyaka, Nani!”

Kairi and Selphie quickly realized that Nani Pelekai was at the moment not in the mood for Selphie’s cheerful quirkiness. “Oh, hey Selphie. Hey, Kairi,” the older teen greeted half-heartedly. “Good to see you.”

“Is everything alright? How’s Lilo doing?” Kairi asked, concerned, as she could feel Nani’s stress bleeding off of her.

Nani sighed and shook her head. “We hit a bump in the road,” she replied. “Another social worker came by two days ago. Scarier than the others. And, well, we didn’t give him a good impression. He said he’d give me three days to clean up my act before he came back to determine whether Lilo should stay with me or not.”

Kairi gasped. “I’m so sorry,” she said sympathetically.

“And then I got fired last night,” Nani added, “so now I have to find a new job.”

“Ugh. That sucks,” Selphie replied, feeling sorry for her friend.

“Say, Nani, would it be alright if we come see Lilo?” Kairi asked.

Nani nodded. “Yeah. Of course. She’d love to see you. And we could use all the help we can get keeping things under control.”

Kairi and Selphie smiled. “Thank you,” Kairi said. They followed Nani across town to her house. They ran into Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy and explained what they were doing. Sora offered to go with them, and Mickey, Donald and Goofy chose to tag along as well. They made their way up a hill, following a trail that sat beside a creek, and came up to a house that sat on an elevated deck made of green-painted wood, which created a more stable platform for the base of the home. A blue Volkswagen Beetle sat parked under the section of deck that was suspended over the end of the trail. The group ascended a flight of steps leading up to the house, which had yellow-painted walls and red roof sections.

Nani unlocked the front door and opened it. They all stepped inside. “Hey, Lilo,” Nani shouted, announcing her presence to her little sister, who was not in view. “I brought some friends.”

Kairi, Selphie, Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy spread out into the living room. They could see that the room was strewn with clothes and a few makeshift toys, indicating that things had clearly been rather hectic, and Nani had not been able to keep the house clean in recent days. Sora, Kairi and Donald noticed that some of the furniture had been chewed up, seemingly recently. They wondered what could have made that mess.

“Just a heads up, we went to the pound and got Lilo a… dog, yesterday,” Nani explained. “I’ll be here long enough to see you say hello, but then I really need to get back out and find a job.”

Kairi nodded. “Okay. We’ll watch her for you,” she said. “Now, she should be around here somewhere.”

“Sora!” a vaguely familiar, slightly animalistic voice shouted suddenly. Before anyone could react, Sora was tackled to the floor by a strange-looking blue-furred creature. It was less than three feet tall, with flat, round feet that had three stubby toes each, two arms with four clawed fingers, a short, stubby tail, a large oblong head that was wider than his torso, solid dark-turquoise eyes, a wide mouth filled with sharp white teeth, a round, hairless nose, and a pair of large bat-like ears. The vaguely-koala-like creature licked Sora’s face excitedly. Donald and Goofy jumped in shock when they saw it, but calmed down and started to laugh when they recognized it.

Sora pulled the creature off of him and rolled up into a sitting position. He petted the small monster on its fuzzy head. “Hey, there. Long time, no see. What are you doing here, little guy?” he asked.

“Do you know my dog?” Everyone turned to the source of the voice, and saw a six-year-old girl with long, straight black hair, brown eyes, and an olive skin tone much like her big sister. She wore a red muumuu dress with white leaf designs and black sandals. She carried a crudely-stitched doll made of green felt with a large head, string hair, a pink ribbon bow, and blue buttons for eyes.

Kairi and Selphie smiled and waved at the girl whom they often babysat. “Hi, Lilo,” the redhead greeted.

“Booyaka, Lilo!” Selphie greeted.

Lilo smiled and waved back. “Booyaka, Kairi and Selphie,” she replied. “Hi, Sora.”

Sora set the “dog” on the floor and waved back to Lilo. “Hey, there.” He looked back at the furry blue creature. “So, this is your ‘dog’?”

Lilo nodded. “Yup. His name’s Stitch,” she replied.

Sora smiled at the creature, which he remembered as a troublemaking but good-natured creature who had harassed him, Donald and Goofy but later came to his aid multiple times via the magic of a summoning charm, and which was most certainly not a dog by any stretch of the term. “Stitch, huh?” he mused.  _ Better than what I had started calling him. _

Before the conversation could proceed further, a knock was heard at the front door. Nani walked over to open it. The visitor was a tall, broad, dark-skinned man whose large muscles were evident even under his black suit and tie and white undershirt. There was also a gold earring on each of his earlobes. He wore a pair of dark sunglasses, which, added to the rest of his appearance, reminded Sora of Rude, albeit with more of a square jaw.

“Mr. Bubbles…” Nani greeted nervously.

“Heard you lost your job,” the social worker said in a deadpan, unamused tone.

Kairi, Selphie and Stitch approached the doorway to see who it was, all of them noticing Nani’s unease. Kairi noticed that the word “COBRA” was tattooed onto the knuckles of his right hand.  _ Mr. Bubbles… Cobra Bubbles, huh? _

“Well… uh… Actually, I just… quit that job,” Nani said, poorly attempting to save face, “because… You know, the hours are just not conducive to the challenges of raising a child…”

Stitch started to growl and, before anyone could react to stop him, picked up a book and threw it at Cobra’s face. The force sent him reeling back and knocked his glasses off.

“Hey!” Cobra shouted angrily. Kairi, Selphie, and Goofy’s jaws dropped.

Nani gasped and grabbed Stitch, holding his struggling body upside-down so that he would not attack Cobra again. “I am so sorry about that!”

“What is that… thing?” Cobra asked.

“That’s my puppy,” Lilo answered, coming into view of the doorway.

“Really?” Cobra turned his attention back to Nani, then stood up straight, cracked his neck, and resumed an air of professionalism. “Thus far, you have been adrift in the sheltered harbor of my patience, but I cannot ignore you being jobless,” he warned. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Nani replied.

Cobra glared down at Stitch, whom Nani had put down and who was now hiding behind Lilo. “And next time I see this dog, I expect it to be a model citizen. Capiche?”

“Uh, yes…?” Lilo said, slightly confused by his wording.

Cobra turned to Kairi and Selphie. “Are you the babysitters?” he asked.

Kairi and Selphie nodded. “Yes, sir,” Kairi replied.

“Make sure that these two stay out of trouble,” he ordered while pointing at Lilo and Stitch.

The girls nodded. “Of course,” Kairi said.

Cobra picked up his glasses and faced the group. “New job. Model citizen. Out of trouble,” he reiterated, pointing his gaze and his glasses at Nani, Stitch, and Kairi and Selphie in turn. He then put the glasses back on, but the right lens popped out. “Good day.” He turned around and left.

Sora, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy joined the group at the door. “He’s the social worker? He looks more like a secret agent,” Sora commented.

“Like  _ Men in Black _ !” Lilo agreed.

Sora shuddered. “The dark-skinned guy’s head does not belong on that buff a body.”

Lilo, Kairi and Selphie nodded in agreement.

“Well, I should really get going,” Nani said.

Kairi nodded and turned to look at Lilo and Stitch. “And I guess we should come along to help Lilo turn this guy into a ‘model citizen’,” she suggested.

“Okay, sure. Just, like he said, stay out of trouble,” Nani agreed.

* * *

For much of the afternoon, the group moved around town as Nani, with Selphie’s assistance, attempted to find a job by responding to help wanted advertisements. Meanwhile, Lilo tried to teach Stitch to be a model citizen by emulating a rock star she idolized. Mickey had suggested teaching him to behave in other ways, but Lilo insisted on training him her way. Unfortunately, despite Sora, Kairi and Mickey’s best efforts to keep everything contained, each lesson for Stitch led to inadvertent destruction, which caused Nani to fail to get the job. While Nani sought out a job at the fruit market run by a short old woman named Mrs. Hasagawa, Lilo tried to teach Stitch to dance, until he accidentally spun out of control and knocked Mrs. Hasagawa down. When Nani applied at a coffee shop, only to be turned down as the position had already been filled, Lilo began to teach Stitch to play the ukulele. Sora found his own instrument and offered to help Stitch learn by playing along. Unfortunately, somehow, Stitch’s music was amplified and the sound waves shattered all of the windows as well as the coffee pot in the shop manager’s hand. After leaving in embarrassment, Nani interviewed for a lifeguard position at the beach. Assisted by Sora and Riku, who had joined the group after the incident at the coffee shop, Lilo and Kairi got Stitch dressed up as Lilo’s favorite rock star and encouraged him to dance and play ukulele for the crowd. They watched their handiwork, and Kairi giggled in amusement as people began to gather around Stitch. However, they began to take their cameras out and take pictures of him, and he was visibly startled and blinded by the flashes. Lilo ran over, yelling at them to stop, but Stitch quickly became enraged. He ripped the costume off and started snarling at the beachgoers. They started to panic and ran away, screaming. Sora and Riku ran in to restrain Stitch while Lilo approached him to try to calm him down, all while Nani, Selphie, and a lifeguard watched, and the lifeguard decided that a prospect of hiring Nani would be more trouble than it was worth.

Not too far away,  a rotund, beefy, purple-skinned alien dressed as a moustached tourist watched them through a set of binoculars designed to work for his four eyes, holding the device with three-fingered hands. “Bah! First, he hid behind little girl as a shield. Now he has big group guarding him,” he complained in a distinctive accent. “Retrieving my experiment will be tougher than I thought.”

“Oh, joy,” a slender, green-skinned alien with one large eye and three small legs, who was disguised as a female tourist, said dryly. “We need to come up with a plan soon, though. The Grand Councilwoman wants that fugitive back in custody, ASAP.”

“Yes, of course, my little one-eyed one,” the purple alien replied. “I am well aware. Although, this may prove very interesting.”


	107. Chapter 106: Surf's Up

The group sat on the sand at the edge of town, utterly deflated. Nani, Kairi, Selphie, and Lilo searched through newspapers, hoping to find another help wanted ad, any chance to help Nani find a job, but it was fruitless. They sighed in dismay as Sora, Riku, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy looked on sadly.

“Hey, Lilo!” a young man, David Kawena, Nani’s boyfriend and a friend of Lilo’s, greeted as he approached. He had a tattoo looping around his upper arm and he wore a pair of swim trunks and a string necklace with a fish hook-shaped pendant. He carried a surfboard under his arm. “How’s it… Nani?” He trailed off as he realized that the Pelekai sisters seemed depressed.

“We’ve been having a bad day,” Lilo explained.

Sora and Mickey noticed Aqua standing twenty feet behind David, applying sunscreen to her arms. A blue surfboard was propped up in the sand next to her.

David squatted down in front of Lilo and Nani. “Hey, I might not be a doctor, but I know that there’s no better cure for a sour face than a couple of boards and some choice waves,” he suggested. “What do you think?”

Nani and Lilo looked at each other and smiled. “I think that’s a great idea,” Nani replied.

David grinned. “Great.” He looked over at the rest of the group. “You know, I was just about to give Aqua over here a surfing lesson. You guys want to join in?”

Kairi nodded. “Sounds like fun,” she said, pushing herself to her feet.

“Uh, I don’t really know how to surf,” Riku admitted sheepishly.

Nani giggled. “That’s okay. We’ll show you.”

“I’ll be back in a jiffy with a change of clothes,” Selphie promised. She ran off to head home, which was not too far away, and did just that.

“We should probably do that, too,” Sora said.

“Actually, we should only need to find the nearest Safe Point,” Kairi advised. She glanced at Mickey, silently inquiring if he knew where it was, and the mouse pointed further down the beach. “Okay. We’ll only be a moment.”

* * *

“You guys packed swimsuits and just got them from your ship?” Selphie asked in disbelief once she returned wearing a swimsuit and found that Sora, Riku and Kairi had already changed.

Kairi nodded. “It was her idea,” Sora said, pointing to Kairi.

“Just in case,” the redhead added.

“Wow,” Lilo said in amazement. She and Nani had already changed as well, and had gotten surfboards for themselves as well as Sora, Riku and Kairi. Mickey, Donald and Goofy chose to stay behind and watch them have fun.

The party decided to catch up with Aqua. “So, are you enjoying yourself here?” Kairi asked.

Aqua nodded. “This place is so beautiful,” she said. “Everyone is so friendly.”

“Almost everyone,” Riku corrected, but he otherwise still agreed.

“I came here about an hour ago to relax on the beach, and I started to watch people surfing,” Aqua continued. “I figured that it might be fun to give it a try.” She blinked as she glimpsed Stitch behind her friends. “Is that…”

She walked past her friends and approached Stitch. Lilo’s pet noticed her and grinned widely. “Ah-koo-wah!” he shouted, waving both of his arms.

Aqua giggled and crouched down to meet him as he ran up to her. “Hey, there. I never thought I’d see you here.”

“You know Stitch?” Lilo asked.

Stitch turned to Lilo and nodded excitedly. “Ah-koo-wah, fren!” he answered.

“Wow. Little guy has a lot of friends,” David commented.

Riku crossed his arms in contemplation. “Wait. If Aqua knew Stitch, then that means…” He did not finish the thought as he simply winced at the realization about the small alien’s age. Sora, Mickey and Donald did a double take as they reached the same deduction.

“Well, how 'bout it? Let’s go.” Kairi hefted her surfboard up and beckoned them to follow her to the water.

Sora and Riku laughed and followed after her. Stitch watched the waves crash, fearful, as he quickly realized what they were doing. Aqua, Nani and Lilo ran down to the surf. David noticed that Stitch was not following, so he picked him up and carried him down with him. Nani set her board down in the shallow water and sat on it. Lilo sat in front of her, and David set Stitch down behind her.

They paddled out across the water. Stitch watched the shore recede and looked down into the water nervously. He poked his finger into the water to test it, only to pull it back in terror. Sora paddled alongside them and petted him on the head. Lilo looked back at Stitch and noticed his nervousness, and she wondered what could be bothering him. Before she could think too much on it, David picked her up and put her on his board, then paddled ahead to meet the first wave.

“Watch how I do,” David instructed Aqua. He maneuvered around and turned so that he was riding the rising wave, then stood up and surfed on the wave, while Lilo laughed and Kairi and Selphie cheered. He brought the surfboard back up beside Nani and Stitch, and he and Lilo posed triumphantly. Nani responded by playfully kicking him off of his board, causing Lilo and Sora to laugh.

Aqua smiled. “Okay. Let me give it a try,” she said. She went up to take the next wave and began to surf on it. Her balance was imperfect, but once she got a feel for it, she managed it with grace. When she came back, she was met with a round of applause from her friends, including some excited cheering from Stitch.

The rest of the party took a few waves each. As Stitch refused to ride the waves, he was frequently swapped from surfboard to surfboard when his current partner wanted to surf a wave. After Kairi and Selphie demonstrated, Sora tried it out. He heard cheering from the shore and looked back to see that his parents were on the beach, and they were watching him learn how to surf. He smiled, emboldened by their faith, and rode up to the closest wave. Remembering his skill on a skateboard, he proved himself to have a talent on the surfboard easily. Riku was less successful, wiping out on his first three attempts. However, he got better with each attempt, and he succeeded on his fourth try. Kumo and Suta cheered from their vantage point. Mickey, Donald and Goofy held up signs, giving him scores of 8, 7, and 8, respectively. Nani stared at them in bewilderment, wondering where they got the cards.

At one point, when Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua were all stationary and together, with Stitch sitting on Aqua’s board, Sora decided to address something that he and the others had been wondering about. “So, Aqua, how do you know Stitch?” he asked.

Aqua looked down at Stitch, realizing that there was something different about him from when she had last seen him. “Well, while I was traveling around fighting Unversed, I found myself on this huge alien spaceship. I saw this little guy, and he was holding a trinket made of scrap metal which looked like the Wayfinders I made. Before I could ask him about it, he fled into the ventilation to escape a security guard, a big whale-headed guy named Gantu,” she explained. “Gantu brought me to meet the Grand Councilwoman, a sort of space government official, I guess. I offered to clear the ship of Unversed, and she also asked me to help track down two fugitives who had escaped detainment. It turns out that this little guy was an illegal genetic experiment created solely for destruction, and he was created by a quote-unquote ‘Evil Genius’ named Jumba Jookiba as the so-called Experiment 626. But after he escaped, he met Terra and stole his Wayfinder. Terra told him that it was a gift from a friend, and it looks like that inspired him to try to understand friendship. He built the trinket to emulate the Wayfinder, and he seemed to be really fond of it. When I tracked them down and brought them in, I made an appeal to the Grand Councilwoman, asking that she reduce his sentence because he seemed to really be trying to make friends. She agreed to consider it if he behaved himself.”

“Fren-ship circle!” Stitch exclaimed.

Aqua nodded. “Yeah. We’re a part of each other’s circle of friends,” she agreed.

“Well, it looks like he got out of there alright,” Sora said. “Donald, Goofy and I bumped into him a few months ago in Radiant Garden. He caused trouble in the computer room and got us zapped into the world inside the computer.”

Stitch looked down guiltily, indicating that he felt ashamed for getting them into a seemingly-dangerous situation.

“I guess leaving a charm that let us summon him to aid in battle was his way of saying sorry,” Sora surmised.

“Ih,” Stitch said, nodding in confirmation.

Aqua chuckled. “I guess that although he’s still somewhat troublesome, he is genuinely trying to be good.”

Kairi diverted the conversation by cheering as she watched Nani surf across a wave, with Lilo hanging on.

* * *

They spent some more time surfing before returning to the beach to play on the sand. Stitch stood back and watched as Lilo, Nani, and David played together, and he wondered if he could ever have the same kind of bond that they shared, as well as the kind shared between Sora, Riku and Kairi. As he watched Nani, David, Kairi, and Selphie build a sand castle with Lilo half-buried underneath, Stitch halfheartedly sat down and shoveled sand onto himself, taking a leaf and sticking it on top of the pile to mimic the flag which Nani put on top of the sand castle. However, he did not feel at all fulfilled, and only more lonely.

Goofy walked up to Stitch and sat down next to him. “Hey, fella. Gawrsh, is something wrong?” he asked. Stitch mumbled a few words which Goofy did not understand and looked over at Lilo and Nani. Goofy scratched his head in contemplation. “Hmm… You want to spend time with them? Have some fun?”

“Ih,” Stitch answered sadly. Goofy guessed that the word meant “yes”.

“Well, I’m sure they’d love to have you join them. But what do you want to do?”

Stitch thought deeply for a moment, then turned to look at the surfboards that had been stuck up in the sand several feet away. He looked out at the water hesitantly, then back at Lilo. Reaching a decision, he climbed out of his pile of sand and went over to the surfboards. Lifting Nani’s board out of the sand with ease, he dragged it over to Lilo, who at that time was playing in the sand on her own. The girl looked back at him when he tapped her on the shoulder, wondering what he wanted. It did not take her long to realize that he wanted to go surfing with her, at which point she smiled in delight.

* * *

“Oh, can’t complain, Mom,” the skinny one-eyed alien, Wendy Pleakley, who at the moment had abandoned his disguise to don a blue uniform, said over his intergalactic phone. “I’m camping out with a CONVICTED CRIMINAL!” While over the past days he had been fascinated by what he had found on his visit to the strange planet which he had previously only studied from afar, but overall it was not a pleasant experience for him as he was forced to chaperone the scientist on a hunt for what had been designed to be the most dangerous creature in the universe. He had even lost his excitement over getting an up-close examination of the endangered mosquito, a rare creature under galactic protection along with the creatures in its food chain, when an entire swarm of the insects bit him and began to drain his blood. Right now, he just wanted the mission to be over so he could go back and sleep peacefully in his cot.

“Wait. Something’s not right,” Dr. Jumba Jookiba said as he spied on his renegade experiment through his binoculars. He saw Stitch walk with Lilo and Nani to the water, Nani carrying her surfboard. “Is returning willingly to water?”

“Oh, hold on, Mom. Another call,” Pleakley said before switching over to the new caller. The screen on the device showed an alien with wrinkled grayish-green skin and small, beady black eyes. He gulped in surprise.

“Mr. Pleakley, you are overdue,” the Grand Councilwoman declared sternly. “I want a status report.”

“Oh, uh, things are going well,” Pleakley said nervously, knowing full well that he and Jumba had not made any progress in days as they waited for Experiment 626 to be alone so they could intercept him. “Things are going well. Jumba, aren’t they going well? Jumba? Jumba, help me out here.”

However, Jumba paid no attention to him. He remained fixated on Stitch’s present actions. “He cannot swim. Is too dense. Why will he risk drowning?” he asked himself.

“I would have expected you back by now, with the experiment in hand,” the Grand Councilwoman said, somewhat disappointed.

“Just a few things left to pack up, and, uh, we’ll be…” Pleakley stammered. Before he could finish, Jumba took his phone and hit a button, causing the screen to go blank.

“Hang up,” Jumba ordered. “We are going swimming.”

* * *

Sora, Riku, Kairi, Selphie, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, David, Kumo, and Suta sat on the beach and watched Nani paddle the surfboard out over the water, Lilo sitting on the front end and Stitch sitting on the back. Donald was momentarily distracted by something round moving across the sand and into the water a distance away, but he elected to pay it no mind. The alien pet looked around nervously before he simply relaxed. He smiled, starting to enjoy the experience. His smile faded when he saw Nani stand up and he realized that they were going over a wave. As they rode through and along the wave as it curled over them, Stitch flailed about to avoid falling off and grabbed onto Nani’s leg for dear life. However, as he felt the breeze blow against his ears, saw the calm blue of the water beneath him, and heard the tranquil sound of the waves, he relaxed and began to enjoy the experience again. He let go of Nani and began to emulate her stance.

Sora, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy cheered Stitch on as he started to have fun surfing with Nani and Lilo. Kairi, Selphie and David cheered for the trio as a whole.

Stitch grinned widely and prepared to let out a triumphant laugh, but he was suddenly grabbed by Jumba as the rotund alien dove in from within the wave, tackling him off of the board and into the water. This inadvertently caused Nani to wipe out and for her and Lilo to fall into the water.

David and Kumo cringed at the sudden wipeout, but Sora, Riku, and Donald, who had noticed the circumstances behind the wipeout, reacted with sudden concern. “Did you guys see that?” Sora asked.

“Yeah, and they were doing great,” Selphie replied, dismayed, not understanding what Sora was referring to.

Shaking his head in disappointment, Sora ran to the water and swam out to check on Lilo, Nani and Stitch, with David just ahead of him. As they swam, they saw Nani and Lilo break the surface of the water.

“What happened?” Lilo asked, confused by the sudden turn of events.

“Some lolo must’ve stuffed us in a barrel,” Nani guessed as she swam over to Lilo.

“Where’s Stitch?” Lilo asked. She got her answer as Stitch broke the surface, thrashing about in a panic. He climbed onto Lilo for safety.

“Get off of her!” Nani yelled, afraid that Stitch would only drag her down. Before she could pull him off, Jumba, unseen by anyone above the water, grabbed Stitch by the legs and dragged him down. As Stitch was still holding tight to Lilo’s arm, the girl was pulled down as well.

“What happened?” David shouted in worry as he saw what happened.

“Stitch dragged her down!” Nani replied. She and David dove down to rescue her.

Struggling to escape Jumba’s grip, Stitch reached down and bit his hand to force him to let go. He then began to orient himself so that he could try to swim back to the surface with Lilo. At the same time, Nani and David reached them. Nani grabbed Lilo by the hand and kicked Stitch in the head to make him release his grip, then she and David swam up with her. The three of them broke the surface and gasped for air, finding that Sora had joined them.

“We lost Stitch!” Lilo exclaimed as she realized that her pet was not with them. Not hesitating, Sora dove under and swam down to reach Stitch while Nani and David focused on bringing Lilo back to shore. He was in such a hurry that he did not consider switching into his half-dolphin form, but he would later decide that it would have been better that he stay as a human. He swam down as fast as he could to reach the alien. As he drew nearer, two other shapes slowly came into focus.

Jumba attempted to restrain Stitch while Pleakley worked to put cylindrical handcuffs on him, but Stitch refused to be taken. He dodged Jumba’s grasp and let him grab Pleakley’s head by accident, taking the cuffs from the skinny officer and closing them on his small hand. Jumba threw a punch at him, but he positioned the cuffs so that the purple alien’s hand went straight through them up to the wrist, the restraining device expanding by virtue of in-built nanomachines to fit the larger area of the hand and tightening around the wrist. While Jumba and Pleakley struggled with the cuffs, Stitch chomped down on Pleakley’s scuba tank. Air escaped through the bite hole and propelled the two aliens out of the water. Only Donald, Goofy and Aqua noticed them bounce across the water, as everyone else was too busy making sure Lilo was okay.

Stitch tried to swim back up, but he was too dense due to the excessively-compressed muscle mass with which he was designed to grant his incredible strength, and thus was unable to get anywhere. He quickly lost the energy to try, as his lungs were filling up with water, and he began to lose consciousness and sink further. However, Sora caught up to him and scooped him up in one hand before swimming back up to the surface.

Nani brought Lilo to shore, and their friends gathered around to check on her. Kairi pulled Lilo into a quick hug. “Lilo, are you okay?” she asked.

Nani turned Lilo to face her. “Lilo. Lilo, look at me, baby. Are you hurt?” she asked, checking her sister’s face and arm.

“No,” Lilo answered sadly, more concerned that, from what she was aware, Stitch was still underwater. Suta reached into her handbag and pulled out a Potion, then made Lilo take a sip. Nani, relieved that her little sister was unharmed, simply pulled Lilo into a hug.

All eyes turned to Sora as they saw him step out of the water, breathing heavily, with Stitch weighing in his arms. “He’s unconscious, but I think he’s alive,” he said. Lilo, Aqua and David ran over to check on Stitch. David knelt down and put his ear to Stitch’s chest, hearing a faint heartbeat.

Stitch began to cough up the water. A moment later, when he could breathe normally, he flipped over onto all fours and began snarling, entering a defensive mode in case his attackers were still around. Nani scooped Lilo up into her arms protectively, fearing that he might lash out at her. While Sora and Aqua assured Stitch that he was safe and worked to calm him down, Nani turned and saw Cobra Bubbles standing several feet behind her.

As Cobra started to walk up to them, Nani turned to David. “David, please take Lilo,” she said, passing her sister into his arms. David, Lilo, Kairi, and Selphie watched solemnly as Nani went up to talk to the social worker. “This isn’t what it looks like,” she told him. “We were… I-It’s just that…”

Cobra took his glasses off and met Nani’s gaze, his eyes clearly filled with sympathy. “I know you’re trying, Nani, but you need to think about what’s best for Lilo, even if it removes you from the picture.” Nani deflated on hearing this. Cobra frowned, as he did not want to take Lilo from her sister, her only remaining family, but he feared that Nani would not be able to properly take care of her. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning for Lilo. I’m sorry.” He turned to leave, putting his sunglasses back on as he did so.

Kairi approached Nani and put her hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her but having no idea what she could do. Nani turned around and pulled her into a hug. Stitch watched this, feeling guilty over letting Lilo nearly get hurt, and realizing that the incident may have only made things worse for the sisters.

David walked up to Nani, still holding Lilo in his arms. “Nani, is there something I can do?” he asked.

Nani shook her head sadly. “No, David. I-I need to take Lilo home now,” she said, on the verge of crying. David passed Lilo to her. “We have a lot to talk about, Lilo. Thanks.” She turned to head home. Kairi and Selphie followed, wanting to provide whatever support they could.

Stitch stepped up next to David and watched them go. “You know, I really believed they had a chance,” he heard David say. “Then you came along.” Stitch looked up at him in shock, but David simply shook his head and walked away. He turned back to watch Nani and Lilo depart and sulked, as he processed all of the trouble that he had caused them.

While Stitch, David, Mickey, Kumo, and Suta lamented what had happened, Sora, Riku, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy gathered together to discuss the incident. “Did you see anything while you were out there?” Donald asked.

Sora nodded. “There was this big purple thing pulling Stitch down,” he explained. “And there was also a skinny green thing with it.”

“Purple…?” Aqua mused.

“A Heartless?” Donald guessed.

Sora shook his head. “I don’t think so. I couldn’t see them clearly, but it looked less like they were trying to tear at Stitch than they were trying to restrain him with something. And it looked like one of them was wearing scuba gear. Stitch bit the tank and they shot out of the water.”

“You know, I thought I saw something heading into the water way over there,” Donald said, pointing to where he had seen the mysterious sight.

Riku nodded. “I’ll take a look. See if they left any clues behind.” With that, he ran off to investigate.

Goofy turned to the direction in which Nani and Lilo had gone. “Gawrsh, do you think there is anything we can do to help them?” he asked.

Sora sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know how we can help them get through this.”

* * *

Sora, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Stitch followed Nani, Lilo, Kairi, and Selphie up to Nani and Lilo’s house. Riku caught back up to them halfway up, having been unable to find any clues about whoever had attacked Stitch and Lilo. In the interim, everyone had also changed back into their normal clothes, Nani and Lilo having also put flowers in their hair. Night had fallen, and Nani had lit a pair of tiki torches to illuminate the deck behind the house as she and Lilo sat in a hammock. Kairi and Selphie sat on rugs on the deck. Sora stepped up to the deck and sat down right next to Kairi. Aqua took a seat in one corner. Riku and Mickey stood behind Sora and Kairi. Donald and Goofy stood on the hill just off of the deck.

Stitch despondently walked up the stairs, stopping when he came face to face with a duck that stepped out of a bush. They stared at each other for a moment before the duck turned her head and quacked, calling five ducklings to hop out and follow her, and they all stepped off and continued on their way. Stitch watched them go, envying the family that the ducks had. They were a unit that waddled together, but while there were people who tried to give him a family, he only caused it pain. He looked up at Lilo and Nani. The pain and sadness on Nani’s face broke his heart.

“Lilo, honey,” Nani said softly, “we have to, uh…”

“Don’t worry. You’re nice, and someone will give you a job,” Lilo assured her, not seeming to fully understand the depths of her worries. “I would.”

Nani sighed. “Come here.” Lilo crawled over to her and Nani pulled her into her lap. “ _ Aloha 'oe, aloha 'oe, _ ” she began to sing. Stitch sat down and listened, entranced by the sad song.

“ _ E ke onaona noho i ka lipo, _ ” Nani continued. Kairi leaned to the side and laid in Sora’s lap. Selphie sighed. Aqua hugged her knees to her chest. “ _ One fond embrace… _ ” Nani took the flowers from her and Lilo’s heads and held them in front of her. Lilo reached out to put her hands over top of the flowers. “ _ A ho'i a'e au/ Until we meet again. _ ” They released the flowers and let them float away in the wind. Everyone watched them fly along the breeze, scattering across the winds.

Kairi sighed, tears rolling down her face. “What if we found what it was that Maleficent and the others are looking for?” she asked. “Could we use it to help Nani and Lilo?”

Sora shook his head. “We can’t do that. You heard what they said it was for. It messes with everything.”

“But if we just do a little thing, I mean. We could fix it so they could stay together. Nani can have a job to support Lilo. Social Services can stay off their backs. Who knows? Maybe bring their parents back.”

Riku shook his head. He knew where she was coming from, but he knew that it was still something they could not do. “Sora’s right. There’s too much that we don’t understand about it to even consider it. And it would mess with too much for us to agree with.”

Mickey nodded. “There’s a reason that even the people keeping the artifacts safe aren’t allowed to know how to get to it. For all we know, it will only do more harm than good. I’m sorry, but we can’t.”

Kairi sighed. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s okay, Kairi,” Sora reassured her. “You just want to help the people you care about. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“But you need to make sure you’re not bringing more trouble when doing so,” Riku added. “It can be hard to know where the line is. You could try to do good or make things right, but if you’re not careful, you could only cause pain.”

Unbeknownst to them, Stitch overheard the conversation and reflected on all of the pain he caused. Saddened and ashamed of himself, he turned and walked away.

Kairi began to cry. “Their  _ 'ohana _ is coming apart and we can’t do anything to help them,” she lamented, keeping quiet so that Lilo would not hear her.

Sora did not know how to respond. He simply held her tightly.

Kairi sniffled. “I’m going to ask Nani if I can stay here for the night,” she said. “Try to give them some comfort. Spend one last night with them as an  _ 'ohana _ .”

Sora nodded. “I’ll let your dad know.”

* * *

Stitch entered Lilo’s bedroom and climbed onto her bed. He moved her pillow, revealing a photograph depicting Lilo, Nani, and their parents. Lilo’s father played on a ukulele for a young Lilo while Nani and her mother smiled at them. Stitch could tell that they seemed happy.

“That’s us, before.” Stitch turned to see Lilo standing just inside the door. “It was rainy, and they went for a drive.” Stitch processed what she told him, putting together the cause of her parents’ deaths. “What happened to yours?” Stitch was taken aback by the question. “I hear you cry at night. Do you dream about them?”

Stitch did not know what to say. He had no family in his past. He was created in a laboratory, and he was arrested only a few days after he was fully gestated. Jumba was not a father to him, and the first time he experienced any warm feelings such as those Lilo, Nani, and Sora felt for those around him was when he met Terra, and then Aqua and Ven. He had never found a family of his own. All subsequent efforts to find friends following his escape from Galactic Federation custody resulted in him being chased out after his mischief caused more harm than good. Sora was the first person to give him a second chance, and that was only after he used his destructive instincts to join the Hollow Bastion crew in fighting the Heartless, when he sought out Merlin and asked for a way to make it up to Sora after causing him to be stuck in the computer world. Even still, he had nothing to call home.

“I know that’s why you wreck things, and push me,” Lilo continued. Stitch slipped off of the bed and went over to the box which Lilo had set up the previous night to serve as a makeshift bed for him. Lilo climbed into her bed and slipped under her blanket. “Our family’s little now, and we don’t have many toys, but if you want, you could be part of it. You could be our baby, and we’d raise you to be good.” Stitch pulled his blanket aside and took out a book which he had taken an interest in the previous night, “The Ugly Duckling”. He wondered if, like the title character, he could find a place where he truly belonged.

Stitch held the book close and walked across the room. Lilo watched him go to the window, understanding what he was meaning to do. “ _ 'Ohana _ means family. Family means nobody gets left behind,” she said. “But if you want to leave, you can.” Without saying a word, Stitch climbed out of the window and left. “I’ll remember you, though. I remember everyone that leaves.” Lilo laid down and closed her eyes.

Stitch climbed back up to have one last look at Lilo. He saw Kairi enter the room. She noticed Stitch’s empty bed and frowned. She then knelt down beside Lilo and kissed her on the forehead.

Stitch dropped down and started walking. He walked through the woods for a short while before stopping. He opened the book to a page with a picture of the “duckling” being found by a swan family that took him in as one of their own. He then turned to glance over at the immediately preceding page, which showed the “duckling” all alone, shouting “I’m lost.”

“L-L-Lost…” He turned around and looked up at the sky, spying the stars whose light showed other worlds watching down on the people on the island. Emotionally torn, he admitted his failings and the loneliness they brought, and pleaded for a blessing from someone or something that cared, channeling his pain and sorrow through the words written on a page in a children’s book. “I’m lost.”


	108. Chapter 107: Aliens Are Attacking My House

“Help! I don’t like the ocean!” Jumba heard Pleakley complain as the noodly alien tried to climb up onto the rock on which Jumba presently laid on his back.. “Oh, look. A friendly little dolphin. They helped sailors in the war一It’s a shark! It’s a shark, and it ain’t friendly! It looks like a dolphin. Tricky fish! Tricky fish!” Jumba rolled his eyes. “Oh, octopus, come and help me. An octo… Octopus is worse than a shark! I hate this planet!” Pleakley finally pulled himself up to the top of the rock. He ripped a small octopus off of his face and threw it aside, then crawled up onto the rock, lying down in defeat right next to Jumba.

“Little monster,” Jumba grumbled, still irritated over the fact that he had failed to recapture Experiment 626. After they lost momentum from the oxygen tank’s propulsion, they spent hours swimming back to land, eventually settling on lying exhausted on a large rock.

Pleakley heard a beeping sound from his pouch, so he sat up and took the communicator out. He answered it and saw the Grand Councilwoman’s stern face. “Uh, Agent Pleakley here,” he said nervously.

“I have lost patience with you both. Have you captured 626 or not?” she questioned, brimming with irritation.

“Um… Uh…” Pleakley tried to come up with an explanation, but his nervousness and failure to properly answer said all that the Grand Councilwoman needed to hear.

The executive leader of the Galactic Federation was having none of it. “Consider yourselves fired and prison-bound.” Pleakley gasped at this statement. “Your incompetence is nothing short of unspeakable.” With those parting words, the Grand Councilwoman hung up.

_ Fired? I’m fired? Oh, and I’m going to be arrested, but FIRED? _ Pleakley began to cry.

Beside him, Jumba broke into a wide grin. “We’re fired!” he exclaimed, chuckling. He pushed himself to his feet, reinvigorated. “Now, we do it  _ my _ way!” He then ran off in the direction of the town.

“Your way?” Pleakley mumbled, wondering what Jumba meant. It took a second for him to figure out what the criminal scientist was aiming to do. While Pleakley had been preventing him from taking action, Jumba had been forced to abide by the galactic law to not harm humans. But now, he was no longer bound by the law, seeing as how he had been relieved of duty and his arrest order had been revived. He was going to capture 626, no matter who might stand in his way. “Wait!” Pleakley cried out as he proceeded to give chase.

* * *

“It seems I’ve overestimated Jumber and Blinkley,” the Grand Councilwoman mused aboard her mothership.

The ship’s military captain, a twenty-foot-tall gray-skinned humanoid with a vaguely shark-like head which had two ingrown horns on either side of his mouth, solid blue eyes, three fingers on each hand, and elephant-like feet, who wore a black uniform with red lining, a blue belt with a V-shaped buckle, and a holster holding a plasma-firing pistol, glanced down at his superior. “Um, Jumba and Pleakley,” he corrected.

The Grand Councilwoman waved it off. “Whatever. The mission is in jeopardy.” She turned to the towering captain. “This could be your chance to redeem yourself, Captain Gantu. How soon will you be prepared to leave?”

Gantu smiled. He had been trying to get back into the Grand Councilwoman’s good graces for years, now. He had been overenthusiastic and overzealous when he attempted to execute that abomination 626 and Jumba after the Councilwoman passed the duty of tracking them down over to the blue-haired stranger due to his failure to locate them on his own and his inability to overcome the invading monsters, and as a result had been relegated to patrol duties. He still retained nominal command of the ship, but had to defer to the Grand Councilwoman before making decisions, and his career had been on the fence for a long time, even while they attempted to track the rogue creature as he traveled from planetoid to planetoid in this ridiculous sector. Now, he was being instructed to recapture the experiment and fully reclaim his position.

“Immediately,” he answered.

* * *

Sora yawned as he descended the stairs to the ground floor of his home. Entering the kitchen, he found his father talking on the phone.

“Alright. I understand. Thanks, anyway. Okay. You have a good day,” Kumo said before hanging up. He let out a disappointed sigh. When he noticed Sora, he offered a soft smile. “Morning, Sora.”

“Hey, Dad,” Sora greeted.

“I was just making some phone calls. Seeing if there was anyone looking for someone to hire. To help Nani, you know,” Kumo explained. “Your mother’s out looking as well.”

Sora shook his head. “I really wish there was something we could do to help her,” Sora said. “I don’t know Nani and Lilo as well as Kairi does, but they’re still friends.”

Kumo nodded. “I understand. We all loved their parents. Hokulani had a smile and a sense of humor that warmed up the whole town. And Ikaia was always up to help anyone who was in a pickle such as this.” He sighed. “I miss those two.”

“I feel bad that I missed the funeral.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that. Heck, they’d probably be glad that you spent your time helping your friends, or your  _ 'ohana _ , as Hokulani would say.”

Sora chuckled. “I wish we could have seen them after coming back. Riku and I would tell Mrs. Pelekai about what we saw, and we’d all trade stories about the worlds beyond this one. Then we’d tell the kids stories around the midsummer campfire like she did when we were little.”

Kumo laughed. “Yeah. She always put a new spin on that story every time she told it.”

“I still imagine seeing some of the worlds like she described,” Sora admitted as he grabbed a box of cereal out of the cupboard.

“And Ikaia always kept one ear to the ground. He helped businesses fill openings and people find jobs. With him helping out, something like the surfboard rental shop would have balanced out within a couple of weeks.”

Sora raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” he asked, setting a bowl and spoon on the kitchen table.

“Well, after Christopher graduated and got another job, Mr. Kuhkini had to shuffle around to balance out the schedule. Claire and Ricky had to take extra shifts.”

“Huh,” Sora remarked, considering what his father said. “Did they ever find someone to replace him?”

Kumo thought for a moment before shaking his head. “I don’t think so. In fact, I think I saw Claire at work when you guys were out yesterday. She used to only work on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

They both stopped dead as they realized what that could mean. After a moment, they bolted out through the front door, running down to the beach to check the rental shop, eager to find if they could help Nani get a new job after all.

_ Thanks, Mr. Pelekai, _ Sora thought, smiling.

* * *

Stitch groggily awoke, having fallen asleep the previous night with his head buried in the open book. He heard a rustling in the trees around him and slowly stood up. Was this what he was waiting for? He looked toward the source of the sound, waiting for his hope to arrive.

He gasped when he instead saw Jumba step through, aiming a yellow plasma blaster with red armor at him. Jumba chuckled as he found his errant experiment. “Don’t run,” he warned. “Don’t make me shoot you. You were expensive.” He stepped forward slowly, not wanting to startle the cowering Stitch and cause him to flee. “Yes, that’s it. Come quietly.”

“W...Waiting,” Stitch pleaded.

“For what?” Jumba asked, confused. He stopped and looked down when he stepped on the storybook.

“Family,” Stitch answered.

“Ah. You don’t have one,” Jumba replied coldly. “I  _ made _ you.”

“M-Maybe… I could…”

“You’re built to destroy,” Jumba reminded him. “You can never belong.”

Stitch sighed, certain that Jumba was correct, but wanting to believe differently. “But I… T-Ter...ra…” he mumbled, blubbering slightly.

“Now, come quietly, and we will take you apart,” Jumba ordered in a less-than-reassuring manner. As he took another step toward the experiment, Stitch turned and ran away. “No, no, no, no. Don’t一don’t run! Don’t run!” The evil genius sighed and gave chase.

* * *

Nani sat at the kitchen table over an empty cereal bowl, mulling over everything that had happened and everything that was about to happen. She looked up at the clock, which read 7:13. She sighed, knowing that in just a few hours she would be separated from Lilo.

Lilo walked into the kitchen, despondent, with Kairi right behind her, and stopped when she was facing Nani. Nani looked up and flinched in surprise when she saw her. She quickly wiped her eyes so that Lilo would not see the tears. “Lilo! I didn’t hear you get up,” she said. She noticed her sister’s sad expression and looked on with concern. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

“Stitch left,” Lilo told her.

“Really?”

“It’s good he’s gone. He didn’t want to be here anyway.”

Wanting to comfort her sister and knowing that things were only going to get more depressing, Nani approached Lilo and knelt in front of her, resting her hands on her shoulders. “Lilo, sometimes you try your hardest, but things don’t work out the way you want them to,” she explained softly. She wanted to explain what was about to happen to them and assure her that it will be alright in the end, but she did not know how to do so even for herself. She cupped Lilo’s face in her hands and lifted it up so that their eyes met. “Sometimes, things have to change. And, maybe sometimes they’re for the better, even if…”

She was interrupted when she heard a knock on the front door. Thinking it was the social worker, she hugged Lilo protectively, but her fears were alleviated when she heard David’s voice call her name. She and Kairi ran over to the door and she opened it to see David standing on the porch, panting heavily, and Sora right behind him, both evidently having run up to the house as fast as they could.

“David!” Nani greeted in surprise.

“Sora!” Kairi added.

“We think we found you a job!” David told Nani, smiling.

“You what?” Nani gasped.

“Old man Kuhkini’s store,” David clarified. “But we’ve gotta hurry!”

Nani’s eyes lit up. “Oh! Uh, okay.” She went back to Lilo and knelt down to her level. “Lilo, baby, this is really important. I need you to stay here for a few minutes. I’ll be right back.” She kissed her sister on the forehead and smiled. “Things are finally turning around!” She returned to the door and faced Kairi and Sora. “Can you two watch Lilo for me while I’m gone?”

The two teens nodded. “Of course,” Kairi replied.

“Thank you.” With that, she ran out the door and down to the trail, following after David. “Aw, David, I owe you one,” she said gratefully.

“That’s okay. You can just date me and we’ll call it even,” David teased.

Sora and Kairi smiled widely as they watched Nani and David go. They had a feeling that things would work out for everyone.

“How’d you find the place?” Kairi asked.

“My dad and I were talking about Lilo and Nani’s parents, and Dad mentioned how Mr. Kuhkini had been shuffling his employees’ schedules around after the one guy left. He didn’t put up a help wanted ad, so Nani didn’t pick it up,” Sora explained. There was a pause as he noticed something amiss. “Hey, where’s Stitch?”

Kairi’s expression turned sad. “He ran away last night,” she told him. “I guess he thought he’d only cause more trouble if he stuck around.”

Sora shook his head. “That’s too bad. They were really starting to become close. And I know he didn’t mean any harm.” He sighed. “I just hope he finds what he’s looking for.”

Suddenly, they saw two green blasts shoot from the trees and hit the ground on the path, and Stitch came running out on all fours. Jumba ran out after him, knocking a tree down with his bulk in the process, and chased after him with his plasma gun.

“Come back here, you little…” Jumba grumbled.

“What theー?” Sora could not complete his thought as he watched Stitch run up the stairs and dash between him and Kairi. Jumba followed, his weight putting strain on the wooden steps and causing a few to split. Before Sora and Kairi could react, the rotund alien plowed right by them, knocking them aside while barely registering them.

“Hey!” Kairi complained. As she pushed herself to her feet, she glanced down to the trail and noticed a few Shadows materializing. “Uh oh.”

Lilo was about to return to her room upstairs when she heard the commotion. She turned to see Stitch come into view, panting.

“Stitch?” The blue creature ran up to her and she noticed that he was slightly panicking. “What is it?” Stitch shushed her and took her by the arm. He was about to lead her away when they heard Jumba burst through the doorway.

Jumba stepped into the hallway and grinned. “Oh! Hiding behind your little friend? Won’t work anymore!” he gloated as he started to approach them, hefting his blaster. “Didn’t I tell you? We got fired this morning.”

Realizing that the scientist was not going to hold back if Lilo was in the crosshairs, Stitch directed the girl to run away.

“New rules,” Jumba continued before shooting his blaster at Stitch. Stitch fell backward onto the stairs, but stood back up, holding the plasma in the shape of a ball in his hands. Jumba looked on, impressed, while Stitch laughed. His laughter turned to yelps of pain as the plasma started to sting, and he tossed it from one hand to the other before throwing it into Jumba’s face, knocking him back into the living room. While Jumba pushed himself back up, Stitch went over to find Lilo.

“Come out, come out, from whomever you’re hiding behind,” Jumba called out as he started to make his way back through the hallway.

Kairi jumped in from behind him and struck him in the shoulder with her Keyblade. “Leave them alone!” she shouted.

Jumba flinched from the blow, but turned and swatted her away. “Little girl with flowery stick…” he griped. He turned back to resume his hunt only to see Stitch throw himself at his face, then kicking off of him to grab onto the wall, which his hands and feet stuck to. After briefly taunting Jumba, he began to crawl away across the wall.

“Come on! What’s the big deal?” Jumba complained as he started to walk after Stitch.

Stitch spat an accusation which only Jumba could understand.

“I’ll put you back together again,” Jumba assured. He ripped the dishware cabinet off of the wall. “I’ll make you taller, and not so fluffy!” He began to throw plates like throwing stars while Stitch crawled on the ceiling to avoid them, which caused the plates to break holes in the ceiling.

“I like fluffy!” Stitch shouted back.

Outside, Sora ran around the perimeter to make sure that the Heartless would not get into the house. Fortunately, they all appeared to be ground-based, so their mobility did not prove disruptive. However, he was annoyed that their growing numbers prevented him from helping Kairi, Stitch and Lilo. He knocked a Heartless which resembled a tiki head into the stream and dispatched a trio of Shadows with a Blizzaga spell, cursing at the fact that the Heartless just had to show up right  _ then _ , of all times.

Further away, Pleakley ran onto the trail, having followed Jumba as closely as he could, which was to say not very close, only to see the destruction that was occurring as plates shot straight out of the roof. “No, no, No!” he screamed in panic, before running to catch up to the incident which was underway.

Jumba finally ran out of dishes to throw, so Stitch stood upside-down on the ceiling confidently, not realizing that the holes in the ceiling formed a near-perfect circle with only a few points holding the platform in place. “Yu porma dissy!” Stitch taunted.

“Oh, leave my mother out of this!” Jumba shot back.

The ceiling, unable to hold itself up due to the damage surrounding Stitch’s platform, broke and smashed on the floor, breaking right on top of Stitch. The experiment groaned in pain.

“You could do with a makeover,” Jumba joked as he started to move debris aside to try and dig Stitch up.

“No!” Lilo screamed as she ran at him and slapped him, rather feebly, with a broom. Not interested in concerning himself with the little girl, he gently pushed her aside. Stitch lunged at Jumba, tackling him, then picked him up and threw him through the wall.

Kairi grabbed Lilo by the arm and led her to the back door. “This way,” she called, beckoning the still-snarling Stitch to follow. “If we make it toー” She did not finish the thought as she opened the door to find Pleakley.

“You’re alive!” Pleakley shouted, relieved to see that the humans were unharmed.

Kairi knocked him down with a Blizzard spell, and Lilo slammed the door. “They’re all over the place!” the child screamed.

They heard Jumba laugh and turned around as he stepped back into view. “Running away? Here.” He pulled out what appeared to be a Swiss Army Toiletry Kit, which opened up so that each tool plus the handle made a six-pointed throwing star. “Let me stop you!” He threw the kit at Stitch, but Kairi stepped in front of him and Lilo and cast Reflera. The kit bounced off of the barrier, forcing Jumba to duck to avoid getting hit in the face. Kairi used the distraction to lead Lilo and Stitch away.

Before Jumba could resume pursuit, Pleakley entered and grabbed him by the coat. “Where’s the girl?” he interrogated. “What have you done with the girl?”

Kairi, Lilo and Stitch ran back into the living room but stopped when a pair of Heartless appeared suddenly. Stitch let out an alien curse and lunged at one of the monsters, ripping it apart with his claws. He then proceeded to jump out through the hole where the wall and window had once been.

“Stitch? Where are youーcrud!” Kairi spat as her attention turned to five more Shadows materializing around her and Lilo. Lilo ran past two Shadows and climbed up on a chair to reach for the phone. “Lilo, go! Find Sora! No, wait. Don’t. There are Heartless out there. Call the police!” Kairi punctuated her instruction by stabbing her Keyblade through a Shadow.

“Hello? Cobra Bubbles?” Lilo said when the recipient picked up her call. “Aliens are attacking my house.”

“I said police, Lilo! 9-1-1!” Kairi scolded. She slashed at a Shadow while two others clawed at her legs from behind.

When he heard what Lilo was doing, Pleakley panicked. “No, no, no! No aliens!” He ran over to try to stop Lilo from saying too much.

To everyone’s shock, the entire remainder of the front wall caved in, shattering into splinters from a powerful force. Stitch stood in what used to be the doorway, holding the old Volkswagen Beetle above his head. “Blue punch buggy!” he yelled before hitting Jumba with it like a baseball bat, sending him crashing into Nani’s bedroom.

Kairi’s jaw dropped. “No! Stitch, put the car down! Stitch!” She watched Stitch throw the car at Jumba and groaned. “Why do I have to do this alone?”

“They want my dog,” Lilo told Mr. Bubbles.

“There’s no need to alert the authorities!” Pleakley pleaded. He took the phone from her and made a poor attempt at alleviating concern. “Everything’s under control.” Lilo quickly took the phone back from the skinny alien.

“Lilo? Who was that?” Cobra asked from the other end.

“Oh, good. My dog found the chainsaw,” Lilo said.

Kairi stopped immediately after destroying another Heartless and blinked in confusion. “What did she just say?”

“Lilo! Don’t hangー” Cobra was cut off as Lilo hung up the phone. At the same time, Stitch jumped back over yet another destroyed wall from outside, revving up a chainsaw.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Sora shouted as he jumped through the hole in the front wall. He cast Zero Gravity on the chainsaw, lifting it out of Stitch’s hands and causing it to power down. “Was the car bit really necessary?” he complained. He cast Thundara to destroy the Heartless surrounding Kairi, then ran over to check on her. “You alright?”

Kairi nodded. “I’m fine. I’ve been keeping Lilo out of danger, but this is getting out of hand,” she replied.

Sora surveyed the damage around him, including what remained of the ceiling and roof. “I noticed.”

Meanwhile, Stitch found Jumba’s plasma blaster and pointed it at his attacker. The instant he pulled the trigger, however, Jumba shoved a carrot into the muzzle. “You shouldn’t play with guns,” Jumba teased, not realizing that the gun was starting to hum and fizzle, as the charged plasma buildup was melting the circuitry and overloading the weapon.

However, Stitch recognized this problem. “Oh, okay,” he replied as he handed the gun to Jumba.

“Thank you.” Jumba then blinked as he noticed the humming start to get louder. “Oh, I just remembered. It’s your birthday.” He passed the gun to Stitch and began to walk away, not wanting to be near when it exploded. “Happy birthday!”

Stitch tugged on Jumba’s coat and tossed the gun back to him. “Merry Christmas!”

“It’s not Christmas,” Jumba retorted, tossing the gun back to Stitch.

“Happy Hanukkah!” Stitch threw it back to Jumba, who, not wanting it to explode from sudden damage, caught it again.

While Sora wondered how either of them could know about Christmas or Hanukkah, Kairi noticed Pleakley pick Lilo up and high-tail it.

“We’re leaving Stitch?” Lilo asked.

“Trust me. This is not going to end well,” Pleakley replied as he ran down the stairs, weaving around Shadows as he fled with the girl.

“What do we do about the gun?” Kairi asked as she turned her attention back to Stitch and Jumba, whose skirmish had devolved to the point where the two of them were quite literally playing hot potato with the overloading blaster.

“We could use time magic to slow down the detonation and get it out of here fast,” Sora suggested.

However, Kairi was skeptical. “I’m not sure we’re advanced enough with that spell to get it far enough away before the magic wears off.”

While they were debating, though Sora seemed set to give it a try, Stitch and Jumba continued to juggle the unstable blaster between each other.

“My…”

“Mother..”

“Told…”

“Me…”

“You…”

“Are…”

“It!” Stitch shoved the blaster into Jumba’s hands, but realized it was too late as the weapon reached critical mass.

“Ha! I win!” Jumba shouted triumphantly, only to take a split second to remember what was happening.

“Sora!” Kairi yelled as she threw herself at her friend.

One second later, the plasma blaster exploded into a green smoke cloud, blowing the entire house to pieces. Debris flew all over the place. One piece hit Pleakley in the back of the head and sent him rolling across the trail, dropping Lilo in the process. The girl looked back and stared helplessly at the smoldering remains of her home.

As he flew down to the island in his spaceship, Gantu saw a green cloud that could only have been caused by a plasma detonation. He smiled.  _ I’ve got you now, Trog. _

* * *

Riku’s eyes widened and he stood up from breakfast, a shocked expression on his face. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

Chikyu and Iwa traded horrified glances, knowing exactly what he was referring to. “It sounded like an explosion,” Chikyu said.

Riku ran outside and climbed up onto the roof of the house, trying to locate the source of the noise. Peering in all directions, he saw smoke rising up from the hill, the source concealed by the foliage of trees. However, he was familiar with the area, as well as the fact that there were not many residences on the hill. He dropped from the roof just as his parents stepped outside to join him.

“It looks like it came from Nani’s house,” Riku told them.

Iwa gasped. Chikyu cursed. “I’ll get my people up there,” the police chief said.

“Isn’t Kairi up there with Nani’s sister?” Iwa asked.

Riku nodded. Without another word, he ran down the street, taking the best route to reach his destination. As he sprinted, he began to hear the sirens from a police car and a fire truck.

Nani ran up the street from the beach, elated by the outcome of her interview. She stopped and watched in confusion as she saw Riku run past her at top speed. “What is he…?” she wondered. She then heard the blare of a siren and turned to notice a fire truck coming from the same direction as Riku. Her face fell as she began to fear what this could mean. “Don’t turn left,” she pleaded. Almost immediately, the fire truck turned left, heading up the hill on which she lived. As if to confirm her fears even more, Riku followed after giving the truck time to pass him. “No…” She ran in desperate pursuit.

When she came up to where her home was, she gaped in horror at the ruins of her pulverized house. The deck and stairs were intact, although there seemed to be a hole under where the kitchen was, but the house on top was nothing more than smoking wood and metal shrapnel. Pieces of her car were strewn about on the opposite side of the stream, the remnants melted and contorted into irreparable, flaming scrap. She saw a dark blue car with the familiar figure of Cobra Bubbles standing beside it. She ran up to him, not noticing Stitch as he pulled himself out of a pile of wreckage in a daze. As she approached, she could hear Lilo’s voice, and was relieved to hear that she was safe, only to remember what the social worker had said he was coming to do.

Riku, Mickey, Goofy, and Aqua, along with a fireman, dug through the debris, trying to find Sora and Kairi, who had not yet been located, while the other firemen used a hose to extinguish what remained of the fire. They were startled when they heard another explosion, although one that was most likely not on the same scale as the previous one, and turned to identify the source. They saw debris fly from the middle of the pile of what had once been the house, breaking into splinters and flying thirty feet, and then Sora and Kairi climbing out of a newly-made hole in the pile.

Not stopping to greet Riku or the others, and not taking time to reflect on the fact that she had just used a third-tier spell to protect herself and Sora, Kairi clambered out of the wreckage and ran down the stairs, calling out Lilo’s name. She stumbled when the bottom step broke beneath her foot, but she kept going. She saw Mr. Bubbles holding Lilo in his arms and ran over to them, reaching Mr. Bubbles’ car at the same time as Nani. Just as they caught up to him, they watched him put Lilo in the passenger seat of his car.

“Please, don’t do this,” Nani begged.

“You know I have no choice,” Bubbles said solemnly.

“No! You’re not taking her!” Nani yelled, desperate and angry. Lilo turned to them, shocked at hearing this. “I’m the only one who understands her! You take that away, she won’t stand a chance!”

“You’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

“But you don’t know what you’re doing! She needs me!”

“Is this what she needs?” Bubbles shot back, gesturing to the destroyed house.

“That wasn’t her fault! Please,” Kairi pleaded.

“It seems clear to me that you need her a lot more than she needs you.”

Lilo processed the information, horrified. They were going to take her away from Nani. She did not want to lose her big sister. And Nani seemed to be so hurt by the thought. She had to get out of there. She could not lose her only remaining family.

She reached up and opened the door, then slipped out and ran away.

Stitch watched the confrontation from a distance, dismayed and ashamed of himself for letting it happen. He made a horrible mistake in allowing Jumba to follow him to Lilo’s house. He made an even greater misstep by failing to contain the damage and instead escalating it himself. Jumba was right. The Grand Councilwoman was right. The entire Galactic Federation was right. He was nothing more than a monster, and everything he touched only came to ruin.

Bubbles sighed. “I am sorry, Nani,” he said sincerely. “I do wish things could be different.”

Nani was on the verge of tears, realizing that there was nothing she could do to stop Mr. Bubbles from taking her sister away. Kairi approached her, sympathizing with the young woman’s plight. She loved Nani and Lilo like sisters, and she wanted there to be some way that she could help them, but it looked as though that would not be possible. Her eyes full of tears, she hugged Nani, not expecting to comfort her, but wanting to at least offer a shoulder to cry on.

Bubbles turned to get into his car, but stopped as he looked through the window to see that the seat was empty.

Kairi and Nani broke their embrace when they heard Bubbles start to call out Lilo’s name. They peeked into the car window and realized that she was gone. They started to desperately call out for her as well.

Stitch watched as they went into the trees in search of Lilo, followed by Sora and Riku. Glancing down, he saw the photograph of Lilo with her family. Two of the corners were burnt up, but it was mostly still intact. The depictions of Lilo, Nani, and their parents were untarnished. He picked it up and studied it sadly, before deciding that he should return it to her.

He scurried through the woods, using his enhanced hearing and smell to track her before he finally caught up to her. He tapped her on the arm to get her attention, startling her, then stepped out into full view. He handed the picture to her.

Lilo noticed the burns on the picture and took on a cold, angry expression. “You ruined everything,” she accused bitterly.

Stitch was surprised by the reaction, but decided that she was right to think so. Thinking that she deserved to know the truth, he showed her his true form. A pair of antennae grew out of his forehead and three foot-long spines extended from his back. He raised his arms and allowed two extra arms to grow from his sides.

“You’re one of them?” Lilo said, feeling shocked and betrayed. Stitch lowered his arms and nodded. Angrily, Lilo shoved him away. “Get out of here, Stitch.”

Suddenly, they both heard a click and turned around, too late as Gantu fired a net that closed around them and sent them tumbling across the ground. “Surprise!” he shouted triumphantly, laughing. He walked over to the net, clearing thirty feet in three steps, and picked it up. Stitch struggled to break out, but the polymer would not be pierced by his claws. “And here I thought you would be difficult to catch! Oh, silly me.”

Nani and Kairi walked through the woods, calling for Lilo. They heard heavy footsteps, almost sounding like an elephant marching, and saw Gantu right in front of them. Nani screamed in terror and leaned up against a tree for safety. Kairi held her back to keep her out of harm’s way as they watched the giant pass by.

They watched Gantu march over to his spaceship, a black vessel with yellow line prints, with two jet thrusters and a pair of wings on top. The ship appeared to be designed for one or two passengers, its size mostly suiting Gantu’s own. He took a tubular capsule off of his back, to which it was magnetically attached, and opened the lid on the end, then emptied the captive contents of the net into it, closed it, and hooked it onto the back of his ship. “There you go, all bucked in for the trip,” he gloated. He then noticed Lilo in the capsule next to Stitch, but did not seem concerned. “And look! I even caught you a little snack.” Lilo gasped in fright. Chuckling to himself, Gantu began to march to the front of his ship.

Sora, Riku and Aqua caught up to Kairi and Nani. “We couldn’t find her. Any luck on your end?” Sora asked. It took a few seconds for the three of them to notice that the girls were staring at the spaceship in horror. When they followed their gaze and squinted to identify the small figures in the capsule, they all collectively gasped.

Nani ran to try to reach the ship. “No! Stop!” she cried desperately.

Aqua turned her gaze to the giant and scowled as she recognized him. Summoning her Keyblade, she ran up alongside the ship just as Gantu was settling into the cockpit. “Hold it right there!” she yelled.

Gantu glanced out at her and frowned. “I don’t have time for any interference.” With that, he pulled his blaster pistol out of its holster and fired it at her, hitting her square in the chest and sending her sprawling. Not wasting any more time, he closed the cockpit and powered up the engine. The thrusters lit up with blue flames and blew air backward, causing Nani to fall backward. Sora and Riku ran to try and intercept the ship.

Stitch jumped up and grabbed the edges of the lid, using his claws to try to pry it open. He could only get a small seam opened, but he managed to contort himself so that he could squeeze through. He climbed out and stood on the glass casing, but before he could do anything else, Gantu gunned the engines and the ship flew off, causing him to fall away.

In a final desperate attempt to stop the ship, Sora threw his Keyblade, but the ship managed to get out of range, and the weapon flew harmlessly. The party stared at the receding spaceship, in shock at what they had just seen happen. Mickey, Donald and Goofy came upon the scene, wondering what was going on.

Nani took it the hardest. “Lilo…” she muttered weakly, terrified that she had just lost her sister for good.


	109. Chapter 108: Spaceship Chase

As the spaceship zoomed away, everyone continued to stare after it in shock. They could not believe what had just happened. Particularly not Mickey, Donald and Goofy, who could only guess the cause for concern based on minimal context.

Nani was on the verge of tears as she watched her little sister vanish into the sky. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Stitch stumbling in their direction, dazed. As she recognized the dogーthat  _ thing _ that had caused so much torment the moment it had come into their lives, her eyes burned with rage.

As his vision cleared and he started to regain his bearings after the fall, Stitch found himself being sent flying from the blow of a Keyblade. Nani stood above him, glaring down at the blue alien while holding the weapon above her. All eyes were on Stitch as he lay flat on the ground, save for those of Aqua, who was staring at Nani in confusion while uncertainly flexing her fingers.

“Okay, talk! I know you had something to do with this! Now where’s Lilo?” Nani demanded. Stitch pushed himself to his feet, groaning in pain. “Talk! I know you can.”

Stitch shook his head to clear his vision and turned around to address Nani. “Okay, okay,” he said, holding all four of his arms out in an attempt at a placating fashion.

Nani screamed, either due to the creature actually proving that he could talk or by the fact that he had two extra arms, which he lacked the previous two days, and hit him with the Keyblade again, causing Aqua and Sora to wince. Composing herself, Nani stepped over until she was right above Stitch. “Where’s Lilo?” she repeated.

“Wait, Nani! He’s not the bad guy,” Kairi tried to explain, grabbing her friend’s arm.

“Yeah. He was trying to protect Lilo when the aliens attacked,” Sora added.

“Aliens, plural? Like, not just that one guy?” Riku asked. Sora nodded in confirmation.

Nani ignored them, continuing to glare angrily at Stitch. “Where. Is. Lilo?”

Stitch sighed as he prepared to explain. “Liloー” However, he was interrupted as he was hit by a plasma bolt from behind, sending him rolling.

Jumba was on him in seconds, and he quickly slipped some four-armed handcuffs onto him. He let out a triumphant laugh. “Now all your washing is up,” he gloated.

Pleakley joined them and flashed his badge, which was not one of a law enforcement officer but still indicated his allegiance, in Stitch’s face. “You’re under arrest! Read him his rights!”

Jumba chuckled. “Listen carefully,” he said, before he began to slam his head into a tree trunk repeatedly.

Aqua retrieved her fallen Keyblade and pointed it at Jumba. “Put him down, Doctor Jumba.” Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy brandished their weapons as well.

Jumba looked at her in bemusement. “Have we met?” he asked, not recognizing the woman who had a hand in re-arresting him over a decade before. He shrugged, then dropped Stitch to the ground and stomped on him.

“They the aliens?” Riku asked.

“Yup,” Kairi affirmed.

Pleakley pulled his communicator out and dialed a number in it, ignoring the disgruntled Keyblade wielders. “Hello? Galactic Command? Experiment 626 is in custody,” he reported proudly. “We’ll wait right here.” He hung up, satisfied. It was then that he noticed the heavily-armed warriors getting ready for a fight. He shrugged. “What? We’re arresting an intergalactic criminal. Experiment 626 is a destructive monster, and the Galactic Federation sentenced him to exile on a distant asteroid. And I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

“He didn’t already serve his exile?” Aqua asked, confused. “The Grand Councilwoman said that she would consider lightening his sentence after I turned him and Jumba back over to her.”

Jumba laughed, although he still seemed rather perplexed. “Oh, but only a few days after our recapture, 626 broke out again and escaped,” he explained. Stitch used the distraction to slip out from under Jumba’s foot.

Nani stepped forward, edging around the others until she was at the front of the crowd, facing Jumba and Pleakley. The aliens looked at her nervously, unsure how to react to the civilian.

“Where’s Lilo?” Nani asked.

“Who?” Jumba asked.

“Lilo, my sister,” Nani clarified, pleading now.

Jumba and Pleakley traded glances, and Pleakley shook his head. “Uh, sorry. We do not know anyone by this… uh…” Jumba replied, trying to deflect his involvement, even though he was starting to feel bad for the woman.

“Lilo! She’s a little girl this big! She has black hair and brown eyes, and she hangs around with that thing!” Nani screamed, pointing at Stitch on the last word.

Jumba sighed. “We know her,” he admitted.

“Bring her back.”

“Oh, we can’t do that. Uh-uh,” Pleakley told her. “That would be misuse of galactic resources.”

“See, problem is, we’re just here for him,” Jumba explained, holding Stitch up to demonstrate.

“So she’s gone?” Nani realized, devastated.

“Look at the bright side. You won’t have to yell at anyone anymore,” Pleakley said, chuckling nervously. Riku, Kairi and Donald glared at him, unamused. Nani fell to her knees, weeping. Pleakley backed up until he had rejoined Jumba and Stitch, not sure what to do.

“Come,” Jumba said as he started to lead Stitch and Pleakley away.

Kairi looked down at Nani, then back up in the direction in which the spaceship had gone. She shook her head defiantly. “No! This can’t be it! There has to be something we can do!” she protested. She turned around to face her companions, looking for them to back her up. “We can’t just give up like that. We have five Keyblades, a boatload of magic, and a spaceship! We helped so many people so many times. We have to… We have to be able to do something! We can’t lose her!” As she spoke, tears rolled down her face. She seemed to be on the verge of breaking down like Nani, but she willed herself to stay strong and look for a way to fight.

Sora, Riku and Mickey were the first to be inspired by Kairi. They attempted to come up with a plan to catch the giant’s spaceship.

Stitch listened to Kairi thoughtfully, then turned around and walked over to Nani. “ _ 'Ohana _ ,” he said.

Nani looked up at him. “Huh?”

“Hey! Get away from her!” Jumba barked, picking Stitch up by the head.

“No!” Nani pulled Stitch out of Jumba’s grip and set him in front of her. “What did you say?”

“ _ 'Ohana _ means ‘family’,” Stitch said. Donald and Goofy shared puzzled looks. “Family means nobody…”

“Nobody gets left behind,” Nani continued the motto carried to heart by her sister.

“Or forgotten. Yeah,” Stitch finished. Pleakley looked at Jumba, perplexed. Jumba simply shrugged. Stitch turned to Jumba and chattered something in his alien language, which only Jumba and Pleakley seemed to be able to understand.

“What?!” Jumba shouted in annoyance. He picked Stitch up and began to scream in his face. “After all you put me through, you expect me to help you just like that? Just like that?!”

Stitch nodded. “Ih,” he answered.

“Fine.” Jumba took out a key and unlocked Stitch’s handcuffs.

“Fine? You’re doing what he says?” Pleakley asked in disbelief.

“He is very persuasive,” Jumba replied.

“Persuasive?! What exactly are we doing?”

“Rescue.”

“We’re gonna get Lilo?” Nani asked, beaming.

Stitch smiled widely. “Ih.”

“Great! Now, how are we going to get her?” Donald asked.

Jumba chuckled. “We’re going to follow them,” he said as if it was obvious. He set Stitch down and began to lead the party through the woods.

Mickey nodded, taking his word for it. “In that case, we’ll need to make sure the big guy doesn’t escape before we can catch up,” he said. He turned to Donald and Goofy. “Let’s get in the Gummi Ship and block his escape.” Donald and Goofy nodded in agreement, and they followed the king to the nearest access point.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up! This is going to clash with galactic protocol!” Pleakley protested. “Interfering with federation law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement personnel will bring about legal repercussions!”

Sora smirked. “We’ll take it up with them if they decide to enforce that,” he quipped.

“Tell them that the next time they come into our jurisdiction, they should discuss terms with us,” Riku added. “Especially if their ‘protocol’ leads to one of our own being kidnapped.” Sora bumped fists with him.

Pleakley rolled his eye. “Oh, good!” he said sarcastically. “I was hoping to add theft, endangerment, and INSANITY to my list of things to do today.”

Jumba laughed. “You too?” Stitch laughed as well.

“Must be Saturday,” Riku added.

“Here we are.” Jumba moved a curtain of foliage aside, revealing a large red spaceship with white designs, a large body, and long, thin, low-set wings. Sora and Kairi’s jaws dropped at the sight of the ship.

“What? Did you think we walked here?” Jumba joked.

* * *

Gantu punched commands into the computer console, a satisfied smile on his face. “This is Gantu, requesting hyperspace clearance,” he said.

“Stand by for clearance,” a voice came through the speaker.

Unbeknownst to Gantu, Jumba’s ship rose above the clouds. It was clear to see that the red crew-intended spaceship was far larger than Gantu’s single-person craft. Lilo looked up to see the ship appear, and she saw Stitch, Nani, and Kairi standing at the cockpit window. Stitch waved to her and Kairi smiled comfortingly. Lilo waved back and started to smile.

“Hang on. It looks like there’s something in your way,” the voice on the other end of the comm link warned him. “Hang on. Plotting a point for a new hyperspace trajectory.”

“What the…?” Gantu shook his head. “Connect me to the Grand Councilwoman.” He was unaware of the ship moving up beside his own.

A moment passed before he heard the Grand Councilwoman’s voice over the comm. “Gantu, what’s going on?” she asked.

Gantu smiled proudly. “I thought you’d like to know that the little abomination is一” He was cut short as he heard the other ship honk its horn. He glanced out the window to regard it in confusion. Stitch flipped upside-down and rubbed his rear end on the window mockingly. Gantu screamed, realizing that his prey was no longer in his custody.

“Yes, Captain?” the Grand Councilwoman pressed impatiently.

Jumba turned the steering wheel and tilted the ship so that the end of the left wing bumped Gantu’s ship from below, giving Gantu a strong jolt in the cockpit.

“I’ll call you back,” Gantu grumbled before hanging up on the comm. He then steered the ship to follow Jumba’s vessel through the sky, unveiling a ray gun from underneath the craft in an effort to shoot his adversaries down. “How did you get out of there?” He fired photon bolts, but they all missed the larger ship.

“So, what exactly are we doing?” Nani asked.

“We got his attention by showing him that we have something that he wants,” Riku explained. “Now we’re stringing him along, making him play by our rules until we get what we want.”

“Goading him into a fight he can’t win,” Aqua mused. “That sounds familiar.”

“Don’t worry. We are professionals,” Jumba assured Nani. He noticed that Stitch had accidentally broken a lever and was chewing on the broken stick. “Hey! Get that out of your mouth!” He reached over and grabbed for the lever. Nani facepalmed. Riku rolled his eyes.

Sora studied the damage. “Got any replacement parts around? Screwdrivers and drills? Anything for maintenance in mid-flight?” he asked.

“Uh, there should be some in the cargo hold,” Pleakley replied. “What are you going to do?” Before he had even finished the sentence, Sora was gone. He returned a minute later with the tools he needed.

“Chip and Dale made sure that we could fix the Gummi Ship if it was damaged,” Sora explained. “Considering how many times we got shot and bumped into asteroids, it was a good skill to learn. Most of the fuselage was put together by just linking Gummi blocks together like Legos, but the machinery and consoles were put together the old-fashioned way.” He quickly began dismantling the plates covering the control gears and worked on replacing the broken lever, while Riku, Kairi, Aqua, Stitch, and Nani watched in amazement. When he was done, he replaced the cover and screwed it back on, then stood up and wiped sweat from his forehead. “All fixed.”

Kairi clapped, impressed. “Nice job,” she commended.

“Thanks,” he replied.

Suddenly, a photon beam shot through the ceiling, dispersing on the floor in the middle of the center aisle, startling Pleakley. Noticing that Gantu’s shots could breach the hull, Riku beckoned Pleakley to come to the front, while he and Aqua took a defensive position behind the others, prepared to block any lasers that might come in from harming them.

Jumba noticed that he was flying the ship back to the island, and straight into a mountain pass. “Hold on,” he told his passengers before turning the ship sideways to fly harmlessly between flanking rocks. Gantu banked to the side, strafing a mountain as he attempted to avoid it. He managed to regain his balance in midair and flew alongside the mountain, although he was unable to go right after Jumba’s ship due to the rocks between them.

“Okay, is showtime!” Jumba shouted. Stitch cackled and scurried over to the emergency exit, grabbing onto the handle as he prepared for his part.

Aqua nodded. “I’m with you, Stitch,” she said, twirling her old Keyblade, Stormfall, in her hands. She had contemplated using the Master’s Defender for the upcoming task, but she had not attempted that function of Keyblade transformation with it before, and elected to use what was familiar to her.

As the ship reached the end of the mountain pass, Jumba turned back to Stitch and Aqua. “This is it,” he told them. He gripped the steering console tightly, indicating that Sora, Riku, Kairi, Nani, and Pleakley should hold on tight to whatever they could grab onto. He swerved, and the ship turned sharply just as it exited the mountain range, coming right into Gantu’s path. The alien officer could only gasp in horror before his vessel hit the larger craft, sending him spinning.

“Go! Go! Go!” Stitch shouted in excitement. He pulled the release lever and opened the emergency door, letting himself fly out into the air. Aqua threw her Keyblade and jumped out after him. Stormfall turned into a Keyblade Glider, scaling and shifting its parts until it functioned not unlike a floating chair with a long, thin cone on the lower front and two arced pieces connected by a thin cylindrical bar that almost gave the glider the appearance of a compound bow. Aqua fell feet-first and landed in position on the glider, her feet resting on the frame of what had once been the teeth of her weapon, and grabbed onto the center bar, sitting on the edge of the back piece. With the glider propelling itself on its own, Aqua flew down to catch up to Gantu’s ship.

Stitch, laughing maniacally, landed on the windshield of Gantu’s ship, much to the giant officer’s surprise. He crawled over the hull and down the back until he grabbed onto Lilo’s capsule. Lilo smiled, happy to see him and realizing that he was going to rescue her. He began to claw at the glass, trying to break it but thus far only creating gashes.

Gantu gritted his teeth, realizing where the experiment was. “Little savage! Get off my ship!” he snarled. He pressed a button, which caused the thrusters in the back to turn so that the flames were blasting directly at Stitch. Although the fireproof Stitch suffered no serious damage, he was hurt enough that he was thrown off and fell through the air.

“Stitch!” Lilo cried out.

To everyone’s horror, Stitch fell to the ground, bouncing high a few times, before landing face-down on an asphalt road.

Up in Jumba’s ship, Kairi gasped. “Well, that’s not good,” Riku commented.

Gantu grunted. “Computer! Locate experiment 626,” he commanded.

“626 LOCATED,” a computer voice replied. A red marker triangulated onto a digital map of the island, indicating Stitch’s exact coordinates.

“We finish this now,” he muttered in a dead-serious tone as he flew in a beeline toward Stitch’s location.

Jumba looked down at Stitch through a set of binoculars. “Stitch is unconscious,” he observed.

“What do we do now?” Nani asked anxiously.

Jumba shrugged. “Stay close. Look for some kind of opening, perhaps.”

Sora pressed his face against the window. “Come on, you fluffy little animal. Come on,” he whispered in a pleading tone.

* * *

As Gantu prepared to fire, Stitch stirred, then shot to his feet when he saw Gantu’s ship diving toward him. He jumped out of the way just as Gantu fired, narrowly dodging to green blast.

“No!” Gantu cursed. He banked upward in order to make room to turn around and try again.

Lilo pressed herself up against the capsule’s glass, looking down at Stitch. “Don’t leave me, okay?” she begged.

“Okay… Okay…” Stitch said sadly, not sure what to do from there. He heard a honking noise and turned around to see a gas tanker driving along the road toward him. His eyes narrowed as he came up with an idea, faster than a supercomputer. “Okay,” he repeated, more resolutely, not willing to let anything get in the way.

* * *

Aqua ascended until she was level with Jumba’s ship. “I can try to get Lilo out, but we should probably keep Gantu distracted,” she said.

Sora held his Keyblade up at eye level, coming up with ideas to help. “I’m good with distractions,” he offered. He focused on his bond with Stitch, and smiled as a shape formed in his mind. He turned back to Riku and Kairi. “Wish me luck!”

“Do you have room for another person in whatever you’re going to do?” Kairi asked, not wanting to stand by and do nothing to help.

Sora shrugged. “I think we can manage.”

Kairi ran over to join Sora. “Hold on,” he said. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he held his Keyblade pointing down with both hands gripped on the handle. He walked over to the door, with Kairi walking with him, and then they jumped out into the air.

“Kairi!” Nani screamed, horrified. She stood up to go to the door and check on them, but Riku grabbed her arm to keep her in place. A moment later, they saw a silver-and-yellow two-person space pod fly in front of Jumba’s ship, an energy bubble forming over the cockpit in which Sora and Kairi sat, with Sora in the front seat and Kairi behind him. Jumba and Pleakley recognized the shape as resembling the police cruisers used by the Galactic Federation, particularly aboard the mothership and starships, with a fully-organic shape consisting of an oblong ellipsoid shape, two engine thrusters on the back, an aerodynamic fin on top, and a pair of photon blasters folded out on the sides. After showing the ship off to the others, Sora steered the Keyblade Cruiser down toward Gantu’s ship, flying side-by-side with Aqua’s Keyblade Glider. Aqua gave Sora a thumbs-up. Sora returned the gesture while Kairi gave her an “okay” sign.

Deeming that Sora’s vessel was better-suited for retrieving Lilo, Aqua accelerated her glider and rode alongside Gantu’s ship. Manually turning the bow of her glider by the handlebar, she charged up an energy bolt, which was set up like a nocked arrow, and fired it at the side of the ship.

Jolting from the hit, Gantu looked at the radar to locate the attacker. He directed the gun to swivel and aim for Aqua and fired. Aqua cast Barrier and blocked the hit, much to Gantu’s bewilderment.

“What sort of shielding does this cruiser possess?” Gantu wondered. “It doesn’t seem to emit the same radio frequencies as a standard one. Computer! Bring up a view of the assailing cruiser.” A camera image appeared on the screen showing Aqua flying beside the ship. “That Earthling who tried to interfere with my takeoff. Hmm… There’s something familiar about… her…”

Aqua fired another shot at the ship. Gantu growled in frustration. “Blasted little…!” He lurched the ship to the right, bumping into Aqua and sending her veering off. However, she regained her balance and flew back in to strafe the hull.

* * *

Sora smirked as he watched Aqua pester Gantu. “I think the distraction is working,” he said.

Kairi nodded. “Let’s move in.”

Sora nodded in reply and accelerated the Keyblade Cruiser so that it closed in on Gantu’s ship, hovering only five feet behind the rear. Lilo looked down at him and Kairi, her expression showing that she was glad to see them. Sora prepared to open the windshield and try to rescue Lilo, but stopped as he examined the capsule and took stock of everything around him. He noticed that the capsule only opened on the end, and it was held shut by the magnetic lock that fixed it to the ship. Gauging its size, he also realized that it was too big for him to wrap his arms around, and he also realized that he could not get much closer without suffering a severe risk to his and Kairi’s safety.

Unable to reconcile the conundrum, Sora glanced back at Kairi. “You know, I think our plan might be missing a few steps,” he admitted.

Kairi nodded. “Yeah. I was thinking the same thing,” she agreed. “What do we do now?”

Sora shrugged. “I guess we stay in position until we figure something out.”

“I guess that’s the best we can do.”

* * *

“Why are they not doing anything?” Jumba asked as he spied the Keyblade Cruiser floating behind Gantu’s ship but doing nothing else beyond maintaining a position.

“I guess they’re struck trying to figure out how to get Lilo out safely,” Riku guessed, borrowing Jumba’s binoculars to get a look, although he struggled to use it properly due to the fact that it was not designed for a human.

“If they can’t get close enough to get her out safely, then we need to stop the ship,” Pleakley declared. “This would be easier if we were in the vacuum of space and could simply force it to stop moving, provided we had the resources, anyway, but in atmospheric conditions with relatively strong gravity and air flow, we’ll have to bring it to the ground.”

“He is right. But Gantu is too stubborn to simply do what we ask,” Jumba added.

Riku stared intently at Gantu’s ship, trying to think of something to turn the tide in their favor. Shooting it down risked great harm to Lilo, so that idea was thrown out immediately. He considered breaking into the cockpit and hijacking it, but a fight would most likely cause extra trouble. Plus, the controls were meant for someone who was twenty feet tall, so none of them would be able to properly commandeer it, unless there was an autopilot (which most likely would not respond to their orders, anyway). He also doubted that using something such as Gravity magic to bring it down forcefully would prove effective so long as the engines and thrusters remained active. He shook his head in frustration, unable to think of a plan that would work.

“Hey, does anyone know where Stitch is?” Nani asked.

* * *

“TARGET 626 IS IN MOTION. SPEED IS 84,” the computer informed Gantu. A red blip on the radar helpfully showed Stitch’s motion at a rapid velocity.

“Impossible,” Gantu muttered. He recalled the various abilities that Jumba had listed during his trial, including being bulletproof and fireproof, able to see in the dark and think faster than a supercomputer, and strong enough to lift three thousand times his size. A full analysis of the doctor’s notes listed the additional abilities of shockproof skin, the ability to crawl on perfectly-smooth walls and ceilings, perceive infrared and x-ray light, retract certain appendages, and amplify sound waves. Nothing ever mentioned such an incredible speed.

Turning his attention away from Aqua’s attacks, he flew his ship in the direction of the experiment’s trajectory.

* * *

Stitch, having stopped and commandeered the gas tanker, drove up a volcano mountain. Barely able to see over the dashboard and using heavy rocks to hold down the gas pedal, he steered the truck until it fell into a river of lava. The truck sank into the molten liquid, and Stitch scampered out and climbed up onto the tank before the tractor unit became completely submerged in the lava.

Gantu hovered over the volcano, trying to fire at Stitch. Lilo could only watch, terrified for the blue alien. Stitch waited for the ship to come closer. Sora, Kairi, and Aqua looked down at him wondering what he was planning to do.

“Abomination,” Gantu spat.

“Stupidhead,” Stitch remarked. He dug his claws into the tanker and pulled, ripping a hole in the steel container. A jet of gasoline shot out and fell straight into the lava. Fire shot up the jet, igniting the gas until it entered the tank and lit up the entire contents. The tank erupted in a fiery explosion, launching Stitch high into the air. The experiment flew straight up to Gantu’s ship and smashed through the windshield, landing on the dashboard. “Aloha!”

Aqua flew around in front of the ship and jumped off of her glider, summoning Master’s Defender and smashing a larger hole in the windshield, landing next to Stitch on top of the dashboard. Riku conjured a Corridor of Darkness and stepped through it, coming out in Gantu’s ship, next to Aqua. He raised his Keyblade, preparing for a fight. “License and registration?” he remarked.

“I’ve had enough of this!” Gantu shouted angrily. He glared at Stitch, Aqua, and Riku in turn, before his eyes fell back on Aqua. His eyes widened as he finally recognized Aqua. “You! You’re the one who interfered with my arrest of the abomination and nearly cost me my job!” he accused.

He swung his fist at Aqua, but she blocked with her Keyblade and pushed his arm back. “You should have done your job right!” she shot back. “Land this thing right now!”

“Let me think about that.” Gantu swung his fist at her again. Aqua called up a Barrier and blocked the hit. He then tried to smash Riku, but Riku slashed at his wrist with his Keyblade. Gasping in pain, Gantu retracted his fist and tried to punch at Riku with his other hand. However, Riku stepped out of the way, and Stitch grabbed his wrist and used it to lift him up, smashing his head into the ceiling.

Gantu had had enough of dealing with Stitch’s antics, and he turned his efforts to slamming his fist down on him. “You’re vile! You’re foul! You’re flawed!” he snarled with each hit. Stitch dodged the first two, but the third connected. However, Stitch simply held the fist up with two arms.

“Also cute and fluffy!” Stitch retorted. With that, he threw Gantu out of the cockpit. Riku and Aqua ducked to avoid being caught as collateral. The giant flew over the Keyblade Glider and landed on the wing of Jumba’s ship, which Jumba (at Pleakley’s insistence) had flown over so that they would catch him.

Aqua waved teasingly to Gantu, then turned to Riku and Stitch. “Okay. Now, let’s get Lilo,” she said.

Stitch nodded and jumped up to the ceiling. He crawled out and onto the top of the ship, making his way to Lilo.

Riku knelt and looked down at the console. “We need to do something about this ship. We can’t just let it keep flying unmanned,” he declared. “But it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to use the controls.”

“Maybe we could override it with an Entice-G,” Aqua suggested.

Riku shook his head. “That’s up on the Gummi Ship. I don’t think we’ll really be able to get it and use it.”

Before they could come up with any new ideas, the ship lurched and they stumbled. They looked outside and saw that Gantu had drawn his blaster and was firing plasma bolts at the ship. He was trying to hit Stitch, but the experiment avoided each shot. When one of the blasts hit and damaged one of the turbines, the passengers took the cue to leave. Aqua jumped off and landed on her glider, dismissing the Master’s Defender. Riku hesitated, but Aqua beckoned for him to jump. He did so, and he threw his arms around Aqua’s waist when he reached her. They flew off, making their way to the larger ship. Gantu shot the turbine again, causing it to release smoke and make a chopping noise. Realizing that it was going to explode in a minute and another shot would cause it to blow up immediately, Aqua shot an energy arrow at Gantu, knocking the blaster out of his hand. She flew over Gantu, and Riku dropped down. He spun around and hit Gantu in the face with his Keyblade. As Gantu began to stumble away, Riku cast Mini, shrinking him down to four feet in height. He caught the alien officer by the arm and pinned him down on the wing.

Sora and Kairi saw Stitch come into view on the back end of the spaceship. Sora opened the windshield, and Kairi pointed her Keyblade at the capsule. When Stitch was just above it, Kairi fired a thin beam of light at the glass and drew a rectangle. Stitch grabbed onto the split pane with the palm of his hand and threw it away, then slipped into the capsule and scooped Lilo up into his arms.

“You came back,” Lilo said joyfully.

“Nobody gets left behind,” Stitch replied. Lilo kissed him on the nose, earning a soft smile.

Kairi stood up and reached her arms out for them. Stitch jumped out of the capsule, and Kairi caught them. “Got you! You’re all right now,” she said. Lilo gave Kairi a hug.

Sora piloted the Keyblade Cruiser away from the Gantu’s ship before it exploded into an enormous cloud of smoke which filled the air, engulfing everyone. They all flew blindly, hoping not to crash into each other and hoping that everyone was alright.

A moment passed before they all escaped the cloud, only to realize that they had all gone in different directions. Sora and Aqua steered their crafts around until they caught up to Jumba’s ship, flying side-by-side to the right of the large vessel. They could see that Riku and Gantu were still safe on the wing. Sora, Kairi, Lilo, and Stitch were perplexed to see that Gantu was now smaller than Riku, but Sora, Kairi and Stitch figured it out as they noticed the spell start to wear off and Gantu began to grow back to his normal size.

“We’ll need to set down here, quick,” Pleakley advised. “Carrying Gantu and Riku on the wing all the way back will be too risky.”

Nani pointed out to the ocean just off of a beach, where very few people could be seen.. “We can park there,” she suggested.

“Well, here we go,” Jumba said. He flew around and brought the ship down in the water, safely bringing it to a stop two hundred feet from shore. The most impact it caused on anyone in the surrounding area was creating a large wave that disrupted a few people sitting on their surfboards.

Sora brought the cruiser up next to the emergency exit, where Nani, Jumba, and Pleakley had gathered, and opened up the windshield. “I think I have about two minutes left with this transformation,” he announced. “But I think I can get everyone to shore in a few trips. I’ll drop themー” pointing back to Kairi, Lilo and Stitch “ーoff and then come back for you guys. Gantu can probably wade on his own.” He drove off to do just that. At the same time, Aqua gave Riku a lift.

* * *

A few minutes later, the party was safely on the shore. Since he had lost his blaster and his ship was destroyed, Gantu was not motivated to pick a fight, even without the four Keyblade wielders standing ready to bring him to his knees if he tried anything. A crowd had gathered around them, a few brave souls asking what had just happened, though the group did not let them come too close to Lilo, Stitch, and Nani. The only ones they allowed to come near were David, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Riku’s parents, and Mayor Braska. The commotion and reports of sightings of the aerial battle drew a larger crowd, and also led the police to the scene. Mr. Bubbles followed them, not seeming very surprised at what he was hearing.

“So, you’re from outer space? I hear the surfing there’s choice,” David said, impressed, as he sat beside Stitch.

“Nice Keyblade Glider,” Aqua complimented Sora.

“Huh? Oh, you mean the space pod?” Sora asked, at first not sure what she meant. “Not exactly. I don’t think it’s the same as what you did. It’s a transformation charged with Dimension Energy drawn from my links to my friends… if that makes sense.”

Aqua nodded. “I think I’ve heard of that before, and I’ve used Dimension Energy, too. Just, not for transforming my weapon. More for using different abilities.”

“Gosh, are you guys alright?” Mickey asked.

Sora turned to Mickey and nodded. “Yeah. We made it out fine,” he replied. After a moment, he blinked and looked back at Mickey, Donald and Goofy. “Wait. How did you know to come back down here? We only just got back a few minutes ago.”

In reply, Donald pointed over his shoulder. Everyone looked up to see the Grand Councilwoman, flanked by a pair of lizard-like soldiers in grey bodysuits. Jumba gulped at the sight, and Stitch sighed in resignation. Aqua’s eyes widened as she realized what was going on. Everyone else quickly caught on, even though Pleakley was the only other person who was acquainted with the Grand Councilwoman, and deflated in dismay.

They were going to take Stitch away.


	110. Chapter 109: 'Ohana

The crowd parted to grant a path for the armored soldiers, who quickly ran up to Stitch and slapped a set of handcuffs on him. “We have 626,” one of the soldiers reported.

“Take him to my ship,” the Grand Councilwoman ordered.

“Leave him alone!” Lilo protested. She pulled at one of the soldiers, but he simply brushed her aside. and began to take Stitch to the ramp leading into their ship, which the party finally noticed had landed on the beach a minute ago. Sora, Riku and Kairi looked on, wondering how they might convince the intergalactic authorities to let Stitch stay. They thought back to what Aqua had told them about her previous encounter with the aliens, and tried to think of something they could draw from that to change the aliens’ mind.

“G-Grand Councilwoman, let me explain,” Gantu pleaded, realizing that his failure and the scandal which his efforts caused would not reflect well.

“Silence! I am retiring you, Captain Gantu,” the councilwoman spat offhandedly. Gantu slumped, his fears realized.

Pleakley stepped in front of the councilwoman. “Actually, credit for the capture goes toー”

“Goes to me!” the political leader interrupted coldly. “You’ll be lucky if you end up on a Fluff Trog farm after we sort this thing out!” Intimidated and recognizing that he was already in hot water for his failures leaving her at wit’s end, Pleakley nervously backed away. Kairi felt bad for him, and even more so when she remembered that she blasted him in the face with a Blizzard spell.

“Your Excellency, please!” Aqua entreated, but the tall alien ignored her.

The Grand Councilwoman turned to Jumba and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You! You’re the cause of all this!” she snapped. “You put us all through  _ years _ of hassle and stress! If it wasn’t for your Experiment 626ー”

“Stitch,” the blue creature interrupted. Until that point, he had been patiently standing on the bottom of the ramp, flanked by the soldiers.

“What?” The councilwoman turned to him, puzzled.

“My name is Stitch,” he clarified.

“Stitch, then,” she nodded and turned back to Jumba. “If it wasn’t for Stitchー”

“Does Stitch have to go in the ship?” Stitch asked.

The councilwoman stopped and did a double take back at Stitch. “Uh, yes,” she answered, honestly surprised by the creature’s manners.

Stitch nodded slowly, calmly accepting this. “Can Stitch say goodbye?” he requested.

The councilwoman was taken aback again. “Yes,” she acquiesced. The soldiers looked at each other curiously.

Stitch nodded. “Thank you,” he replied. He stepped off of the ramp and walked over to Lilo, Nani, Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua. Lilo hugged him, and Sora knelt down to pet him on the head.

The Grand Councilwoman leaned in to observe the affection shared with the small group. “Who are you?” she asked.

Stitch turned around to face her. “This is my family,” he explained. “I found it all on my own. It’s little and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.” He turned back and gave Sora and Aqua a smile, then started to walk back to the ship. Everyone looked on sadly as he accepted his fate.

“Does he really have to leave?” Pleakley asked sympathetically.

The Councilwoman sighed regretfully. “You know as well as I that our laws are absolute. I cannot change what the council has decided,” she told him solemnly.

“But Stitch is a good person now,” Aqua interjected. “He’s made lots of friends and he’s been behaving himself.”

“For the most part,” Riku muttered. Kairi jabbed him with her elbow.

Sora stepped forward. “I can attest to that. Sure, he messed up a few times, but he’s stood by his friends.”

The Grand Councilwoman shook her head. “I can bring your claims up to the council, but I fear that the most we can expect is to reduce his sentence, but that would still leave him to be banished for several years.”

A commotion built among the crowd. Several people let out cries of protest. “Let him stay!” they jeered. A few of them repeatedly chanted “'Ohana” at increasing volume. The Grand Councilwoman, Jumba, and Pleakley were taken aback. In the face of the overwhelming support for the experiment who had only been a part of the community for a few days, the aliens felt even more regret at not being able to do anything legally to allow Stitch to stay.

“Lilo…” The girl looked up at Mr. Bubbles when he spoke. “Didn’t you buy that thing at the shelter?”

Riku raised an eyebrow. “What’s that have to do with…” He trailed off when he noticed his mother smirking confidently. He had seen her in the courtroom enough times to know that that expression meant that she was about to present a decisive piece of evidence that would close the case beyond a reasonable doubt. He had seen similar expressions on the defense attorneys, but he always thought it looked cooler on his mother. As such, although he did not yet know what it meant, he immediately had faith that things were going to turn out alright.

Lilo gasped as she realized what Bubbles meant as well. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pink sheet of paper, the receipt that she received at the animal shelter upon purchasing Stitch. She ran up to the tall alien and tugged on her robe. “Hey!” she shouted. The Grand Councilwoman turned around to locate who had gotten her attention, then looked down at the young girl. Lilo unfolded the receipt and showed it to her. “Two days ago, I bought Stitch at a shelter,” she said. “I paid two dollars for him. See this stamp? I own him. If you take him, you’re stealing.”

The Grand Councilwoman took the receipt and examined it closely. She smiled at Lilo, glad to have been presented with a loophole that would give her an excuse to do what she thought was right.

Sora and Riku looked at Mr. Bubbles, wondering how he knew that would work. “Aliens are all about rules,” Bubbles explained.

The two teens looked at each other in bewilderment. Have aliens been to the islands before? Or has Bubbles been to other worlds, including on an occasion when aliens visited?

The Grand Councilwoman picked Stitch up and unlocked his handcuffs. “Take note of this,” she announced. “This creature has been sentenced to life in exile, a sentence that will be henceforth served here…” She paused, appearing uncertain, and looked to Pleakley for help. “What is this celestial body called, again?”

Pleakley flipped through his notes, trying to find the answer, but Braska helpfully interjected. “We call it ‘Destiny Islands’, ma’am.”

The Grand Councilwoman nodded. “Right, thank you. Ahem. The sentence will be henceforth served here, on Destiny Islands,” she concluded, setting Stitch down in front of Lilo and Nani. Lilo hugged Stitch. “And, as caretaker of the alien lifeform, Stitch, this family is under the protection of the United Galactic Federation.” Cheers rose up from the crowd, although some of the chatter was focused on small conversation discussing the fact that not only were aliens real, but they had a galaxy-wide government right above them.

Aqua smiled. “Thank you, your Excellency,” she said.

The councilwoman smiled warmly. “It is my pleasure. Aqua, was it?” The blue-haired woman nodded. “I’m glad to see that you were right about Stitch after all.” She turned to face Mr. Bubbles. “We’ll be checking in now and then,” she informed him.

“I was afraid you were going to say that. This won’t be easy to explain back at headquarters,” Bubbles replied.

The councilwoman chuckled. “I know what you mean.” She turned and began to walk back to her ship. She saw Jumba and Pleakley waving to her, hoping not to be forgotten, and she waved back. However, she leaned over to the soldier beside her. “Don’t let those two get on my ship,” she whispered. The soldier nodded and followed her to the ship, which resembled a rotund rocket. The other soldier escorted a halfhearted Gantu. When the Grand Councilwoman, Gantu, and the two soldiers had boarded the vessel and closed up the hatch, they launched off into space, with the party, Stitch, Lilo, Nani, Jumba, Pleakley, Mr. Bubbles, and the spectating crowd watching it fly off into the sky.

Chikyu grumbled. “Did nobody seriously notice the giant spaceship in the last three days?” he asked in an exasperated tone.

Jumba chuckled. “Well, you see, we parked high up in the woods on the hill, out of sight,” he explained.

A patrolman cleared his throat. “Truth be told, sir, I thought I saw something funny with some of the trees up there,” he admitted. “But I just brushed it off. I wouldn’t have really expected it to be anything too weird.”

“Yet not a single person noticed it landing?” Chikyu sighed. “Never mind. Let’s try to keep that in mind, just in case.”

Sora and Riku turned their attention back to Bubbles. “You’ve met aliens before?” Sora asked, awed.

Bubbles smirked. “That’s a story for another time,” he said. “For the moment…” He turned to Nani. “About your house…”

Stitch and Jumba chuckled nervously. “Our bad,” Stitch admitted.

“I stuffed the carrot,” Jumba added.

Bubbles raised an eyebrow.

* * *

The party hired a construction team to build a new house for Nani and Lilo. Jumba offered his two cents and built in some special features, such as an elevator that led up to a loft above the main section of roof, which would serve as Lilo and Stitch’s new room. Mickey, Donald and Goofy supplied some Gummi blocks for the structure. In their free time, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, and Stitch helped with the construction.

While they awaited completion of the project, Kairi and Braska allowed Nani, Lilo, and Stitch to stay at their house. While Nani worked at the rental hut, Kairi would play with Lilo along with Selphie, Tidus, Wakka, and Lulu. Lulu helped Lilo assemble a stuffed doll, which became a green toy with a large head, blue button eyes, string hair, and a pink bow, exactly like the one that Lilo had previously made and which was destroyed when the house blew up. She named this doll “Scrump 2”. Wakka would joke and act goofy to make Lilo laugh, causing Lulu to roll her eyes. Wakka only shrugged in response.

Over the following days, Sora, Riku and Kairi attended school and spent time with their friends and families. They watched one of the Destiny Aurochs’ games, cheering Tidus and Wakka on, and celebrated their victory. Kairi met with Selphie to help her plan for the festival, and Lilo offered some rather creative suggestions. One day, she bought a pair of sneakers to replace the ones that had been marred when one had been impaled, along with a pair of hiking boots. Sora trained with Sion, learning more kenpo techniques, as well as being schooled in Sion’s own brand of street fighting. Meanwhile, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy monitored the radar on the Gummi Ship, keeping track of their enemies’ movements. One night, the party, along with Lilo, Stitch, Nani, Jumba, and Pleakley, gathered at Riku’s house to watch a monster movie. Sora expressed concern for if it was okay for Aqua to watch, but she insisted that she was fine, and they all ended up enjoying the flick together.

It was decided that the party would return to the adventure on Thursday, a week after their arrival. On Wednesday afternoon, Kairi and Sora, with Nani’s permission, brought Lilo and Stitch over to the islet. They gave the girl and the alien a tour of the island where they had played growing up. Stitch took an interest in the Paopu fruits, recognizing the similarity to Terra’s Wayfinder. Noticing this curiosity, Kairi explained the legend, and told him and Lilo how in the old days, sailors would fashion trinkets after the fruit as good luck charms. Lilo asked if they could make Wayfinder charms together, to which Kairi said that they might do so another time.

After showing them all around the beach and scaffolding, Kairi and Sora led their charges into the Secret Place, through the cave entrance directly next to the waterfall spring. They pushed the brush aside to allow Lilo and Stitch to enter unimpeded. They walked through the narrow path, sliding their hands on the rock wall as a guide to make sure that they followed the dark, winding path without difficulty. When they stepped into a more open cavern, they found that they could see more clearly, as sunlight shone through a hole in the top of the cave, which was only somewhat covered with canopy leaves from the trees outside. A few old, dead trees hugged against the wall, having taken root years ago in the soil and grown around the sides of the cavern, taking advantage of rainstorms and the occasional monsoon to attain the water to feed on the nutrients in the ground only to be unable to sustain themselves through adulthood. Mushrooms and other fungi grew at the base of some of the trees On the end of the cave across from the group, there was a flat wooden door with a simple yellow design around the edge, which lacked a doorknob. For most of their lives, Sora and Kairi did not understand what the purpose was or what it was for, though Mickey’s story about his encounter with Aqua in the Realm of Darkness offered a few clues as to its nature. The walls and large rocks were marked all over with chalk drawings and scribbles. Most of the drawings had been made by Sora, Riku and Kairi when they were children. They doodled in the cave less and less as they grew up, although they still cherished the memories of their childhood.

Lilo and Stitch gaped in wonder as they examined all of the drawings. They could easily imagine the make-believe worlds that the teens had placed themselves in when they were Lilo’s age. Sora and Kairi smiled as they watched them run around and look at each of their drawings. They recalled their own behavior when “exploring” the “mysterious” cave, imagining new secrets to be found even though they already had every square inch of the small room mapped out. Looking around at their artwork, they remembered every story they told and every fantasy they envisioned.

Lilo turned to Sora and Kairi, a smile stretching from ear to ear. “This place is amazing!” she shouted. Stitch laughed as he heard her voice echo all around them.

Sora nodded in agreement. “It is pretty cool, right?”

Lilo and Stitch ran around to look at some more drawings, laughing at each one. However, they stopped when they saw one drawing a few feet from the door. Lilo stepped toward it to study it. Sora followed her gaze to see what she was looking at, but he was only able to see part of the drawing. However, he recognized that part, and he felt a shock of embarrassment as he realized that it was drawing attention.

“Is this supposed to be you two?” Lilo asked. Sora and Kairi moved closer, and saw the art in full. It was a drawing that the two of them had done a decade before. They had each drawn a caricature of the other’s head in profile. Sora recalled updating it nearly two years ago, adding a cartoonish arm delivering a star from his head to Kairi’s.

“Ter-ra,” Stitch said, pointing to the star shape.

“You’re right, Stitch. Those do look like Paopu fruits,” Lilo agreed.

Sora chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck, flustered. “Uh, huh, so it is…” He paused and blinked, realizing that something was weird. “Wait, ‘those’?” He glanced over at Kairi, and realized that she did not seem at all shocked or surprised to find that the drawing had been updated. Rather, she was looking at him with an endearing smile on her face. He looked back at the drawing and realized that it had been updated again, at some point after he had applied his own adjustment. There was a mirror version of the hand crossed over the one he had drawn, passing a star from Kairi to Sora.

Lilo turned to the two teens and giggled, clearly having figured out what it all meant. Sora turned back to Kairi as the same thing dawned on him. “So, uh, you saw that already?”

Kairi nodded. “It was about the day after the islands came back,” she replied. “I came in here, taking a walk down memory lane after everything that happened, and then I saw that.”

Sora chuckled nervously. “So, uh, you drew that other part?” he surmised.

Kairi nodded. “Mm-hmm.” She took a few steps toward Sora.

Sora still acted nervous, although he started to calm down as his and Kairi’s eyes locked. They smiled. Kairi took another step forward.

Lilo giggled and Stitch clapped his hands, breaking them out of their trance. They stepped back, suddenly self-conscious that the young girl and the alien were watching them. They laughed nervously, trying to think of something to save face. Sora glanced up and saw that, through the hole in the top of the cave, the sky was turning orange.

“Well, uh, heh, look at that,” he said. “It’s, uh, it’s getting kinda late.”

Kairi glanced up and nodded. “I guess so. Well, I guess it’s time to start heading back.”

Lilo giggled teasingly, before she and Stitch followed Sora and Kairi out of the cave.

* * *

The party, along with Sora, Riku and Kairi’s parents and closest island friends, gathered at Kairi’s house the following morning. The islanders had packed everything they needed and were prepared to say good-bye to their friends and families.

“Take care! And good luck,” Suta said as she hugged Sora, then kissed him on the cheek.

“I will. Thanks,” Sora replied. He separated from his mother’s embrace and hugged his father, then Sion.

“Stick together. Trust your friends,” Chikyu advised Riku. “Remember that you’re all in it together. You’ll pull through.”

Riku nodded. “Thanks, Dad.”

Kairi hugged Braska and Selphie, then turned to Lilo and Nani. “You guys take care of yourselves, okay?”

Nani smiled and nodded. “Thank you for all your help, Kairi.” She hugged Kairi tightly. For a moment, Kairi struggled to breathe. “Come see us when you get back.”

“Yeah!” Lilo agreed. “I can’t wait for you to see the house when it’s done!”

“And while you’re out there, playing hero, don’t forget that you’ve got your  _ 'ohana _ cheering you on,” Nani added.

Kairi’s eyes widened. “ _ 'Ohana _ …?” she repeated, touched.

“Fren-ship circle!” Stitch shouted in confirmation. Aqua chuckled at this remark.

Nani nodded. “Of course,” she replied. “You’ve always been here with us. You’re just as much a part of our  _ 'ohana _ as the rest of us.” Lilo, Stitch, and David nodded in agreement.

Tears rolled down Kairi’s face. She hugged Nani, then she stooped down to hug Lilo and then Stitch. Sora, Riku, and the others watched, smiling warmly.

Kairi stood up and rejoined the party. Sora stepped forward and knelt down in front of Stitch. “You stay out of trouble, okay?” he advised.

Stitch nodded. “Stitch will be good,” he replied.

Sora smirked, then looked up at Jumba. “And try to be a little less on the ‘evil’ side, alright?”

Jumba chuckled nervously. “Of course! I would never, ever dream of causing more trouble. Or, at least not  _ too _ much more trouble. Heh, heh.”

“Hmph.” Sora petted Stitch on the head, then gave Lilo a high-five. He stood back up and rejoined the party. Everyone waved good-bye as a column of green light shot up around them, and they were beamed up into the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, don't worry. Selphie is also considered a part of the _'ohana_. I just figured that writing it into the scene would cut away at the mood.


	111. Chapter 110: Family Honor

“So, where to now?” Donald asked.

Mickey crossed his arms as he thought hard. “You know, how about we check the map?” he suggested. “We can follow them to another world and find some clues.”

Riku nodded. “Good idea. And maybe we can stop them from getting what they’re after, and even capture one of them while we’re at it,” he added.

“Alright, then. Let’s have a look.” Mickey entered a few commands into the computer and brought up the world map display. At first, most of the dots appeared to be either in Villain’s Vale or on the home worlds of some members. A few were in distant locations that would take at least a day’s worth of travel to reach. However, a minute later, while they considered checking out the distant worlds, a dot vanished from the Vale and appeared over a world that most of the party recognized.

Sora’s face lit up. “How far away is that world?” he asked.

Donald plotted a path and analyzed the route. “With minimal interference, about six hours,” he replied.

“Have you been there before?” Aqua asked.

Goofy nodded. “Yeah. That’s the Land of Dragons,” he answered. “We helped the army there fight off invading Huns and Heartless.”

“I wonder how Mulan and Shang are doing?” Sora mused, crossing his hands behind his head.

“I bet they’d be happy to see you,” Riku assured him.

“What about when they see you?” Goofy asked. Riku raised an eyebrow curiously. “Well, I mean, you did fight Shang to get to talk to the Emperor.”

Riku flinched, taken aback as he recalled his visit to the Imperial City to warn the Emperor and his guards of a dragon Heartless. He chuckled nervously. “I’m sure they won’t recognize me,” he said. “I had the coat on, and I had a different body underneath, anyway.”

“Well, you still had the same weapon,” Sora countered. “Your sword was a Keyblade when we fought on the mountain.”

“I fought the Heartless. You attacked me,” Riku corrected. “I barely even retaliated.”

“And they’ll probably remember your name. I did mention it when asking them about you.”

Riku jumped. “Sora!” Sora and Kairi laughed at Riku’s embarrassment.

“Well, let’s get going!” Donald shouted, getting everyone back on topic.

Mickey nodded. “Right. Strap in. We’re on our way.” With that, he fired up the engines, and the ship shot off through the Lanes Between.

* * *

An afternoon breeze blew as they entered the village. As they passed through the streets, civilians turned to watch them curiously. Women at the market began to chat, wondering who the newcomers were, while children who had been playing offered friendly waves. A few of the men nodded respectfully.

“So, um why didn’t we land near the encampment?” Goofy asked.

“This was the nearest Safe Point to where the dot appeared,” Mickey answered.

“And he only arrived on this world a few hours ago, so I’m pretty sure the army wouldn’t have been mobilized,” Sora added. “So, right now, the best thing to do would probably be to keep an ear on the ground and see if anyone has heard or seen anything that can help us.”

“That’s a really good idea,” Kairi commended.

As they passed through town, Donald spied a familiar figure. He patted Sora on the leg to get his attention, then pointed in her direction. Sora noticed a young woman, who did not appear to be much older than him. She had straight black hair that extended past her shoulders, as well as dark brown eyes visible through narrow eyelids (a trait shared by the other locals). She wore a green kung-fu robe with a red sash around the waist, gray pants, knee-length white socks, and black shoes, her clothes hugging her slender yet slightly-muscular figure. She led a black horse with white fur on the center of the muzzle by the reins. A pouch was attached to the horse’s saddle, which most likely contained traveling essentials.

Grinning, Sora approached the woman, waving. “Hey, Mulan!” he greeted.

Fa Mulan turned to see who had called and smiled when she identified the speaker. “Sora! Donald! Goofy!” She raised her arm in greeting, and bowed when Sora and his friends approached her. “It is good to see you.”

“Same here,” Sora replied. “How have you been?”

“Very good. Thank you. I was just on my way to visit my family.”

“I take it, it's been pretty peaceful around here lately?” Sora guessed.

Mulan nodded. “Yes. Shang has been training soldiers in the event of another threat, and also to quell whatever Heartless do appear.”

“Gawrsh, that’s good to hear,” Goofy said.

Mulan looked past Sora, Donald and Goofy, and noticed their companions. “Who are your friends?” she asked.

Mickey, Kairi, Aqua, and Riku introduced themselves in turn.

“Riku…” Mulan mused, recalling that she had heard the name somewhere before. She gasped. “The spy in black?” She had spoken louder than she had intended, causing nearby civilians to turn curiously to the conversation.

“I helped you guys out, remember?” Riku claimed defensively. “And the real perp was Xigbar, wasn’t it?”

Mulan let out a nervous laugh. “Right. Sorry about that,” she said.

“A-hyuck. I saw that coming,” Goofy quipped. Riku smacked him on the back of the head. “Youch!”

“Then I should thank you for your assistance during that incident,” Mulan added.

Riku nodded. “No problem. I did what I could.”

“Oh! You should come over for dinner!” she suggested.

“Huh? Oh, thank you. But are you sure that it won’t be too much trouble for your folks?” Sora asked, worried that the sudden addition of dinner guests would inconvenience her family. On the island, the parents would respond by ordering pizza when this happened, but he doubted that the same applied in the village.

Mulan chuckled, understanding his concerns. “Don’t worry. Mother and Grandmother like to be ready for guests,” she explained. “And I am sure that they would love to meet you.”

Sora traded glances with his friends, who all seemed receptive to the idea, then turned back to Mulan and nodded. “Sure. We’d… ahem…” He gave her a bow, much to Riku and Kairi’s amusement. “We’d be honored to join you for dinner.”

Mulan bowed in return. “Thank you. Follow me.” Guiding her horse, Khan, Mulan led the party through town and to her home. When they reached the wall surrounding the property, Mulan opened the door and led the party through. Once inside, a small dog with cream-colored fur and two large brown spots scampered up to them, yapping excitedly. Mulan laughed and leaned down to pet the dog on the head. “Hello, Little Brother. It’s good to see you too.” She released Khan’s reins and walked up to the front door. She knocked and waited.

When the door opened, she saw her mother. Fa Li was a slightly plump woman with dark brown eyes like her daughter and graying black hair, which was tied in a bun. When she saw her daughter, she smiled. “Hello, Mulan.”

“Hi, mother.” Mulan and her mother hugged.

“Is that who I think it is?” An elderly woman hobbled to the front door.

Mulan bowed to the woman. “Hello, Grandmother.”

A man who appeared to be a few years older than Li, with a goatee, hair tied in a topknot and which grayed at the temples, and who also held a cane. Mulan hugged her father, Fa Zhou.

“Mulan? Who are these people?” Li asked. Mulan turned to see that her mother and grandmother had noticed Sora and the others. Goofy and Kairi waved amiably.

“I invited some friends,” Mulan replied.

Satisfied with the answer, her parents and grandmother invited the party inside, whereupon they all introduced themselves.

* * *

Mulan and her mother passed the dinner plates around with evenly-distributed meals. Kairi struggled to use chopsticks for the first time, but Mulan helped her figure it out. Sora, Donald and Goofy had also not mastered the use of the utensils, but they managed. The guests tasted the dinner and told the Fa family their thoughts.

“So, you met Mulan in the army?” Fa Li asked.

Sora nodded. “Me, Donald and Goofy ran into Mulan near the camp before she went in to enlist, and we decided to help her out,” he explained.

Grandmother Fa chuckled. “Was that before you learned Fa Mulan was a woman?” she asked.

“After, actually,” Sora replied. “Somehow, Goofy saw through the disguise immediately.” He laughed as he remembered his own shock when the beans were spilled.

Mulan chuckled as well. “I couldn’t have made it without you,” she said.

Sora shook his head. “Don’t sell yourself short. We just supported you.” He pointed at her. “It was through your own strength and determination that you became a real hero.” Donald and Goofy nodded in agreement.

“Your friends are correct, Mulan,” Fa Zhou said. “You had the strength inside you all along.”

Grandmother Fa laughed. “So, then, Fa Mulan, please tell us what you have been up to since you were last here?” she asked.

* * *

After dinner, Mulan, Sora, Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, and Mickey went outback to take a walk through the garden. Aqua, Kairi and Mickey admired the cherry blossom tree. Sora, Donald and Goofy noticed what appeared to be the crumbled remains of a stone statue. They asked Mulan about it, and she explained that it was a statue of the Fa Family guardian spirit, the Great Stone Dragon, and she had no idea how it was broken.

The party followed Mulan up to a small shrine. Mulan held her hand up, bidding her friends to wait, then went inside. There were slates that had been mounted upright, their surfaces polished to a reflective shine and etched with Han characters. Mulan knelt down and kowtowed before the center slate, saying a prayer to her ancestors. When she finished, she stepped out and rejoined her friends.

“So, what brings you all here?” Mulan asked.

Sora whistled. “Well, let’s see where to start,” he mused.

Before they could begin, however, they heard a voice that Sora, Donald and Goofy recognized. “Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute! Is that who I think it is?” A crimson lizard with a yellow underbelly and two gold hair-like strands on the sides of its lip crawled across the grass until it reached the group, standing upright when it had arrived. Its human-like eyes opened wide and its mouth spread open into a grin as it recognized some of the visitors. “Sora! Donald! Goofy! And friends!” the creature identified. A purple cricket, whom the original trio had not yet met officially but whose name was Cri-Kee, hopped up beside the lizard.

Sora smiled. “Well, if it isn’t ‘family guardian’ Mushu!” he said, making finger quotes over “family guardian”.

The tiny dragon chuckled. “Don’t worry. I really  _ am _ the bona fide family guardian nowadays,” he clarified. Cri-Kee rolled his eyes. “You know, after helping Mulan save all of China and all. But enough about me. What’s up with you guys?”

Sora gave Mulan and Mushu the CliffsNotes version of the recent adventure, while introducing Riku, Kairi, Mickey, and Aqua to Mushu.

Mulan gasped as Sora explained what had specifically brought them to The Land of Dragons. “One of your enemies is here?”

Riku nodded. “Yes. And, unfortunately, we have no idea who it is,” he replied, “or where he could even be at this moment.”

“It could even be someone we haven’t met yet,” Donald added. “I wonder what else they have up their sleeves.”

“We were hoping to listen for clues and work our way in from there,” Aqua explained.

Mulan nodded. “I see. If what you’re saying is true, then I think the best thing we can do is to head to the army camp. Maybe the trainees and scouts would have seen something.”

Their train of thought was interrupted when they heard a distant scream. Without hesitation, the party ran down the hill and toward the town. Mushu and Cri-Kee quickly ran up Mulan’s leg and slipped into her pocket as she started to run. Mulan stopped to retrieve her sword from her pouch on Khan’s saddle before catching up with the others. As they ran through the street, going in the opposite direction of the fleeing civilians, they saw a trio of blue creatures in dark blue and magenta robes and wide, flat-topped hats. While their feet hovered above the ground, the Nightwalkers moved as if walking with a stiff shuffle, their arms stretched out in front of them.

“Heartless!” Goofy gasped.

“At least we got to have a peaceful dinner,” Donald remarked.

“But they won’t!” Mickey added.

Sora, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua summoned their weapons while Mulan pulled her sword from its sheath. Mushu climbed onto Mulan’s shoulder and puffed a few embers threateningly.

Aqua turned around and saw more of the Nightwalkers materialize further down the street. Kairi looked up and saw, hovering above the roof of a house, four creatures with black spherical bodies, yellow-orange beak-like helmets with eye holes, pairs of stubby legs, and spinning helicopter blades protruding from their elevated rears. The Rapid Thrusters quickly disappeared over the roof.

“They’re all over the place,” Aqua told her friends.

“Then let’s split up and take a different corner of town,” Mulan asserted.

The team divided, spreading out in different directions to take on the threat to the village.


	112. Chapter 111: Scouting Mission

A Nightwalker swiped its arm at Sora, but he parried the blow and retaliated. Mulan fought against and cut through another Nightwalker. The third tried to attack her from behind, but Mushu spat fireballs at it. Mulan then flipped her sword around and stabbed it in the gut as she turned around, causing it to dissipate.

At the opposite end of the street, Aqua fought Nightwalkers and Soldiers, which seemed to be led by a larger variant with darker clothes, yellow claws, and a tarnished helmet. Goofy charged through the Soldiers and engaged the Sergeant, dealing some strong attacks until it retaliated with a kick, which sent him tumbling backward.

Mickey and Kairi climbed onto the roof of a house and jumped between roofs in pursuit of the Rapid Thrusters while also using magic to dispose of any stray Heartless they saw. Mickey threw Pearl spells at distant foes. Kairi used Magnera to pull enemies on both levels to a close proximity so that she could slash and stab at them. A small group of Rapid Thrusters noticed them and closed in on Kairi, but the girl spun around and used light Aero magic to pull them closer by the propellers, then spun back around in midair to hit them all, destroying two of them and stunning the rest, allowing her to use Blizzard to finish them off.

Riku and Donald ran through the streets to locate and eliminate Heartless while their friends worked their way through at a normal pace. Riku would warp between a civilian and a Heartless to protect anyone in harm’s way, while Donald would take out enemies from afar with magic or shield the would-be victims with Reflect spells. They helped people up when they fell and directed animals out of danger. Further along, they saw some former soldiers fighting against the Heartless, and they advised them on how to properly counter the Heartless’ attack patterns, allowing them to defeat the monsters more efficiently.

Mulan heard a horse neigh and turned around to see Khan charging through the street, Fa Zhou seated astride and wearing the black and green armor that Sora recalled Mulan wearing when she was disguised as “Ping”. He swung a sword the slice through a Nightwalker’s head

“Mulan! We must force these creatures away from the village!” Fa Zhou exclaimed.

Mulan nodded. “Father, are you sure you’re…” she began to ask out of concern.

Fa Zhou chuckled. “I may be a lame old man, but I am not quite too decrepit to stand alongside my daughter,” he retorted.

Mulan smirked, then turned to face the Heartless and raised her sword. They charged through the streets, cutting through Heartless and forcing the survivors to flee. Fa Zhou and Khan soon split off down a different street to cover more ground while Sora fought back to back with Mulan.

After some time, the majority of the Heartless in the village had been destroyed, with the remaining creatures either warping away or flying or running away. However, the party continued to chase after them, pursuing them out of town and up a nearby hill. As they reached the top, three Assault Riders, Heartless resembled armored centaurs with broad bodies, red capes, and guandao spears with gold blades in the shape of angular spirals, materialized before them. The fleeing Heartless stopped and turned to face the party.

“Huh. I guess they couldn’t fit in the streets,” Riku mused.

Aqua flicked her Keyblade to the side. “Then how about we help them by cutting them down to size?” she quipped.

Khan reared and let out a fierce whinney. Fa Zhou gripped the reins and glowered at one of the Assault Riders.

“For China!” Mulan and her father shouted in unison. Khan charged toward an Assault Rider, and Fa Zhou slashed at it. It turned around as Khan looped around for a return strike. As the horse made his charge, it thrust its guandao at him and his rider, but Khan dodged to the side, and Fa Zhou delivered a downward slash at his opponent’s shoulder. As they cleared past the recoiling Heartless, Fa Zhou felt his side, grunting as pain from his old war injury acted up. He gritted his teeth, knowing he had to push past the pain for this battle. Khan turned around and charged again. The Assault Rider swiped at him, but the horse lowered his head and dodged the attack. Fa Zhou, who also ducked and barely avoided the strike, thrust his sword straight into the Heartless’ chest, destroying the fiend.

Sora, Mulan and Goofy fought against another Assault Rider. Goofy made for a frontal assault, but was knocked back as the Heartless spun its guandao at an incredibly fast speed. Sora and Mulan took advantage of this to attack from behind. After they dealt multiple hits to its rear, it hopped and spun around, swinging its guandao at them. Mulan ducked while Sora took the hit and was sent flying, in the process absorbing energy from the hit so that it would not do much if any harm to Mulan. He realigned himself in midair and landed on his feet. He willed his Keyblade to light on fire, then lunged at the Heartless. It started to twirl its guandao in front of it in an effort to block him and do damage, but Sora simply jumped over it, then slashed his blazing Keyblade at it from behind. The flames died down after the combo finished. The Heartless turned around and reared up. It slammed its front hooves to the ground, releasing an explosive force underfoot. However, Sora jumped to avoid this blast, recalling clearly every time that he had been sent flying with that trick. Mulan struck the Assault Rider in its hind while Mushu spat fireballs at it and Goofy attacked it with his tornado spin. Sora dealt the final blow by delivering a downward slash to its head.

Donald and Kairi used Blizzard and Thunder magic to fight the last Rapid Thrusters. Twice, Kairi used Magnet to draw the flying Heartless in to directly harm with sword strikes. When her mana depleted, she waited for the Heartless to close in on her before slashing and stabbing at them. Riku and Mickey targeted the last three Nightwalkers and the final two Soldiers. Aqua fought the third Assault Rider, though, despite her own considerable strength, she frequently fell victim to its powerful and unrelenting attacks, much like Sora, Donald and Goofy had in their first several battles with the brutes.

Seeing Aqua’s distress, Sora and Mulan ran over to help her. Mulan deflected a guandao stab with her sword while Sora helped Aqua to her feet. The Assault Rider reared up, preparing to blast them away, when they heard the sound of a new set of horse hooves grow louder. As the Heartless reared back all the way and was about to lean forward, a white horse with grey dapples on its neck charged at it, and its rider struck the Heartless with a sword. The horse turned around, and its rider fought the Assault Rider directly, sword against guandao, and he efficiently cut it down to size.

When all of the Heartless had been slain, the party turned to face the newcomer. The horse’s rider wore a set of black and gray genji armor with gold trim, an off-white long sleeve tunic, khaki pants, black-and-white Chinese warrior boots, a red cape tied in a knot in front of his collar, and a black war helmet. He slipped his sword back into its scabbard and dismounted from his horse. He turned to address the party and removed his helmet, revealing short black hair tied into a bun with a red clip.

“Is everyone alright?” the general of the Chinese army asked. Three soldiers wearing grey clothes and black armor approached them, each one riding a horse of his own.

Sora and Aqua nodded. Mulan and Goofy helped Fa Zhou off of Khan, and Mulan wrapped her father’s arm over her shoulder to hold him up, as the flaring pain from his injury combined with his own heart problems acting up left him momentarily having trouble standing on his own. Donald contemplated offering a Potion, but he had no idea how well it would work for the situation.

“Thanks for the help, General Shang,” Sora said.

General Li Shang nodded. “It is good to have you back, especially at this time. We could really use your help here,” he told the teen.

“The Heartless have been causing trouble lately?” Donald surmised.

“Yes,” Shang confirmed. “There have been sightings of hordes of Heartless appearing all around the countryside. Most groups haven’t reached populated areas yet, but they appear to be gathering to march on China from all directions.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Riku muttered.

Shang shook his head. “I have platoons scouting all over, but we don’t have enough soldiers in the field to cover sufficient ground,” he explained.

“You want our help to look around?” Sora surmised.

“Yes.”

Mulan nodded. “What do you need us to do?” she asked.

Shang nodded to one of the soldiers, who pulled out a map and unrolled it, setting it down on the ground for all to see. Four circles were drawn in different places around the map.

“I’ve assigned platoons to scout in these locations and track the enemies’ movements. Every few days, they each send one of their own to report back to me,” Shang explained. “I specifically instructed them not to engage the enemy, only to gather intel. However, I fear that our understanding of the breadth of the situation is limited. As you can see, this arrangement leaves some critical blind spots. We need to cover more ground to comprehend the size of the encroaching force, as well as determine their objective, and if they really are an encroaching army on a march.”

“It must’ve been organized by whoever we tracked here,” Sora mused. “But he couldn’t have gotten here earlier than this morning.”

“Maybe he had them start gathering ahead of time,” Goofy guessed.

“But then he would’ve had to have someone else set the locations and give the orders here,” Donald argued. “Is this guy working with another crook we haven’t run into yet, or does he have a sidekick answering to him?”

Riku, Mickey, and Mulan studied the map closely, then Mickey nodded in understanding. “So, how do you want to divide up the teams?” the mouse asked.

“We should split evenly into two teams, and cover a different opening,” Shang answered. He blinked as he finally registered that there were strangers in the group. “Pardon me, but I don’t believe we’ve met before. Who are you all?”

Those whom Shang had not already met introduced themselves.

Shang shot Riku a look and raised an eyebrow, recalling the conversation that had taken place in the Emperor’s throne room. “You possess some excellent fighting skills, Riku,” he commended.

Riku blinked. “Uh, thanks,” he said sheepishly. “You too, General.”

Shang looked around at everyone present. “There are twelve of us present, not counting the dragon, who will, of course, be accompanying Mulan.” His gaze fell on Fa Zhou, who was still being supported by Mulan and Goofy. “Fa Zhou, I thank you for your assistance in quelling the threat to the village, but out of concern for your health, I think it’s time that you return home.”

Fa Zhou smiled. “I understand. It has been an honor to do my part once again after so long,” he replied.

“I’ll accompany you back home,” Mulan promised. “And then I will rejoin everyone.” She and Goofy helped her father back onto Khan, and then Mulan climbed up with him, taking the reins in front of him. She flicked the reins, and Khan trotted down the hill and back to the Fa family home. While they waited for Mulan to return, the rest of the group discussed party arrangements and who would go where.

When she returned, riding on Khan’s back, everyone turned to face her, ready to present the arrangement. The party would be split up into two teams of six. The first team would consist of Shang, Mulan (and Mushu), Sora, Mickey, and two of the soldiers that accompanied Shang. The other team would consist of Aqua, Riku, Donald, Goofy, Kairi, and the third Chinese soldier. Each team took a different area on the countryside, neither of which was too far from their present location, and everyone agreed to meet up at a campsite marked on the map the following night. Wishing each other luck, the two teams began their journeys. It was only after several minutes that the soldier in the second team realized that his companions did not have horses to ride to make the trip easier, but Riku, Aqua and Goofy assured them that they were used to it, so the soldier offered to let Kairi ride with him if she got tired. Donald grumbled that he did not have any options for if he got tired, but he shut up when Riku joked that he could carry him. Night fell by the time they reached their destinations. They took a look around, but they could not see much, so they decided to call it a night and wait until morning.

* * *

“How many do you think there are?” Sora asked as his group peered over the hill at the large throng of Heartless in the valley below.

“I’d say four to five hundred,” Shang replied.

“Hard to really judge since the size variance is so great,” Mickey added, noting the number of Assault Riders and Bolt Towers, tall floating cylindrical Heartless with three points on the bottom, spherical heads sticking out of the base, and red and yellow rings at the top and bottom, compared to Shadows and Rapid Thrusters, as well as the Soldiers and Nightwalkers in the middle.

“We wouldn’t want these monsters to combine ranks with the other groups,” one of the soldiers said.

“But if we engage now, we won’t be able to properly determine their pattern of movement,” Shang argued.

“I wouldn’t want to charge into a small army with only six people anyway,” the second soldier added.

“King Mickey and I would probably manage, at least, but I agree with you. We don’t want to waste all our energy before we would have to fight more of them,” Sora replied.

“So now what?” Mulan asked.

“Now, we watch them. Figure out what they’re going to do,” Shang answered.

They watched the Heartless march for hours. Sora was perplexed, as he had never seen a group of Heartless on a big march before, except perhaps when Maleficent led her army in an attempted siege of Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion. But that was clearly an army’s march to battle. This group, and the other four that the soldiers had found previously, was marching hundreds of miles across largely empty terrain. Comparing their direction of movement to the position of the sun, Mickey and Shang determined that the Heartless were marching in a southeastward path. Mulan consulted Shang’s map as they followed the Heartless’ march.

“Shang, there are villages in this line of movement,” she said. “What will we do if the Heartless come upon one?”

“If they threaten the people in it, we will intervene, to the best of our ability,” the general replied.

Mulan nodded in understanding. They continued to watch the large parade of Heartless, following them at a distance. When the Heartless approached a village, the majority of them swerved around it while a few dozen broke off and made their way into the village. Realizing that they had to act before the Heartless took any hearts, the party ran down and chased the Heartless into the village. Shang and the soldiers guided the people to safety while Sora, Mulan and Mickey fought the Heartless.

When the town had been cleared of Heartless, and after they had made sure that everyone was safe and sound, the party left the village to see the remaining Heartless continue their march, apparently unaware that their splinter cell had been exterminated.

“Well, I guess now we know why they’re hiking across China,” Mulan said. “They’re not just going someplace; they’re trying to take China with them.”

“At least we won’t have to overexert ourselves taking on the whole army at once,” Mickey determined. “We can cut through portions that split off, then rest in between fights, so we don’t get overwhelmed.”

“But only one more of those groups will be directly opposed by a unit of this caliber,” one of the soldiers reminded them. “Not to say I don’t have faith in my compatriots, but I think the other four will have a better chance of taking the towns.”

“Then I guess we’ll have to hope for the best,” Sora said. “And who knows? You guys handled yourselves pretty well when Shan-Yu’s Heartless army invaded the Imperial City.”

Mulan nodded. “Sora’s right. I have faith,” she said. Cri-Kee chirped from atop her shoulder, which Mulan and Mushu took as a sign of good luck.

Shang nodded. “Alright, then. Let’s keep moving.”

They continued to follow the Heartless for most of the day. When a group of Heartless splintered off to attack a village, the spy party pursued them and fought them until there were no more Heartless to threaten the townspeople. A few former soldiers provided their assistance. When the battle was over, Shang and Mulan explained what was going on, and the defending townspeople offered to join them and help out. Shang ordered them to head straight for the campsite and to not engage the Heartless army. After suiting up and saying good-bye to their families, the soldiers left for the camp while the party continued to tail the Heartless.

Later in the afternoon, the party decided to call it a day and make their way to camp to regroup with the others. The sun was beginning to set as they crossed over the hill and came into view of the camp As they entered the circle of tents, they saw a dozen soldiers decked in Chinese armor, as well as Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua. A fire pit was lit as Aqua, Goofy, and a soldier worked on cooking dinner.


	113. Chapter 112: Campout

While they ate, both groups shared accounts of what they had seen while tailing the Heartless. The soldiers had removed their armor, as they were not engaging in combat. Shang, unlike the others, had also removed his robe, so he sat shirtless. Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy had removed their armor and accessory attachments, which lay in a pile near one of the tents. Mulan helped Kairi practice using chopsticks.

“We saw the same thing,” Aqua said. “They just kept marching, attacking villages along the way.”

Shang brought his hand to his chin, deep in thought. “So, it’s true. The Heartless are all an organized movement. The question is: what is their objective.”

Mickey raised his hand. “We have a theory, General,” he said.

“Go ahead. And this isn’t an elementary school class. You don’t need to raise your hand.”

Mickey lowered his hand sheepishly. Kairi giggled in amusement. Riku and Aqua smiled encouragingly. Everyone at camp gave him their attention, interested in what he was going to say. “Well, the Heartless aren’t just going from town to town willy-nilly and attacking people there,” he began. “Each group is following a specific path, in nearly a straight line, as if they were going somewhere specific, and they were trying to increase their ranks on the way there.”

“He’s right,” Donald agreed. “They seemed to be marching with a purpose.”

“We think that they’re moving toward the Imperial City,” Sora declared. “It’s really the only thing that makes sense. It’s like with Shan-Yu’s forces: when you invade a country and make your way through the countryside, you go for the capital. That’s where the ruling government will be, and where you’ll find the people with the most power and authority.”

“You think the one leading the Heartless wishes to conquer China?” Mulan asked, shocked.

Mickey shrugged. “We don’t know if that’s the goal or even an extra reward along with what they really want, but it certainly seems to be the most advantageous strategy.”

“And if they were looking for something specific, that would be the most likely place to find it or whoever would know where to find it,” Riku added. He picked up a piece of pork with his chopsticks and ate it.

“You believe that the Heartless’ commander is in search of a special item?” Shang asked.

Riku nodded. “That’s how it’s usually been lately,” he replied.

Shang nodded, understanding. “If that’s the case, then the Imperial City would seem to be the most plausible destination. However…” He turned to one of the soldiers. “Let me see the map.” The soldier took the parchment out and unrolled it. Shang asked for a brush and an inkwell, which another soldier provided. “The Heartless we pursued followed this path,” he said as he drew a line from the location that his squad had scouted straight in a southeastward direction.

“And our group went this way.” Riku took the brush and drew a line on the path his squad traveled.

Shang and some of the soldiers dotted points where scouts from the other groups said that they had seen the Heartless and drew lines from the circles that marked their starting points down through the lines of dots. When that was finished, they stepped back so that everyone could look at the map. Some of the soldiers gasped, but Sora, Mickey and Riku nodded while Shang let out a “Hmph”, as their suspicions had only been confirmed. All of the lines led straight to the Imperial City.

“You’re right. They’re planning to surround the City on all sides and overwhelm all defenses with immense numbers,” Mulan remarked.

“In an ambush like that, the men there won’t stand a chance,” one of the soldiers said, worried.

“Which means we need to be there to defend the Imperial City,” Shang asserted. “Tomorrow at dawn, we’ll break camp and head to the Imperial City. We’ll try to head them off and ensure that the city is well-defended.”

The entire camp was in agreement. Something had to be done, and before the Heartless reached the Imperial City and threatened the Emperor, his advisors, his servants, and the soldiers stationed to defend the city. They finished their meals and set plates, bowls, and utensils to be cleaned. Kairi and two of the soldiers took the duty of cleaning everything while the rest of the group either prepared for bed or sparred with one another.

Sora watched Shang and Mulan step aside to discuss the situation. He saw how calm Shang was, how certain he was of the mission even when the prospect of such a great threat was so terrifying. He held a great deal of respect for the army leader, who had built what had been a pathetic regiment of inexperienced men, as well as a cross-dressing Mulan, into a formidable army capable of making any general or emperor proud. Sora had learned quite a bit from him while he was his captain during his brief time in the Chinese army.

Maybe, he thought, he could do to learn some more.

“Hey, General Shang,” he called out as he approached the commanding officer.

Shang and Mulan turned around. “Do you need something?” Shang asked.

Sora nodded. “I was actually wondering if you could give me some more training,” he replied.

Shang raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s necessary? You are quite a formidable warrior in your own right.”

Sora could not help but smile slightly at the praise before refocusing. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to learn some new and better techniques before some of my next fights.” He recounted his defeat at Zeromast’s hands. Mulan winced at a few points in the story. Mushu climbed out onto Mulan’s shoulder to listen and gasped at dramatically-appropriate points (and one inappropriate point).

“Aw, Sora! Dang, that’s rough,” Mushu consoled. “Don’t worry, I got you! Let me show you a little of my Mushu style, Dragon Fu!” He waved his arms and did a little dance that was most likely intended to resemble a martial arts practice. Mulan smiled and rolled her eyes, then casually brushed him off of her shoulder, causing the dragon to let out a yelp. Shang shook his head in disbelief at Mushu’s antics.

“Alright. I think I know where to start,” Shang said.

Sora nodded. “Thank you.”

Shang turned to a nearby soldier and shouted an order. The soldier entered a tent and came out with three bamboo poles, each one six feet in length, and handed them to Shang. Shang bowed in thanks and tossed a pole each to Sora and Mulan. Sora caught it with both hands, then watched in awe as Mulan caught hers with one hand and began to twirl it around, then spin around with it and deliver a jab with one end at the end.

Shang gripped his pole, his hands spaced apart and holding the pole at a diagonal. “In order to branch your skills out, you must learn a new discipline. To do that, you must practice with an unfamiliar weapon,” he told Sora. “When your familiar tactics will not suit you, you must learn to explore an alternative.”

Sora nodded, understanding. He waved the bamboo bo staff around uncertainly. “So, how do I use this?” he asked.

Smirking, Shang held his staff out in front of him at arm’s length, his right hand gripping from the underside and his left hand gripping overhand. “The first thing you need to understand is that you are not training to use a staff; you are training  _ with _ the staff,” he explained. “One does not run around and swing it like a tacky blunt instrument. Think of the staff as an extension of your body. It moves with you.” He demonstrated by raising his leg and holding his staff over his right shoulder, then stepping forward and swinging the staff forward by pushing his right hand and bringing his left hand down. Next, he threw a round kick, then spun around, twirling his staff above his head as he did so, and brought the staff to his rib with the front end pointing forward. Next, he thrusted the staff down at a diagonal to his side, raising his leg on the same side as he did so. He showed off a few more moves, each one acting with his full body and with the staff serving more as an extension or axis of each move rather than the focus and weight of the swing. He concluded the demonstration by bringing the staff back to his side, holding it parallel to his body with a reverse grip, and then bowed.

Sora nodded and smiled, impressed. “I see.” He gripped his bo staff the same way that Shang had at the beginning of the demonstration. “Let’s do this!”

Shang smiled. “Alright. Let’s start with the forward down thrust,” he said.

Mickey, Riku, Kairi, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua watched this lesson take place. Riku and Donald chuckled as Sora made a few missteps while Mickey and Aqua smiled as he slowly but surely got the hang of the technique.

“You really think this will work?” Aqua asked. “Learning new fighting styles to go up against someone like Zeromast?”

Mickey shrugged. “It seems like a long shot, especially since, from what he said at the time, he knows just about every technique there is,” he admitted. “But it also looked like his real advantage was knowing exactly what moves Sora knew by then.”

“It actually looked like he spent most of the fight letting Sora try to attack him, you know?” Goofy surmised. “He waited for him to do something and then countered each one.”

“And he seemed to have been thrown off when Sora did a roundhouse kick,” Kairi added. “I don’t think it was the fact that the kick was a really good trick. It’s a pretty simple move. I could probably do it easily. What I think caught Zeromast off guard was that Sora had only recently learned it.”

“I think I get it,” Aqua said. “He beat Sora because he could predict each of his attacks. So if Sora learns to use a broader variety of styles and techniques, Zeromast won’t have that advantage and he’ll have to fight on more even footing.”

Riku nodded. “That’s the idea. But if he’s as good as he says, and since we didn’t actually see what his own fighting style is like on his own, I guess we can only hope that it’ll be enough.”

They watched Shang knock Sora on his back with a sweeping blow. As Sora picked himself up, Kairi and Goofy gave him encouraging thumbs-ups.

“You know, I guess we might as well train ourselves, huh?” Aqua suggested.

Kairi smiled and summoned her Keyblade. “Alright if I take a few lessons from the Master?” she asked.

Aqua let out a laugh. “I would be happy to impart some of my wisdom.” She summoned her own Keyblade and flicked it out to her side. They began to clash Keyblades, blocking, retaliating, and dishing out special tricks. Aqua commended Kairi on her technique and shouted out advice whenever she landed a hit on the less-experienced girl.

Riku, Mickey and Goofy also began to spar one-on-one-on-one. Donald, who was more magic-oriented than physical combat-focused, simply watched his friends practice. He noticed Sora match up against Shang and Mulan, performing with the bo staff with a surprisingly fluid grace for a beginner. He also saw Kairi get a few good hits in against Aqua, even knocking the Keyblade Master off of her feet. As he watched, he wondered if there was anything he could do to hone his abilities. He recalled seeing Aqua casting Firaza in the Realm of Darkness, a fourth-tier spell which he had never quite reached. He wondered if he could learn to unlock that level of power. His eyes fell on Mushu, who also sat and watched Sora training with Mulan and Shang. He walked over to the dragon and sat down next to him.

“Say, Mushu, where does your fire come from?” he asked.

Mushu laughed. “Oh, I see what you’re doing. You want to learn the dragon art!” He sized Donald up and down. “Well, I dunno if I can teach you the full, pure force of it. That stream you see some of my boys huff out, you know, it takes a little something that I’m not sure you have in you. He he… Actually, they say I don’t have it in me either. They said the furnace won’t fit in me, you know? But anyway, I think I can give you the gist of what goes on in my gut here.” He cleared his throat and clapped his hands. Cri-Kee looked up at him curiously. “Take a seat, lucky bug. Now, taking a look at your own fire magic… No offense一 it’s good form, but it’s a bit sloppy. You’re pulling it out of thin air, converting some energy to make it appear. Dragon fire, however, is something drawn from deep within you. It flows through your body, burning with your soul. Kinda like how that bo staff is used as an extension of your body, fire, pure fire magic, is a projection of your own spiritual strength, channeled with your chi, and fueled by your emotions. To call upon the full extent of that power, you must come to understand the fire that burns within you. Got it?”

Donald and Cri-Kee gaped in awe. Mushu, counter to the aura that he always projected previously as a semi-incompetent goofball, had just displayed a great deal of wisdom. Donald felt that he would take his advice to heart, which left him in total disbelief.

Mushu blinked, wondering why the duck and cricket were looking at him strangely. “What? Oh, come on! Gimme some credit here! I’m not just some fool! Sure, I don’t really take myself seriously most of the time, and I mess up a lot, but you don’t get to be a family guardian  _ ever _ if you don’t know anything about spirituality, and especially if you’re a dragon who doesn’t know how fire breathing works!” he complained. “What, you can buy  _ Goofy _ giving out sage wisdom and explaining everything perfectly but not me?” He snorted some fire through his nostrils, crossed his arms, and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. You figure it out. Have fun with your fire magic business.” He turned around and walked away.

Donald and Cri-Kee looked at each other, not entirely sure how to respond. The cricket shrugged, then turned back to watching Sora, Mulan, and Shang. Donald turned and stared into the campfire, watching the tongues of its flame float and crackle. He figured that he might as well take Mushu’s advice and search for the fire within himself. He walked over to the campfire and sat a few feet away from it. He then began to breathe in and out slowly, relaxing.

At the same time, Sora won a match against Mulan, tripping her up and then knocking her down with his staff. He began to celebrate his victory by spinning the staff over his head like a helicopter.


	114. Chapter A113: To the Imperial City

After eating breakfast at the crack of dawn, the troop packed up camp and began their march. Mulan, Shang, and the soldiers rode their horses while the majority of the foreigners in the party walked, although Mulan allowed Kairi to ride with her when her legs and feet grew tired, and one of the soldiers offered the same courtesy to Donald.

They trekked across the countryside for much of the day. The journey was rather peaceful, for the most part. They only ran into very few Heartless, and a trio of Dusks at one point, never facing a force similar to that which attacked Mulan’s village two days prior. Sora questioned this phenomenon, but Mickey said that it made sense, as the majority of Heartless were gathered in the large army units, so there would only be a few strays.

“Speaking of the enemies we’ve been fighting, what are the Nobodies doing here?” Riku asked. “We ran into them a couple of times in the last couple weeks, but they’ve just been in small groups, acting without much of an agenda.”

“Those white things? Those were ‘Nobodies’?” Aqua questioned.

“Now that you mention it, we’ve seen very little of them since you were last here, after the last time that spy with the eyepatch was seen,” Mulan added.

Sora shrugged. “Well, we did take out Organization XIII, so they don’t really have anyone ordering them around,” he replied. “And we also took out a bunch of them on our way through their stronghold. And there were those hundreds of Dusks that you and I fought after we beat Xemnas.”

“I guess whatever Nobodies are still around are trying to find something to do with themselves,” Mickey surmised. “They’d even be willing to work for people controlling the Heartless, like the ones that Dr. Facilier sent to fight us.”

“Doctor? Is he some kind of healer?” Mulan asked, wondering who this character could be.

Donald shook his head. “Not even close. He’s just a skinny guy with… a special kind of magic,” he told her, deciding it was best to not try to explain what voodoo was.

“You know, after we finished off the Organization, I guess I kinda forgot about the rest of the Nobodies,” Sora noted.

Riku shrugged. “Well, I guess that, aside from the ones that stayed in human form, we saw the Nobodies as just another type of enemy to fight, dangerous monsters like the Heartless. We only recently found out that they could have grown hearts of their own and that they could have become people with feelings and hopes again.”

“Now I feel kind of bad for them, and how we treated them,” Sora lamented. “We should have found some way to help them.”

“Xemnas misled us. He misled them. There wasn’t anything we could have thought to do,” Mickey reminded him. “And we were too busy trying to stop him and them from causing pain and destruction across the worlds. Remember how Xaldin manipulated Adam’s emotions to try to turn him into a Heartless and a Nobody? When Luxord sent the Grim Reaper to attack Port Royal? When Xigbar stoked a dragon to become a Heartless and attack the Imperial City?”

Mulan raised an eyebrow. “You were here for that?” she asked, not remembering the mouse’s presence.

Mickey shook his head. “Riku told me after the fact. Along with the profile on the Heartless in the journal, I was able to put the story together.”

“He has a point,” Kairi said, referring to Mickey’s previous argument. “Besides, now we know a lot more about Nobodies. We know that if they die, they will become Somebodies again, as well as the whole ‘heart-growing’ thing. But now that we do know this, what are we going to do about the rest of the Nobodies still running around?”

The party fell silent as they thought about how to answer the question. Before, they had only concerned themselves with protecting the fate of the people that the Nobodies threatened to harm. But now, with their more advanced knowledge of the nature of Nobodies and what may happen to them, they had to consider and decide the fate of the Nobodies themselves. Sora felt apprehensive, as he had never had to think this “big” before, never having to decide the fate of an entire species.

“I wonder,” Sora muttered.

* * *

In the early afternoon, they approached a grove. Mulan and Donald dismounted, and they, along with Goofy, offered to scout ahead and determine whether the path was suitable to progress, or if any monsters of one variety or another were present.

They stepped into the line of trees, looking around to make sure that nothing escaped their view. After a few minutes, Mulan heard something. She raised her hand, beckoning for Donald and Goofy to stop. Donald squinted as he glanced around, while Goofy tilted his head and lifted one ear. The sound returned, a rustling in the grass and shrubbery. Mulan reached for her sword while Donald and Goofy’s staff and shield appeared in their hands. They each took on a battle-ready stance as the noise grew louder and closer. They began to hear voices, although not loud enough to discern the words spoken: a deep growl, a high shrill, and a calm, soft tone. As the figures drew closer, Mulan began to make out some of the words, and she started to find the voices to be rather familiar.

“This is all your fault!”

“I just thought it’d be a good idea to scout ahead. I thought that tree was a good landmark to find our way back.”

“I smell some delicious mushrooms somewhere around here.”

“Would you just shut up about food?!”

“But this could be a good spot toー”

“Yeah! What are一”

“Shh! I think I hear something.”

Donald and Goofy looked at each other in confusion. Mulan started to smile softly, coming to believe that she knew who was on the other side of those bushes.

“Okay, on my signal. One, two, three!” Three soldiers of different shapes and sizes jumped out from behind the bushes, with swords drawn. The short, portly one and the lean, skinny one let out threatening shouts, while the tall, fat one smiled innocently.

Donald and Goofy raised their arms defensively, but Mulan merely smiled and released her grip on her sword. “Well, look who it is!”

The three soldiers blinked first in confusion, then in recognition, then started to laugh. They sheathed their swords and embraced Mulan.

“Ha! We almost got you!” Yao, the short soldier wearing black and red armor and who had a thick beard and an eye that seemed to perpetually be swollen purple and shut, boasted.

“You sure did, Yao. You sure did,” Mulan replied, humoring the man.

“Did you miss us?” Ling, the skinny soldier wearing black and yellow armor, asked.

“We missed you,” Chien Po, the tall, fat, and bald soldier wearing black and blue armor, said.

Realizing that these three were not enemies, Donald and Goofy dismissed their weapons and waved amicably. “Hey, you guys. Long time,” Goofy greeted.

The three soldiers broke off from Mulan and looked at the duck and dog in mild confusion. Yao and Ling waved nervously while Chien Po waved cheerfully. “Oh. Hey. It’s… you guys,” Ling said uncertainly. He sighed and slumped slightly. “I’ll be honest here. I don’t remember who you are at all.”

Donald’s jaw dropped. Goofy tilted his head in bemusement. Yao shrugged. “Sorry,” the gruff soldier said. Mulan giggled.

“It is very nice to meet you,” Chien Po greeted politely.

Yao turned to Mulan. “Good to see you back in the field. Say, you mind if we tag along with you?” he asked. “We kinda got separated from our troop.”

Mulan nodded. “Of course. We could use all the help we can get.”

Ling grinned. “Great! Let’s一” He stopped as he registered what she had said. “Wait, what do you mean by ‘all the help we can get’?”

* * *

Mulan explained the situation as she, Donald and Goofy led the three soldiers out of the grove and back to the troop. Yao, Ling, and Chien Po greeted Shang and the soldiers. Yao gave Sora a playful punch on the arm, which Sora returned, and Chien Po pulled him into a bear hug. Ling kissed Kairi’s hand with a gentlemanly flair, then Yao shoved him to the ground.

“So, we’re out to save China again?” Yao asked for clarification, an anticipatory grin forming on his face.

Shang nodded. “That’s right. And we need to hurry. With any luck, we’ll be able to reach the Imperial City before too much damage can be done,” he affirmed.

“Which means we need to get a move on,” Riku reiterated bluntly.

“Then let us go help our friends,” Chien Po said sweetly.

Kairi smiled. “I like this guy,” she remarked.

* * *

The troop continued its march. They approached a village and saw that it was under attack by Heartless. Aqua, Mickey, and Yao ran in to check the situation and help out, but saw that a dozen men, some dressed in armor and others in plainclothes, were already fighting the monsters off. Most of the townspeople had locked themselves inside their homes, and some of them were using brooms, knives, and pieces of armor to fend off any Heartless that attempted to break in. Yao laughed as he saw that the people were handling the situation well enough. Aqua and Mickey each let out a sigh, relieved to see that they did not have much to worry about in regards to the Heartless’ country-wide assault. Deciding that they did not need to call in reinforcements, they charged into battle and helped clear out the Heartless.

When the battle was over, they rejoined their companions and reported to Shang. With the crisis resolved, they proceeded onward. As they hiked, the terrain grew rough and uneven. After a short while, a gap in the earth came into view. As they drew near, they saw that it was a ravine, in which a river flowed twenty feet down. The only link to the other side was a rope bridge, which was wide enough for three men and which appeared to be sturdy.

“Once we cross this bridge, it will be only a day’s trek to the Imperial City,” Shang said.

Goofy peered over the horizon. “Gawrsh, you think the Heartless went this way?” he asked.

“Probably, if they were going for a straight shot,” Mulan replied. “But I don’t see them anywhere, and they didn’t seem to be moving very fast.” She gazed downhill beyond the ravine, not even seeing a dot on the plain.

“We did tail them and catch up to them pretty quick after each fight in the villages,” Donald remarked.

“And that last fight didn’t look like it had started too long ago,” Yao added. “Maybe a little over an hour, tops.”

“Maybe they decided to take a detour, go the scenic route,” Ling quipped.

Two of the soldiers studied the map. One pointed out the number of villages marked on either side of the river to the other. “Maybe they did change course so they can go after more villages and increase their ranks,” one of them suggested. They turned the map around to show the others.

Donald looked across the bridge, then glanced to the right, where the Heartless had most likely gone. “So what are we supposed to do?” he asked.

“We’ll have to split up,” Shang said. “A small contingent will continue to follow the Heartless and make sure that they don’t take any victims on the way while the rest of us head straight for the Imperial City and mount its defense.”

Sora nodded. “That’s a good idea. Now, how about we…” He trailed off as he heard a peculiar noise. As he listened, trying to discern the nature and source, the noise grew louder, or rather, the source came closer. Everyone else looked around in all directions, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from.

They soon realized that the noise sounded like a yell, and that it was coming from somewhere above them. They all looked up, just in time to see a massive armored figure drop from the sky and land in the middle of the bridge. The giant man reached behind him and pulled out a naginata and a jian sword with a brown leather handle and an octagonal red guard.

Sora jumped in surprise as he recognized the warrior. “You again?” he blurted, flabbergasted.

Mulan shot Sora a bemused glance. “You know this beast?” she asked.

Gilgamesh pointed his sword and twirled his naginata. “Yes! We meet again, Keyblade’s warrior!” he shouted. “We were interrupted before our fated duel could properly begin, but I hope you are ready this time!”

Shang squinted as he studied the samurai’s weapons and gasped. “That sword… it belonged to my father!” he exclaimed. He glared at the swordsman and drew his sword. “He said that a strange warrior had confronted him and stolen it. That warrior was you!”

“Stolen? Bah! That General Li fought quite admirably, but he lost in the end. I simply claimed my prize,” he corrected. After a brief pause, he cleared his throat, speaking in a slightly softer tone. “I, uh, heard what happened. You have my condolences, good sir.” There was another brief pause before he decided to resume his original business. He twirled his naginata again and swung the sword. “Now we shall share our own great match, Keyblade master Sora! Step forward, and we shall fight like men!” He glanced around quickly, registering the presence of Kairi, Aqua and Mulan. “And ladies! And ladies who dress like men! For Gilgameshー”

He was cut off as he heard wood creaking and twine ripping around him. He looked around and saw that the rope holding the bridge together was stretched thin, and that cracks were forming in the wooden boards that he was standing on. He looked back up and gulped. A few seconds later, the ropes broke completely, and the bridge fell against either rock wall, with two broken boards dropping into the river. He remained still in midair for several seconds before dropping into the water with an enormous splash. Sora, Mulan and Shang ran to the edge and watched the armored figure as he was swept away in the river’s rapid current.

Mushu climbed out of Mulan’s robe and stared in the same direction as them. “Uh, what just happened?” he asked, utterly bewildered. Sora could only shrug in response.

Mulan sighed. “So much for mounting our defense ahead of the invasion force,” she lamented.

Shang shook his head. “Well, there’s no point standing around here.” He turned around to face the rest of the troop. “We’re going around.”

* * *

They continued their march, this time going the long way and hoping that they will not be too late. One of the soldiers estimated that, with minimal delay, it should take three days to reach their destination. Shang responded by declaring that they had best not delay.

“I wonder what that guy’s deal is,” Sora mused after an hour of walking.

“Who?” Kairi asked.

“Gilgamesh,” Sora clarified. “He just started to show up out of nowhere and said he wanted to duel me. You don’t really run into that very often.”

“He seems to be able to travel from one world to the next,” Riku noted. “My guess is that he’s a warrior without a war or a cause, so he gave himself a purpose by tracking down soldiers and champions from all over and fighting with them. I can only guess why. Something to prove to himself? Something to prove to his girlfriend? Fun?”

“So he’s a lone samurai who goes around picking fights for the thrill?” Aqua paraphrased.

“I think the technical term is ‘rōnin’,” Mickey corrected.

Mulan shrugged, not knowing what the distinction meant.

“What do you think will happen when we see him next?” Sora asked.

“Well, if you don’t get interrupted, I guess he’ll just start a fight with you,” Goofy answered.

“Launch him to the dark side of the moon for me, okay?” Shang requested.

Sora smirked. “I guess all I can do is be ready.”

* * *

As night fell and they continued on, they saw what appeared to be an army camp a few hundred feet away. Donald, Ling, Chien Po, and two of the soldiers smiled, thinking that they were going to meet up with some allies, but Shang, Mulan, Mickey, and Riku put their guards up.

“Careful, fellas. Something’s not quite right,” Mickey warned.

“What do you mean?” Donald asked.

“Take a closer look. There aren’t any lights, and it isn’t that late,” Riku noted. “There also doesn’t seem to be anyone keeping watch. And, though I can’t see very clearly, I can’t see any horses anywhere.” He sniffed. “I also smell something… disconcerting.”

Chien Po sniffed the air. “I also cannot detect the wafting aroma of a recently-cooked dinner.”

“A real sign of disaster,” Ling quipped.

Mulan and Shang sniffed the air, as did Mushu. “Now hold on. I don’t smell anything funny,” Mushu remarked.

“You probably wouldn’t. It’s not a regular scent,” Sora clarified. “Riku can literally smell the power of darkness.”

Mulan, Shang, and Yao looked at him in bewilderment. Riku sighed. “Just roll with it and pretend it makes sense,” he advised dryly.

Shang shrugged. “Approach with caution,” he instructed.

Sora and Mulan nodded. The troop walked toward the quiet camp silently, watching and listening carefully for any sign of life. When they drew within two hundred feet, they slowed their pace, waiting for anyone who might be present to stir.

As they reached the edge of the camp, they stopped as they heard something shuffle inside one of the tents. They stood still, barely moving a muscle. The flaps on the tent were pushed open, and a figure stepped out and made its way to them. As the figure came closer, the party could tell that he was dressed in a soldier’s uniform, with a sword at his belt, although they could not make his face out in the darkness. Three of the soldiers looked at each other in confusion, wondering why this man was wearing his armor. The figure stopped five feet in front of Shang, his face still difficult to see clearly. He stood at attention, showing respect and deference to Shang.

Shang nodded. “At ease, soldier,” he said. The figure relaxed. “Status report.”

Rather than answer, the figure reached for the hilt of his sword and drew it. Mulan gasped and drew her own sword. She brought it up to block the figure’s attempt to swing his weapon at Shang. Riku summoned his Keyblade and stabbed the figure in the side. However, the attacker did not flinch. Instead, he stepped back and reared to swing again, heedless of the growing gash in his side as the still-impaled Keyblade did not budge. He swung again, but Mulan parried his attacks and then kicked him in the stomach. Donald cast Thunder, calling down a bolt of lightning to hit the enemy’s sword. The blade glowed as electricity crackled through it, finally lighting the figure’s face, if only for a few seconds. However, these few seconds were enough to expose a shriveled face of decaying blue skin, jaundiced, lifeless eyes, and a hole where his nose ought to be.

Kairi yelped while Yao, Ling, and Chien Po screamed. Aqua gaped in horror, Sora gasped before scowling, and Goofy grimaced.

“What is that thing?” Mulan asked, similarly freaked out.

“A Mamluk!” Sora replied. He attacked the zombie, striking its joints hard enough with his Keyblade that its limbs fell off. He finished off by smashing its stolen helmet, crushing the metal and caving its head into its torso. “You can’t kill them, but you can take them out.” He demonstrated by pushing the Mamluk’s now-limbless torso onto its back and kicking the limbs away so that it would not be able to put itself back together.

A few seconds after the first Mamluk had been defeated, a dozen more of the zombies stepped out of the tents. Each one wielded a scimitar, and only a few of them had bothered to wear any of the armor. The Mamluks stalked toward the troop, their swords raised to kill.

By this point, the soldiers had calmed down from their terror and had drawn their weapons. Everyone else also took out or summoned their own weapons and prepared for battle. They charged at the undead soldiers and engaged them. The Chinese soldiers had a difficult time fighting them, even when fighting two-on-one, as the Mamluks were skilled and they were not fazed in combat. However, they quickly began to overtake their opponents when Riku reminded them to go for dismembering blows. They found that the decaying skin and atrophied muscles made cutting through the walking corpses a simple matter; while one kept the zombie occupied in a frontal attack, another soldier would slice at the shoulders, elbows, knees, hips, and neck.

Mulan and Shang paired up against a Mamluk in a similar manner, although Mulan had her sword ignited and charged up with Mushu’s dragon fire. The heat flared each time her sword connected with her enemy’s scimitar, and she managed to cut off the Mamluk’s hand, igniting its wrist in the process. Shang severed its opposite arm while Mulan dealt a few more flaming slashes, incapacitating the zombie and causing its body and clothes to start burning up. With her opponent vanquished, she spun her sword like a windmill, dispersing the flames that wreathed her blade.

Donald cast Firaga, Blizzaga, and Thundaga to try to take out some of the Mamluks, while Kairi tried to throw them off balance with Aerora and then attempt to slice at sensitive nerves and tendons with her Keyblade (she did not have as much success as she would have hoped, however). Aqua blasted three Mamluks with Blizzaga, then cast a Blizzaza spell at one of them, freezing it solid. She then hit it with her Keyblade with enough strength to shatter it to pieces.

Sora, Riku, and Mickey overcame their opponents with their superior strength, speed, and swordplay. They made sure to sever the Mamluks’ limbs and heads to keep them from getting back up. Goofy assisted them by blocking sword strikes with his shield and pushing them off balance. Once all of the Mamluks had been defeated, Riku conjured a pool of darkness to dispose of the broken bodies. With the battle over, everyone regrouped.

“I suppose we can imagine what happened to the soldiers that were at this camp,” Shang mused grimly. “But what were those things we just fought?”

“Mamluks, undead soldiers from the Land of the Black Sand,” Sora answered. He looked over at Riku and Mickey knowingly. “Which means we know who’s controlling the Heartless here.”

“Mozenrath,” Mickey confirmed.

“Who is that?” Mulan asked.

“He’s a powerful sorcerer who specializes in dark magic and manipulations,” Riku explained. “When we faced him, he tried to use the Heartless of a wind spirit to destroy a city in order to find an item of value to him and his associates.”

“I see. I suppose an army of Heartless carving through the entire country to invade the Imperial City is a strategy that fits someone who is that ruthless,” Mulan remarked.

“Maybe he sent that eel of his to set things up ahead of time,” Donald added, recalling the theory that the Heartless invasion had been prepared before the commander’s arrival.

“If that’s the case, then we’ll need to hurry to the Imperial City to stop this invasion, and prevent this Mozenrath from getting what he wants,” Shang asserted. “We’ll rest for the night, and continue on our way first thing in the morning.”

No one complained. They prepared and ate dinner, then spent an hour sparring before hitting the hay. Sora took another lesson in bo staff fighting with Shang and Mulan while Riku, Kairi and Mickey sparred together. Aqua would have joined them, but Donald wanted to talk to her.

“Hey, Aqua,” he began, getting her attention.

Aqua turned to face him. “What is it?”

“How did you learn to use those fourth-tier spells?” he asked. “I’ve been at third-tier level for a while, and I haven’t figured out how to cast next level magic.” He shook his head. “Until I saw you cast Firaza, fourth-tier magic was only something I’d read about years ago.”

Aqua reflected on her experience in the Realm of Darkness, recalling how she unlocked the power in the first place. She sat down next to Donald. “I’m not sure how to explain it. When I was down there, the monsters I fought were like nothing I’d ever seen before,” she explained. “It took all of my power just to survive down there. At first, I tried being strategic with my spells, but after a while, as the assault was just as fierce, I resorted to casting Firaga in succession, putting all of my power into trying to destroy the horde. As I flung spells left and right, I think I felt the intensity rise. My anger and frustration burned to a peak as I cast the strongest fire that I could manage. Then, suddenly, I felt a strange warmth. I cast my next spell, and it came out with an explosive force. Instead of just a really big fireball, I’d engulfed the entire horde in flames. I couldn’t believe it.”

Donald thought over her account. “So, you focused on the fire, letting it rage inside you and letting it all out, pushing yourself to your limits,” he summarized, considering Mushu’s words from the previous night.

Aqua shrugged. “I don’t really try to go right for the big spell. If I go all in with a single spell over and over, it’ll happen, but I won’t just use something that powerful offhand.”

Donald nodded. “Makes sense. It seems a lot stronger and tougher to get a handle on than lower-tier spells, especially if you can’t really practice in a controlled environment,” he mused. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You really think you’re ready for fourth-tier Black Magic spells?” Aqua asked.

Donald shrugged. “Eh, when has a wizard really been ready for something he’s ambitious to learn?” he joked. “But if and when I am ready, I’m sure I’ll be able to do it. When my heart has the strength, it will let me do it, right?”

Aqua nodded. “That’s right. Don’t worry. Your heart is strong. You’ll find that strength. Heck, I got it to work, and I wasn’t even trying.”

They laughed for a moment. Their attention fell upon Sora, Mulan and Shang’s training session, where Sora was getting the hang of the new weapon and fighting style.

* * *

After breakfast at dawn, the troop packed up the camping set, seeing as no one was using it anymore, and set off. They marched for two full days, facing no opposition, which was both relieving and worrying; they did not have to worry about delays due to semi-frequent encounters, yet it also gave them an idea of the scope of the invasion force, indicating that nearly all of the Heartless in the world are participating in the horrific assault. Knowing that they needed to catch up to the Heartless before they could do any damage, they moved as fast as they reasonably could. By the morning of the last day of their trek, they could see the platoon of Heartless that they had been tailing. In the afternoon, the Imperial City started to come into view. As they finally approached the city, they watched the swarm of Heartless grow and envelop the land around it.

Ling screamed. “It’s begun!” he announced.

The soldiers dismounted from their horses. Shang drew his sword. “Then let’s end it before they get too far in.”

“There is only one direct entrance into the city: the front gates,” one of the soldiers reported. “The enemies on this side will enter through there, while the rest would have to climb the walls. Or, you know, teleport inside the city. The streets will be overrun, but defenses on the walls will be better-matched.”

Mulan nodded. “Alright, then. Our priority will be to eliminate the threat and defend the gates. We will also need troops to fan out and make sure the city is clear and no one is harmed,” she declared.

“And we also need to find their commander,” Mickey added. “Mozenrath will certainly be headed straight for the palace. We’ll need to stop him and protect the Emperor.”

“Certainly,” Shang agreed. “But first, we’ll need to cut through the mob in front of us.” He pointed his sword in the direction of the gates to emphasize.

Sora studied the crowd before deciding how they should proceed. “Magic users go first. Blast a hole in them so we can pass through and cut down the rest!” he ordered. He, Riku, Mickey, Donald, Aqua, and Kairi charged ahead of the rest of the troop, readying the spells that they would use. Mushu climbed out of Mulan’s robe and jumped over to Sora, grabbing onto his hood, clambering up his shoulder and hair, and standing on his head. As they drew within a hundred feet of the crowd of Heartless, they began flinging spells left and right. Mushu spat fireballs at enemies as well. Aqua took the lead, launching Firaga spells into the center of the crowd. Flames enveloped her Keyblade more and more with each spell. After the fourth spell, she threw a Firaza spell, which obliterated a large percentage of the Heartless in front of them and caused dozens others to be blasted backward, clearing the way for the troop to proceed through the gates.

When the troop reached the gates, carving through any Heartless in arm’s reach, Riku, Goofy, and four guards stopped. “We’ll cover this entrance,” Riku said. “These things aren’t going to get past us!”

Shang nodded. “Understood.” Sora gave his friends a thumbs-up before they continued.

As they proceeded, they saw Heartless running through the streets and flying around houses in search of victims. Shang directed the Chinese soldiers to break off into groups of three to clear the alleys. Yao, Ling, and Chien Po ran together, charging with determination toward an Assault Rider and two Nightwalkers. The rest of the group continued on their way, sprinting up to the courtyard in front of the palace, where they saw that the palace was surrounded by Heartless of all kinds. When they reached the center of the courtyard, four Bolt Towers descended on them. Sora jumped into the air and lashed out at one of the Heartless’ floating heads. When he finished a combo and started to drop down, the Bolt Tower shot its head straight at him, hitting him in the chest and launching him over the party. Another Bolt Tower shot a bolt of electricity from its antenna, striking Sora and causing him to drop to the ground. Mulan ran over and helped Sora to his feet. Mushu climbed up to Mulan’s shoulder and spat a few fireballs at the Heartless directly above them.

“Thanks,” Sora said. He leaned to the side to look past Mulan, and his eyes widened when he saw a Bolt Tower descend to ground level and bend up and backwards about its top so that its base was reared back. “Everyone jump!” he shouted.

Mulan, Donald, Mickey, Aqua, Kairi, and Shang turned around to see what the Bolt Tower was doing. Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi were confused, but the others were quite familiar with the Heartless’ strategy. “Jump! Now!” Donald yelped. Knowing better than to question their friends’ judgment, Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi joined the others in jumping just as the Heartless swung the heavier part of its body forward, crashing it into the ground and causing a large shockwave.

When they landed as the shockwave faded, Donald cast Agua, directing a snaking tube of water in circles above them. Kairi then cast Aerora. The wind currents dragged the water around in an airborne whirlpool that expanded and enveloped the Bolt Towers. Not only did the water harm them, but they were also made to crash into each other. Sora and Aqua cast Blizzaga at the Heartless. Two of them became trapped in blocks of ice as the water around them froze solid, and they fell out of the cyclone and crashed to the ground. Mickey began to hack and slash at one of them while Mulan, with her sword once again ignited by Mushu’s fire, carved into the other one.

When both spells faded, the Bolt Towers set to realign themselves. One of them fired a laser at Kairi, which enveloped her and lifted her into the air. Sora looked up in shock, but he remembered facing this same attack multiple times. “When it charges and sends a bolt down the line, send it back at it!” he instructed. The other Bolt Tower shot a bolt of electricity at him, but he blocked it and threw his Keyblade at its head, knocking it out of orientation. Kairi nodded, understanding what Sora had told her. She waited for the opportune time. When she felt a subtle change in the energy, she used a small amount of Aero magic to spin herself around, swinging her Keyblade as a thicker bolt of energy emerged from the antenna and zoomed straight toward her. She successfully hit the bolt and sent it back to where it had come from. An explosion of energy burst from the antenna and sent the Bolt Tower flying.

Sora and Aqua pursued the Bolt Tower and attacked the head, batting it back and forth to one another. As it was being passed back to Sora, it regained its senses and returned to its body. However, before it could do anything, Kairi ran up and stabbed her Keyblade straight through the head. The head dissolved, and then the rest of the Heartless disintegrated.

While Mickey and Mulan destroyed the frozen Heartless, Shang and Donald fought the last Bolt Tower. Donald used Graviga to bring it down to their level, where Shang carved at it with his sword and Donald cast Fire spells at it. It knocked Shang on his back with its head and shot a bolt of electricity at Donald, but the two persevered and defeated the Heartless.

With the fight over, the party gathered together again and ran up the stairs to the landing just before the tall, crimson front doors. When they reached the top of the steps, they saw a figure clad in dark robes, as well as an eel floating next to his head. He raised his gloved right hand to cast a destructive spell.

“Stop right there, Mozenrath!” Sora shouted. Shang groaned at his lack of discretion.

The dark sorcerer turned around and smirked. “Ah. I was wondering what all the commotion was,” he remarked. “Have you come to die?”

“We’re here to stop you!” Donald answered, casting a Firaga spell at the villain.

Mozenrath casually slapped the spell aside and shook his head. “Well, we can’t let that happen, can we?”

Xerxes shook his head. “No, no. He he he.”

“Don’t take this personally, but I can’t allow you to interfere any further.” With that, Mozenrath waved his hand. Miniature fireworks exploded at the party’s feet, blasting them backward and sending them tumbling down the stairs. He then held his hand out, palm forward, and willed a honeycomb barrier to materialize along the edges of the platform, rising twenty feet up and stopping just under the edge of the roof. He turned around and used a spell to telekinetically pull the doors open, then casually strolled through.


	115. Chapter 114: The Drowned Bird

Shang pushed himself to his feet and ran up the stairs, only to charge headfirst into the barrier and fall backwards again. Sora and Mulan caught him before he could tumble down the stairs again. Shang swung his sword in an attempt to break through the barrier, but to no effect.

“It’s no use, Shang. You can’t break through it. We’ve tried,” Sora told him.

Shang cursed. “That magician is going after the Emperor, and we can’t even go through the same door as him!” he complained.

“Tell me about it.” Sora shook his head in annoyance. “We need to find another way in.”

“If Riku weren’t preoccupied, he could just create a dark portal that leads right into the throne room,” Mickey muttered.

Mulan turned to Sora with a smile on her face. “The front door isn’t the only entrance,” she said. “Remember when the doors were locked and we had to warn Shang and the Emperor about the dragon?”

Sora nodded, recalling how they used a pillar to climb up to the roof.

“The doors were locked? Why didn’t you use the Keyblade?” Kairi asked.

Sora blinked, then grunted and slapped himself on the forehead. He shook his head, deciding to beat himself up over the goof later. He glanced around and saw a long flag hanging vertically along the front wall in either direction. He jumped off of the stairs and, using a small amount of Aero magic and also reducing the force of gravity on him, glided over to one of the flags. He ceased his spells and grabbed onto the flag. Turning himself so that he had his feet pressed against the wall, he pulled hard on the flag, ripping it free, and propelled himself away from the building. He beckoned for his friends to join him. When they did so, he gave one end to Kairi and had her help him stretch it out while Mulan cut ribbons out of it. He and Mulan passed a ribbon to each of their companions. Kairi, Mickey and Aqua looked at the ribbons in confusion, but Donald and Shang smiled, Donald recalling their entrance and Shang quickly figuring out what Sora and Mulan had planned.

Shang led the party around the building until they found a row of columns against the wall. Mulan advised Kairi, Mickey and Aqua on the plan, then she wrapped her ribbon around one of the columns. Pulling the ribbon tight, she set her foot against the column, then brought her other leg up to a higher position. She slid the ribbon up as she climbed higher, and repeated the process all the way up to the top, where she switched one end of the ribbon to her other hand and reached up to grab the lip of the roof, then dropped the ribbon and pulled herself up with both hands.

The rest of the group followed her example, climbing up the pillars in a row. Kairi nearly slipped, but she caught herself by pulling herself tight to the column, then set herself right and finished her ascent, joining the others on the roof. Mickey and Donald finished last due to their stature.

When they were all standing on the roof, they saw four Heartless materialize. These Heartless resembled Red Nocturnes, except their bodies were dark blue save for imprinted designs resembling colorful fireworks explosions on the lower part of their bodies. One of the creatures shot a crackling burst out of its antenna. The burst exploded into a dozen pyrotechnic sparks a few feet in front of Sora, who dodged to the side in time to avoid getting hit with the fireworks.

Donald and Kairi cast Blizzard spells at the Festive Fireworks. Sora and Aqua attempted to deflect the fireworks attacks, but they exploded on contact with their Keyblades. Mulan and Shang maneuvered around and slashed at the Heartless. Mushu spat a fireball at one but noticed that it either had no effect or it actually healed the Heartless. Mickey threw himself at it and delivered a flurry of slashes, then threw two Pearl spells at it. Aqua finished it off with a combo. Kairi cast Thundara, and watched in bewilderment as two bolts hit one of the Festive Fireworks and caused it to explode. Sora noticed this, equally shocked, and swung his Keyblade back, charging it up with Thunder magic. He threw it and let it fly around, slicing through the Heartless, each one exploding after being struck. After the final Heartless was destroyed, the Keyblade returned to his hand.

The party ran up the roof and climbed into a window. After navigating the upper level of the building, they dropped into a hallway. Three Mamluks stood in front of the doors that led to the throne room. The zombies jumped in surprise, but quickly composed themselves and raised their swords. However, the party quickly defeated them, and Donald and Aqua froze their severed limbs to the walls to prevent them from attempting to pull themselves back together. Sora pulled the doors open and they ran into the throne room, only to stop when they saw what was happening.

Using magic to hold the Emperor in the air, Mozenrath sent searing energy through the old monarch’s body. Despite the obviously agonizing torment, the Emperor did not show signs of pain. His body was rigid and his arms appeared to be shaking within the large yellow sleeves of his robe. His eyes were shut tight, and there was no way to determine his expression from his mouth, which was obscured by his chest-length white beard and pointed moustache, but Shang wondered if he would betray how much he was struggling through the torture if his mouth were visible. Mickey was immediately impressed by the Emperor’s strong will.

“You’re still silent, huh? Fine by me. I can do this all day,” Mozenrath taunted. “You’ll tell me where it is soon enough. Every man has his limits.” Xerxes laughed.

Rather than announce his presence like last time, Sora threw his Keyblade at Mozenrath while the sorcerer’s back was to the party. Xerxes turned around and saw the attack. He let out a yelp in an effort to warn his master, then flew into the Keyblade’s path to try to disrupt the raid, only to get slapped to the ground as the teeth struck him from above. Mozenrath turned around to see what was going on, and just in time. He brought his gloved hand around and raised a shield to deflect the Keyblade. As this action diverted his focus, his torture spell over the Emperor broke and the old man fell to the floor.

Mozenrath scowled. “You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

Sora shook his head. “No. We’re stubborn like that,” he retorted. He summoned his Keyblade back to his hand while his friends drew their own weapons.

Mozenrath chuckled. “Then you’ll just have to learn.” He fired an energy bolt from his gloved hand, only for Sora to block it. Shang ran around the sorcerer and helped the Emperor to his feet. Wrapping the old man’s arm over his shoulder to support him, Shang led him to the exit.

Mozenrath fired several more spells, but the party dodged to avoid them and blocked a few. Sora, Aqua, Donald, and Kairi fired some of their own spells back at him. While he was preoccupied with countering their spells, Mulan slipped behind him and moved to attack him. However, Mozenrath recognized this effort and, without even looking back, pointed his gloved hand back over his shoulder and blasted her back with a burst of energy. He then made his hand into a fist and brought it down to the floor. Bursts of dark flame shot up from the floor beneath everyone’s feet, launching them into the air. Sora, Mickey and Aqua realigned themselves and landed on their feet, but Kairi and Donald hit the ground face-down.

The sorcerer waved his hand, causing eight Nightwalkers to materialize. “Take their hearts,” he ordered. “Or just kill them. Whichever you prefer.” Xerxes, who had regained consciousness, cackled hoarsely.

The Nightwalkers floated toward the party, which moved to engage the Heartless. Sora threw his Keyblade at one of them, conjuring wind magic to make the weapon fly around it and slash at it several times. While his weapon fought the Heartless, he threw himself at Mozenrath and threw a punch to his stomach. Mozenrath charged his glove up with electricity and attempted to slap Sora, but Sora grabbed his arm and pushed it up out of the way. He then elbowed his enemy in the chin, dealt a flurry of punches, and kicked him in the side. Mozenrath punched him in the shoulder. Sora prepared to throw another blow, but Xerxes wrapped himself around his wrist and pulled back with all of his strength. Sora struggled to break free, but was surprised by how strong the eel was. Instead, he jumped, using Xerxes as a pivot axis and performing a backflip, kicking Mozenrath in the chest and face as he threw himself up and over. Mickey cast a Fira spell at Xerxes, causing the eel to release his hold. Sora landed on his feet and rushed over to Mozenrath again, striking him with a roundhouse kick, grabbing his arm, and, twisting around and setting his foot back to the floor, flipping him over his shoulder. When he threw his opponent, Aqua cast a Blizzaga spell at him, striking him in midair. Sora then walked over to the Nightwalker that was under assault by his Keyblade, willed his weapon to return to his hand, and then finished the Heartless off.

In the meantime, Mickey, Aqua, Kairi, Donald, and Mulan defeated the other seven Nightwalkers. With the monsters vanquished, the warriors encircled Mozenrath, pointing their weapons at the sorcerer. Mozenrath pushed himself up to one knee and glared at his enemies, gritting his teeth. After a moment, his expression relaxed and he let out a laugh.

“You think that old man is safe?” he taunted. “Now he’s out in the open, and you’re all in here.” As his foes wondered what he was talking about, he wrapped himself in darkness and vanished through a dark Corridor.

While everyone tried to figure out what Mozenrath was going to do next, they heard a loud, high-pitched screech. They could not see what had made the noise, and they noticed that it felt as though the entire palace shook from the power behind the screech.

Mickey gasped. “Where did Shang take the Emperor?” he asked.

“They must’ve gone outside,” Mulan replied. She gasped as she realized what that meant. “That noise came from outside!”

“Well, come on! Let’s hurry!” Kairi said. All in agreement, the party ran out of the throne room, through the corridors, and out through the front doors. Much to their relief, they saw that the barrier had been removed. As they ran down the stairs, they noticed that it was raining.

“I don’t recall it appearing overcast when we got here,” Donald commented.

Just then, something cast a massive shadow over them, accompanied by the sound of wings flapping, causing them to look up in shock. The silhouette of a massive bird passed over them, flying over the Imperial City. As it passed, they saw a stream of water follow it from behind, leaving a path of suspended liquid that very much resembled a floating stream from an Agua spell. The party ran down the stairs and through the courtyard. When they reached the bridge that joined the courtyard with the rest of the city, the bird flew in an arc, turning around and giving them a better view of it.

The bird, which was large enough for its wingspan to stretch over seventy feet, had black and blue feathers. It had a short, fat beak that was dark gray in color, and the inside of its mouth was a bright red. Its eyes glowed a bright yellow. Its feet each had three talons pointing forward and one talon pointing backward. The water stream materialized and coalesced from the tips of its three teardrop-shaped tail feathers. While an emblem was not visible from their vantage point, there was no doubt that the giant fiend was a Heartless. Mickey guessed that the emblem would be on the creature’s back.

When it saw them, the bird let out another screech. Raindrops formed into spheres of water around them and flew at them. Mickey jumped up and, in a spinning slash, cut one of the spheres in two, causing it to collapse. Aqua cast Blizzard to freeze another one, then struck it, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Mushu spat fireballs to destroy three others. Mulan scanned across the city and gasped. “Look!” she shouted, pointing toward a sphere of water floating above the street. Shang and the Emperor stood trapped within the bubble, which appeared to be a six-inch thick barrier of water formed into a perfect sphere with a pocket of air inside. Shang attempted to cut through the bubble with his sword, but this seemed to only let rainwater enter and fill the bubble more. Mozenrath floated in front of the bubble, facing the Emperor with his arms crossed. He could not make it out from so far away, but Sora had no doubt that the sorcerer was smirking.

“Okay, it looks like this thing’s water-based,” Aqua mused. “So we should use Thunder magic to deal the most damage?”

“In the pouring rain? Are you sure about that?” Kairi argued.

Aqua blinked as she reconsidered her idea. “Point taken. That’s a terrible idea.”

“Let’s get close to it and figure it out from there,” Sora suggested.

They ran through the city and climbed up onto the roofs of some of the buildings. The Heartless flew around, leaving a winding path of water in the air. In its flight, it swooped down and strafed the roofs, forcing the party to drop onto their stomachs until it passed. It looped back around and flew back toward them.

Mickey jumped up to strike the bird’s face as it approached, but it opened its mouth and caught him in its beak. It then veered upward, flying high into the sky. It released him, and he fell out of the Heartless’ mouth and into a section of the water stream, where he was carried away by the current. Donald screamed in horror as he watched this happen. Fortunately, several seconds later, Mickey was able to spin himself, carving through the stream with his Keyblade and destabilizing it enough for him to fall out. He fell a hundred feet, but before he could land hard, Riku appeared and caught him, landing safely on a roof. At the same time, Goofy climbed onto the same roof and ran over to make sure his king was okay.

“Okay. Don’t let it grab you,” Sora advised, shouting so that everyone could hear.

Aqua nodded. “That would be wise.”

They waited for the Heartless, which Sora elected to call “Water Wings”, to swoop by again, at which point they lashed out at its wings and neck. When it passed directly over them, Sora, Aqua and Mulan dropped flat and slashed at its stomach. However, it flew too fast, and it passed by before they could do much damage. They then had to roll out of the way so that they did not stand up and become swept in the current.

“We need a new plan,” Mulan said. “We won’t be able to stop this thing unless we can slow it down.”

Aqua examined the water stream in front of them, then let her gaze follow the flow. She smiled and turned back to face Sora and Mulan. “I have an idea.” She succinctly explained what she had in mind, and they agreed with the plan. Mulan sheathed her sword and threw her arms over Sora and Aqua’s shoulders, while the Keyblade wielders each wrapped an arm behind her back. “One… two… three…” They jumped, Sora and Aqua lifting Mulan with them into the air. Aqua pointed her Keyblade down and cast Blizzaga, freezing a section of the stream, which they landed on top of. Aqua positioned herself in the direction that the Water Wings had flown, and released a jet of Blizzard magic from her Keyblade, freezing the water ahead. Meanwhile Sora, facing the opposite direction, transformed his Keyblade into a bo staff and began to spin it, using Aero magic to blast air out and propel them along the freezing path. Mulan stood in the middle, holding onto them and making sure that they moved as one. Mushu picked Ethers out of their pockets and used them on Aqua and Sora every so often so that they did not run out of magic power. The path wound around in the sky for some time, but they stayed on top and traveled along at an incredibly fast rate. Sora drew wind from in front of Aqua to push backward to limit wind resistance.

The Water Wings flew over the roofs and pecked down to grab Kairi, then found a section of stream to drop her in. Goofy chased her down, jumping between rooftops to track down where she was going to end up. When he reached his destination, he fired himself like a rocket, blasting through the stream and grabbing Kairi as he passed through.

The Heartless witnessed this rescue and, annoyed, conjured balls of water to drop on its adversaries. Riku blasted two of the spheres with Dark Firaga. Mickey sliced through another one. Donald destroyed three with Fire and shot two Firaga spells at the Heartless. Kairi froze two, which Goofy proceeded to smash.

Eventually, Sora, Aqua and Mulan caught up to the Water Wings. Sora decreased the speed so that they were going at the same speed as the Heartless, rather than overtaking it and crashing into it. Counting to three so that they worked in unison, they jumped off of the ice slide, Sora adding a burst of Aero to propel them and Aqua ceasing her Blizzard jet, and landed on the Heartless’ back, which did indeed have a Heartless emblem painted on its feathers.

Aqua cast a Blizzard spell in the form of a mist, which spread over the rain in front of them and froze them into tiny ice needles which fell and struck the Heartless’ back and head. After the effects of that trick faded, she and Mulan moved to slice at the Water Wings’ back and wing joints while Sora slammed his staff against the body like a baseball bat and jabbed the tip into the joints. The Heartless let out a screech, letting them know that they were doing damage. In retaliation, it conjured balls of water to attack them. However, Mushu destroyed most of them, and Sora froze the last one, jabbed the tip of his bo staff into it, and swung it down like a hammer onto the Heartless’ back hard enough to shatter the ice. The bird squawked in pain and dropped several feet. Sora, Aqua and Mulan grabbed onto the feathers so that they did not lose their footing as it dropped. After a few seconds, the bird regained its bearings and tried to resume its flight, only to crash its head into a section of the frozen stream. The ice shattered on impact, but the Heartless was left in pain and disoriented, decreasing its speed.

“Now’s our chance!” Riku shouted. As the bird flew around, strafing the rooftops again and trying to avoid any more obstacles, Riku, Mickey, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy attacked it from below, the Keyblade wielders using a mix of sword strikes and spells, Donald throwing a barrage of Fire spells, and Goofy punching upward with his shield, spin-attacking, and throwing his shield.

As it suffered more injury, the Water Wings tried to keep at a distance and avoid flying over its enemies. However, it was distracted when Donald shot another salvo of Firaga spells at it and Mulan stabbed her sword, which had once again been lit ablaze by Mushu, into its back, and it crashed into another section of frozen water stream. Sora lost his footing and stumbled off of the Heartless’ back, landing on a roof. He used his staff as a support to stand back up, then changed it back into its normal shape. Wrapping the Keyblade in flames, he threw it at the Heartless’ stomach several times.

Kairi jumped between roofs, catching herself on the ledge at one point to avoid falling. When she was under the Heartless’ feet, she pointed her Keyblade upward. “Let’s try something different,” she muttered. “Blast!” A sparkling bolt shot out of the tip of his Keyblade, flying straight up and hitting her target right above its legs. The bolt exploded into sparks, igniting its feathers in effect. The fireworks sparks then exploded into numerous smaller bursts. Water Wings let out a screech in pain.

“Nice one, Kairi,” Sora commended. Kairi giggled and flipped her hair back. She watched him jump up and slash at the bird’s stomach. She jumped up as well and delivered a set of blows to one of its feet.

Aqua noticed that its wing flaps were getting weaker, and the rain was starting to let up. “We’ve got it on the ropes! Let’s finish this!” She ran up the Water Wings’ back and stabbed it in the neck, pushing her Keyblade down to the hilt, then pulled it out and jumped off, slicing its wing on the way down. She landed next to Sora and shot a Firaga spell up at the bird. She and Sora high-fived, then threw their Keyblades at the Heartless.

The party continued to deal damage to the Heartless. The Water Wings eventually tried to dive down and grab Sora in its beak, but Mulan ran over its head and sliced her sword through its face, leaving a burning wound across its beak. Screeching in agony, the bird flapped its wings and tried to flee, but it had lost most of its strength, so it was only able to hover up and down ineffectually. While the Water Wings screamed, Sora threw his Keyblade into the beast’s mouth. Feeling the weapon rip into its throat, it realized that it was not going to survive the fight, so the bird tried to build up the strength to teleport away. However, Donald let out a fierce cry and, the fire within him boiling over, shot a Firaza spell at the Heartless, hitting it square in the chest. The powerful flames enveloped and burned through it, and the giant Heartless exploded into flames.

With the Heartless destroyed, the rain stopped, and the clouds that it had conjured began to fade away. The water sphere that Shang and the Emperor were trapped in, and which had by then been filled a third of the way due to Shang’s efforts to escape and kill Mozenrath, began to dissolve. Noticing this, Mickey jumped down and cast Zero Gravity on them the moment the sphere collapsed, then eased them down to the ground. Enraged that his efforts had been thwarted, Mozenrath tried to blast Mickey, but he was hit in the chin with Goofy’s shield, which bounced off and flew back to its owner. Gripping his jaw, which felt as though it had been cracked, he glared and attempted to retaliate, only to find all of his adversaries aiming their weapons directly at him. Some soldiers had also appeared on the scene and had drawn their own swords. Xerxes gulped, realizing that they were outnumbered and outmatched.

“So much as raise that glove, and you get the same thing!” Donald threatened. He had no idea if he would be able to carry through on his threat, but he was sure that Mozenrath would not risk it. Sure enough, the sorcerer reluctantly wrapped himself and his eel in darkness and vanished.


	116. The Emperor's Wisdom

The party accompanied the Emperor, Shang, Yao, Ling, Chien Po, and two soldiers back into the palace, where everyone had gathered in the throne room. Servants had brought towels to dry everyone off from the rain, although the Emperor and Mulan’s robes, as well as Sora, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy’s clothes were drenched. After the rain had stopped completely, Kairi used an Aero spell to try to dry everyone off, although this was not entirely successful.

Shang stood to the side so that he would address both the Emperor and his allies. “The Heartless invasion has been successfully thwarted,” he reported.

“Very good,” the Emperor replied. He turned his head to address the party in front of him. “You all have my thanks. China owes you another great debt.”

Mulan, Mickey, Riku, Aqua, Donald, Goofy, and the soldiers bowed. Sora and Kairi followed suit a second after, hoping that no one noticed the delay.

“Your Excellency, do you have any idea what Mozenrath came here for?” Mulan asked.

The Emperor stroked his beard thoughtfully. “I cannot say for certain. He used rather vague terms in his demands,” he claimed.

Sora raised an eyebrow, doubting that the Emperor really had no idea. He shrugged, playing along. “Maybe he thought there was something of value here and he figured you might know something about it. Maybe not. I guess he should have been more clear.”

The Emperor narrowed his gaze at the teen. The old leader realized that Sora seemed to have an idea of what the invader had been after. He glanced broadly at the rest of the group, contemplating what reason they would have for being in China, particularly in time for the evening’s crisis. He quickly deduced that they must also be aware of what the sorcerer had come for and why, and that must have been why they had come.

“General Li, Captain Fa, would you and your men give us the room?” he requested.

Shang and Mulan bowed. “Yes, your Excellency,” they replied simultaneously. They, along with the other soldiers, turned and exited the throne room.

Sora, Donald and Goofy looked at each other in bewilderment.  _ Did he say  _ Captain _ Fa? _ Sora mused.

“I see there is little point maintaining the secret,” the Emperor said, reclaiming the trio’s attention. “How much do you know?”

Mickey cleared his throat, having not expected it to be so easy to broach the subject with the Emperor. “To be honest, not much,” he admitted. “We know that Mozenrath and his allies are searching for artifacts and gathering one from each world, and we know that they want to use them to change the laws and structure of the universe to suit their desires, but we’re not sure how to locate them or figure out for sure who to look for to ask about them.”

“Hmm… So, in order to prevent them from gathering these ‘artifacts’ and achieving their goal, you are trying to gather them first,” the Emperor surmised.

Sora, Mickey and Donald were taken aback by the accusation. However, as they considered his words, they realized that he was onto something. “Uh, well, I guess. It’s the best thing we can think of doing,” Sora conceded. “At least until we stop them and make sure they can’t go after them again.”

The Emperor nodded. “I understand your concerns. Protecting the… ahem, ‘artifact’ is a hefty responsibility. For generations, one man, and one man only, aside from his successor whom he trained before he passed on, took the role of guardian. Perhaps it was all in preparation for what has come now.” Sora nodded, and attempted to hide his anticipation for him to continue. It appeared as though they were finally about to get some answers. “However, I must ask what you plan to do at the end of your journey.”

This question confused the party. Sora, Riku, and Mickey were not sure how to treat the prompt or how to answer. Sora and Mickey tilted their heads, showing how utterly thrown they were. Donald, Goofy, and Kairi initially thought that it was an easy answer, from their perspective, anyway, but Kairi slowly realized that it was not as simple as she thought. Aqua, being fairly new to the quest, did not have an answer herself.

“Let me clarify what I mean. Should your pursuit of your objective lead you to collect all of the artifacts, including those that may already be in the possession of your enemies, then, at the moment when you reach that point and achieve victory, what will you do then?”

“Well, uh… We’ll…” Sora began, before trailing off as he realized that the Emperor had a point. He would have liked to say that they would just return them to their worlds and make sure that they stayed safe and secure with their guardians, but he realized that was only an easy response without putting much thought into it. He realized that, if they had all of the artifacts, it would be very tempting to at least see what everything was about. They might even be tempted to use that power. A part of him wanted to believe that none of them would give in to those dark desires, but he quickly remembered everything that had been damaged and that they would desire to fix. He also recalled that Kairi had indeed considered using the power to fix something that was broken not very long ago. Regardless, he found that he could not answer the Emperor’s question with any certainty.

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered. Donald and Goofy looked at him in shock. Riku, Kairi and Mickey glanced at him curiously. Aqua seemed lost in thought, as if she herself was following the same train of thought. “I’d like to say we’ll do the selfless thing, but I can’t really be sure of what we would do if we had the chance.”

The Emperor nodded. “Wise answer, Keyblade Master. I suppose that is the same reason that the artifacts were not all kept safe under the same eye. Power is seductive, and any man, even with the best intentions or the worst, can be tempted into misusing it.”

“Your Excellency, would you mind helping us out? Could you tell us what these things are, and what this whole ‘reality warping’ thing is?” Mickey asked.

The Emperor closed his eyes, contemplating the request. “Unfortunately, I do not believe that you are quite ready to hear the full story. I do not know how much you truly understand, but I believe that you have more to learn before you can attempt to understand this. And even if you were prepared, I do not think that I am fit to explain the full story.”

The party slumped, disappointed.  _ Great, _ Sora thought.  _ Another dead end. _

“However,” the Emperor continued, “there is something that I can offer so that you do not leave completely empty-handed.” Everyone in the party stood upright, listening intently. “It is clear to me that some dangerous individuals are seeking out these artifacts, and they will not stop until they have claimed them all. It is a certainty that those fiends will return in another attempt to capture the one in my protection. In that event, it would be prudent to ensure that its location may be known to someone who can adequately defend it. Therefore, in preparation, I will allow one of you to know where it may be found, and what to seek, should you have to.” He sized up each of the warriors before him. “Young lady…”

Kairi pointed at herself uncertainly. “Me?” she asked.

The Emperor nodded. “Kairi, is it? Come with me. The rest of you, wait here.” He walked past the party and exited into the corridor, Kairi following behind him. They passed Shang and Mulan, causing the Emperor to advise them to wait a little while longer. He led Kairi through the halls, taking multiple turns before entering a storage vault. He guided her around the piles of supplies and relics before stopping in front of what appeared to be a large chest for clothing. Kairi could tell that the seemingly-innocuous box was important because it was locked with, rather than a latch or nothing at all, a slider puzzle. In its current state, the segments overlapped the lip between the box and the lid, preventing it from being opened normally.

“Watch carefully, and remember how this is opened,” the Emperor advised. He stooped down and worked on solving the puzzle. Kairi watched intently, trusting Naminé’s powers to keep a record of the process even if her own memory proved imperfect when the time came to follow the Emperor’s pattern.

After two minutes, the puzzle was finished. The sliding pieces now created the shape of a dragon. Kairi helped the Emperor open the box and saw that there were indeed clothes inside. The Emperor lifted a robe, revealing a short staff etched with intricate designs and written characters. He took the staff out and showed it to Kairi. The girl took it in her hands, and felt a strange power current within the golden shaft. She could not determine the nature of the power, but she could tell that it was distinct, and was most likely tied to something beyond the material world and the forces of light and darkness. It made her all the more curious in regards to what this artifact and its ilk were tied to. Examining the top face of the shaft, she noticed an odd symbol resembling a circle with an X drawn inside and with spikes drawn all around the outer circumference. Something tugged at the corner of her mind. Somehow, the shape looked familiar, but she could not place where she had seen it.

“Kairi, I am trusting you with the location of this artifact in the event, and only in the event, that taking it into your possession is an urgent necessity to protect both it and China from the threats that you and your companions are facing. Once that event has come and passed, its fate is in your hands. I trust that you and your friends will handle it wisely,” the Emperor reminded her. Kairi nodded, letting him know that she understood. Satisfied that he could leave the ultimate security of the artifact in the young lady’s capable hands, the Emperor replaced the shaft in its hiding spot and reset the slider puzzle. He and Kairi then returned to the throne room, inviting Mulan, Shang, and the soldiers back in as they passed. Kairi retook her place beside Sora and Riku while the Emperor stopped in front of his throne and entered a lotus position.

“Once again, I thank you for all you have done in protecting China,” the Emperor said, addressing the whole party. “And I wish you good fortune in your travels. May you achieve victory in your battles to come.” In response, the entire party bowed, with no one falling behind.

“You’re leaving?” Mulan asked, dismayed.

“Yeah. We’ve got to make sure that Mozenrath and his groupies don’t cause more trouble,” Sora replied.

“It was good seeing you,” Donald said.

“Good luck, soldiers,” Shang told them.

Riku grinned. “I’ll keep the wise guys out of trouble,” he joked.

The Emperor chuckled. “Ah, yes. I thought that was you,” he remarked. “General Li, you might still need to keep up on your training.”

Shang sighed as he recalled his embarrassment. Sora laughed and nudged him with his elbow. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry. After all, I’m sure Captain Fa can keep him on his toes.”

“Don’t get yourselves in too much trouble, you two,” Kairi teased. This left Mulan and Shang flustered while the others laughed. They soon recovered themselves and joined in.

“Eh, he’ll be fine,” Ling argued. “After all, he’s got  _ a girl worth fighting fooooooor!” _ He and the soldiers laughed.

Mulan raised an eyebrow in amusement. “Uh, and vice versa,” Yao added upon noticing this.

“Thanks again for the bo staff training,” Sora said.

Shang nodded. “Be sure to keep training. And good luck in facing that man. Oh, and speaking of which, if you see him again, be sure to give that armored giant a sound beating, for my father.”

Sora saluted. “Yes, sir!” He and his friends waved good-bye as they left the palace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, yes. That symbol has been brought up before, in a pretty early chapter. And it's not entirely made up: if you read the Bestiary section of the strategy guides (starting with KHII, I believe) or simply perused the Wiki, I think you would have seen it before.


	117. Chapter 116: Where's the Prize?

Yzma, wearing goggles, gloves, and a mini-lab coat sized for her feline frame, mixed various minerals from her collection and the earth materials from the Realm of Darkness with fluid chemicals in a beaker and heated it over a burner until the mixture took on a thick purple color. She plucked one of her own hairs with a set of tweezers and dipped it into the concoction. After letting it soak in the potion for twenty seconds, she pulled it out, shook it dry over a napkin, and placed it under a microscope. Taking her goggles off, she looked through the microscope in order to view the hair and determine to what animal it now belonged. She was quite curious as to what sort of transformation this potion would induce.

As she attempted to analyze the traits of the strand of hair, she heard a humming noise interrupt her train of thought. She grumbled, although it came out as more of a soft purr, and tried to ignore it. However, the volume only increased as the source came closer into the room, and it was only compounded by a  _ boing _ sound as the offender hopped with each dancing step. Sighing in resignation, she turned to see what the ruckus was about.

The source was Kefka, who danced around while carrying two distinct items. In his left hand, he held a three-foot-long petrified root with a knotted briar at the top. In his right hand, he held the bruised and bloodied corpse of a three-foot-tall, gray-furred rabbit that wore a tattered pink shirt and ripped-up blue jeans. Kefka danced around the room, swinging the limp rabbit around, at one point forcing Dr. Facilier to duck to avoid being hit, and waving the briar root like a conductor’s baton, while singing a whimsical diddy. “ _ Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay. My, oh my, what a wonderful day. _ ”

Yzma rolled her eyes and returned to her work.

Kefka hopped over to Maleficent and bowed before her. “Your prize, ma’am,” he said, holding the dead rabbit out in front of her.

Pete shuddered and gagged. Maleficent scowled. “And what am I supposed to do with  _ that _ ?” she asked icily.

Kefka tilted his head in apparent confusion, then looked down at the corpse and adopted an expression of exaggerated surprise. “Whoopsie! Wrong one!” He swung the body back and held the briar root out in front of him. “The other brother was guarding it, though not too well, I might add. I shaved off most of the patch when I yanked it out so it wouldn’t all be a hassle. One more whatever-it-is for the vault.”

Maleficent shot Pete a look, and her lackey took the root from the deranged clown and made his way down to the vault to place with the other artifacts. “You’re dismissed,” the witch said. “Get that thing out of here.”

Kefka stood up and waved the corpse dismissively. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. I’ll find a place for this. Or I could give it to Cruella. I know she has a thing for animals. Not that I’m judging. Where is the old cat lady anyway?”

“Mademoiselle de Vil is looking around a city with even stranger fashion sense than her,” Dr. Facilier replied.

“Well, then I’m sure she’s having the time of her life, unless she’s arguing with a clerk about the price of an itchy cardigan,” Kefka quipped.

“Perhaps she’s looking for something more tasteful for you to wear,” Kuja said, not even looking up from the  _ A Midsummer Night’s Dream _ book he was reading.

“Bah! Put on some pants and I’ll listen to your commentary on this so-called ‘taste’,” the clown retorted, pointing the rabbit corpse in Kuja’s direction.

“I will tell you once again: dispose of that at once!” Maleficent shouted.

Kefka made a salute, then spun around on his toes and started to skip toward the exit.

A Dark Corridor opened, from which Mozenrath and Xerxes appeared in the chamber. As the portal vanished, the sorcerer was suddenly struck in the face as Kefka swung the rabbit’s corpse wildly. Angered by this additional slight upon his already-disappointing evening, Mozenrath shot a bolt of lightning at the clown, who jumped back to avoid being hit. Xerxes hissed in Kefka’s direction. Kefka blew a raspberry and thumbed his nose in response.

“Where is it?” Maleficent asked impatiently upon noticing that Mozenrath was empty-handed.

The sorcerer sighed. “The assault was a failure,” he answered in resignation.

“What went wrong?” the witch inquired, growing annoyed.

“May I have a guess?” Dr. Facilier remarked. He took a handful of chicken bones out of his bag, shook them in his cupped hands, and threw them onto the ground. The bones landed in the shape of a crown, very similar to the shape of a certain necklace and the negative space created by the teeth of a weapon that Maleficent knew very well.

“He and his allies managed to destroy the entire Heartless army, prevented me from torturing the artifact’s location out of the old man, and obliterated the drowning bird,” Mozenrath explained bitterly.

“That is a disappointment,” Maleficent grumbled. “Well, I trust you at the very least handled yourself better than the last of our own to encounter them.” She scowled and glanced over at a large dent that she had broken into the wall several days ago, using the Horned King as a blunt instrument.

Kefka let out a laugh. “Aw, I wouldn’t worry about it. We can just go back and destroy it all and pick our prize out of the rubble,” he suggested.

Dr. Facilier raised an eyebrow, contemplating the practicality of the suggestion. “He just got his butt kicked and lost a thousand Heartless, and you want to go back there before we’ve even properly recovered our ranks and before we even know if they’ve left?” he argued. The other villains turned to look at him and seemed to consider what he said. He shuffled his deck of cards and then scattered them to the floor to emphasize his point. “Not to mention, they were already gathered to stop an attack. It won’t be hard to get back in gear. Give it a few weeks or something. We’re not in a rush or anything.”

After a moment of contemplation, Kefka shrugged. “Sure, whatever. I’ve got a new toy to play with to pass the time. Hmm, I wonder if I can find some other toys to play with. Ta-ta for now!” He waved good-bye with his right arm, wagging the dead rabbit up and down as he did so. He opened a Corridor of Darkness and pranced through.

Yzma groaned. “I thought he’d never leave,” she muttered. She went back to determining what her potion had done, but to her dismay, she could not identify the type of hair that her sample of fur had become. She sighed. “Looks like I’m going to need a live test subject.” She shoved a cork into her beaker and wrapped it in layers of cloth to prevent it from breaking open, wrote down an enumerated list of minerals that she had used in her concoction, and called Dr. Facilier to help her pack her supplies up.

“So, how do you think you’ll test your potion?” the voodoo practitioner asked. “You gonna get an animal from a random world?”

Yzma shook her head. “Nah. There’ll be the possibility that the potion would turn it into that animal, and I’ll want to know for certain that it works. I’ll just have to find a person to test it on.”

Pete returned to the chamber and noticed Mozenrath and Xerxes. “Hey, there. So, how’d it go?” he asked.

The sorcerer glared at him, and the eel shook his head, giving Pete an idea of how it went. Maleficent turned to face him. “Sora and his friends were there to stop the invasion,” she told him.

“Oh. They’re really getting under our skin, huh?” Pete mused.

“Yes, they are,” Maleficent agreed.

“Say, I’m startin' to think it’ll only be a matter of time before they figure out more about the thingies and start going after them at the same rate as us. And, well, you know, they’ll probably then start collecting them to keep us from getting to 'em.”

“What of it?” Maleficent asked impatiently.

“I’m saying we should probably do something about them before it gets to that point. 'Cause they’re not going to ‘just’ be in our way for too much longer.”

Maleficent nodded. “An excellent suggestion, coming from you.” Pete smiled proudly, before he registered the second part of the sentence. The fairy smirked. “I believe I have a few ideas.”

Pete chuckled, imagining the sort of trouble that the Keyblade wielder and his pals would be in when they next crossed paths.


	118. Chapter 117: Dreams of Distant Friends

A basketball appeared in Sora’s hands. He dribbled it from one hand to the other, bouncing it on the stained glass platform, before catching it in both hands again. He locked eyes with Roxas and bounced the ball toward him. Roxas caught it and passed it back. Sora caught it and ran past Roxas, dribbling as he went. Roxas turned and gave chase. He did a Reversal, sliding around and stopping in front of Sora, blocking his path. Sora then threw the ball to the side and dashed after it, reclaimed it, and continued his run toward the basketball net. He stopped and made a shot, but Roxas jumped up and slapped the ball away from the net. He caught up to it and started dribbling the ball as he ran toward the opposite net, this time with Sora pursuing him. Roxas stopped in front of the net and made a shot. The ball bounced off of the backboard and dropped through the net with a  _ swoosh _ .

Sora and Roxas continued their game, running all around the Station of Awakening. Sometimes, one of them managed to nab the ball from the other. Some shots made it into the net while others were blocked or missed. They each made a slam dunk as well.

They were all tied up, six to six. Sora bounced the ball to Roxas. Roxas bounced it back. Sora started to move, weaving around the court while avoiding Roxas. He stopped twenty feet away and made his shot. Unfortunately, Roxas had made a dash toward him, causing him to rush and put a little too much power in the shot. The ball bounced off of the backboard and sailed away, bouncing on the floor before falling over the ledge. Sora and Roxas watched it fall off and vanish.

“Whoops,” Sora said, admitting his error. He turned to face Roxas. “So, uh, should I call a new one? Summon it back? I’m not sure how this whole thing works.”

Before Roxas could offer a suggestion, the ball reappeared, soaring above the ledge and back onto the station. It bounced across the glass straight toward Roxas, who then caught it. Sora glanced over to where it had fallen, wondering what had just happened.

“Hey,” Roxas said, drawing Sora’s attention back to him. “I guess it’s my ball.”

“Uh, yeah.” He took another quick glance back at the ledge, but nothing revealed itself. He shook his head to clear his thoughts.  _ These Dives have always been surreal. I shouldn’t worry too much about it, _ he thought.

They continued their game, matching skills fiercely, laughing when one of them scored a point, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. After they had each scored fifteen points, they decided to take a break.

“That was a good game,” Roxas said, laughing.

Sora nodded in agreement. “I bet Irvine would have liked to see those moves,” he added. Roxas fell silent and looked away uncertainly. Sora frowned, understanding his Nobody’s conflicted feelings. “You know, I like hanging out with you in here一even though the atmosphere is kinda creepy一but I feel bad that you’re watching life from the sidelines.”

“You know what would happen if I separated from you,” Roxas argued.

Sora shrugged. “Actually, I don’t, really,” he admitted. “I was told that it ‘has to’ be like this, but they never explained how or why.”

Roxas smiled and shook his head. Same old Sora, hopelessly lost trying to understand the rules and logic of everything. Then again, it is not like he is any better at making sense of everything. Even when he was in the Organization and Axel was spoon-feeding him answers to his questions, he was always asking the why and how of everything and questioning everything that the Organization was doing. Granted, his questions and doubts were well-founded, but the point still stood.

“I had to merge back with you so that you would be complete,” he explained. “You were only half of what you were. Your strength was greatly depleted. You didn’t even have a real body.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I never really thought about how that worked between Kairi bringing me back to the light and you merging with me back in Twilight Town. So, my body was where you were, and Kairi’s light created a body for me. I thought that the Final Keyhole being complete just made the Heartless stronger, but I was actually weaker. When I fought Xemnas in Hollow Bastion, he said that I was ‘not whole’. So, I guess I couldn’t really be complete without you.” Sora shook his head. He put his hand over his chest empathetically. “But you deserve to live as your own person just as much as I do.”

Roxas sighed. “I shouldn’t have to take anything away from you. I wasn’t supposed to ex一”

“Yeah, well, things don’t always go how they’re ‘supposed’ to,” Sora shot back. “And you  _ do _ exist. And it’s a great existence. Your life shouldn’t be left to waste.”

“You got an idea for how to do that?” Roxas asked.

Sora realized that he still did not have an answer to that problem. “Uh… well… We’ll figure something out. Ansem, Ienzo and Even are smart. And Merlin and Yen Sid have really powerful magic. Between those guys, we can come up with something.”

Roxas let out a chuckle. “Come back when you think of something, and I’ll think about it.”

They fell silent, unsure how to further pass the time. Sora thought back to the basketball game and looked over to the edge of the platform curiously.

“I wonder who it was that threw the ball back,” he mused.

Roxas followed his gaze and shrugged. “Dunno. But when I caught the ball, I felt something... I’m not really sure what it was. I guess it felt like a… friend. It felt somehow familiar.”

“Huh.” Sora crossed his hands behind his head and laid on his back. “I wonder what it was, and why it was just off the side.”

* * *

In her own dream dive, Kairi sat in a room very similar to the dormitory in which Naminé had resided while in Twilight Town. She sat in a chair to the left of Naminé. Both girls had a sketchbook and a crayon in their hands. A box of crayons sat on the table between them. Kairi looked over at her Nobody’s artwork, which depicted the team, Mulan, Shang, and the soldiers standing before the Emperor.

“That’s amazing,” Kairi said, impressed.

Naminé smiled. “Thanks.” She snuck a peek at Kairi’s sketch. “That’s an interesting symbol.”

Kairi glanced down at her sketchbook page, on which she drew the symbol that she had seen on the staff in the palace’s storage room. “It is. It was on the artifact that the Emperor showed me,” she explained. “But I feel like I’ve seen it before. I just don’t know where.”

Naminé shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing like that sticks out in the more prominent instances in your memory. I could cycle through every moment that you saw and try to find it there, but that would take a long time.”

“Oh, well. If I see it again, maybe we can figure out what it means.”

“Sure.”

Kairi finished touching her sketch up, then took a look around the room. The walls were lined with drawings depicting events that had taken place since Naminé had merged into Kairi’s heart. Kairi knew that her Nobody had been with her during all that time since. However, she knew that, save for a few periods of chatting back home, Naminé had not truly participated in any of it. She had only sat in this room, watching from the sidelines as Kairi lived through everything. Sora and Riku knew that she was with them; Donald, Goofy, and the King, to a lesser extent; Aqua, however, barely knew she existed. She had never made the same connection to their friends as they had.

“Must be lonely in here,” Kairi mused.

“It’s fine,” Naminé replied simply. “I don’t get bored.”

Kairi shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. You don’t have any friends to talk to, except for the times I’m here. You don’t have any experiences to share. You have no one to laugh or cry with, no one to lend you their ear when you’re hurting and need a friend, no one to share ice cream with. You should be able to do all of that and more.”

Naminé hesitated before responding. “Should I?” she asked softly.

Kairi noticed the hint of self-loathing in her voice, and realized why she was avoiding the topic. “Yes, you should,” she said firmly, supportively. “We would all be happy to have you join us.”

“Even after all I’ve done?”

Kairi knew that her Nobody still felt immense guilt over taking Sora, Donald and Goofy’s memories apart under Marluxia’s orders. Even after undoing the damage, she still felt that that one event defined her. But Kairi had something else in mind. “After you put Sora, Donald and Goofy back to the way they were and fixed the harm that you were forced to do while you were pretty much held against your will? I’d say  _ especially _ after all you’ve done.” Naminé blushed. Kairi stood up and hugged her Nobody. “Besides, Sora never got to formally thank you.”

Naminé smiled softly, offering Kairi a degree of encouragement. “Come on, Naminé. Spend one day with us, please. At least have dinner with us just once,” she insisted.

Before Naminé could reply, they heard a voice permeating the dreamscape.  _ Ven… I’m sorry, Ven… _

“What was that?” Kairi asked.

“I think it came from outside,” Naminé guessed. “You want to check it out?”

Kairi nodded.

With that, she opened her eyes, finding herself back in bed. She threw her blanket off, slipped out of the bunk bed and stood up. She listened for the voice.

“Ven, I’m sorry. I might not make it back as soon as I thought.” Kairi looked up and realized that the voice was coming from the bed above hers. She began to climb the ladder leading up to the top bed. At the same time, she heard the door open and saw Mickey enter, also coming to investigate the voice.

Kairi climbed to the top of the ladder and saw Aqua tossing and turning in bed. “Sleep well, Ven,” she heard the blue-haired woman murmur. She frowned, realizing that her friend was having a bad dream.

Mickey jumped up and grabbed onto the frame, hoisting himself up next to Aqua’s head. He nudged her shoulder to shake her awake. “Aqua,” he whispered.

Aqua’s eyes fluttered open. She tilted her head to see Mickey and Kairi looking at her with worry.

“Are you alright?” Kairi asked.

Aqua blinked, still sleepy. “Did I do anything?”

“You were talking in your sleep,” Mickey told her.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Were you dreaming about Ventus?” Kairi asked.

Aqua nodded. “Yes. He’s… he’s still asleep. His heart is still lost.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I was supposed to go back and wake him up. But now I’ve been gone for so long.”

Mickey put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you want to go find him? We can try to wake him up,” he suggested.

Aqua thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. I mean, yes, I do want to find him. But I have no idea if it will do any good. Will I even be able to wake him? Could I? Do I have the power?”

Mickey nodded, understanding her concern. “Right. Master Yen Sid said that the light of a friend should be able to bring his heart home, but that was only right after he lost it.”

“His heart was close enough to point the way back to our home, where he would be kept safe,” Aqua continued. “But that was so long ago. His heart has been floating, lost, for twelve years. I don’t know where it could be. I don’t know how to find him. I might never be able to wake him up.” She broke down crying.

Kairi shook her head. “We will,” she declared adamantly. Aqua and Mickey turned to her. “We will find a way. I know you haven’t seen most of what our friends have pulled off, and I haven’t been at it as long as the others, but this is what we do. We make miracles happen. When it looks like there’s only smothering darkness, we find the small glimmer of light. We’ll figure something out, like we’ve always been able to do.”

Mickey smiled and nodded. “Right. I don’t know how, or how long it’ll take, but we’ll find Ven’s heart, and we’ll find a way to wake him up,” he promised. “And we’ll all be right there to greet him.”

Aqua smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Thanks. You guys are right. I just have to believe. Ven’s heart is still out there, somewhere. We just have to find him.”

“That’s good. Do you want me to make you some tea?” Mickey asked.

Aqua shook her head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll be alright now,” she replied. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kairi said. “Sweet dreams.” With that, she descended the ladder.

“Good night, Aqua.” Mickey gave her a parting smile before dropping down to the floor. Wishing Kairi good night, he left and returned to his room. Kairi slipped back into bed and pulled her blanket up.


	119. Chapter 118: Busy Streets of Shibuya

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep. As you can tell from the chapter's title, we're taking a dive into the world of "The World Ends With You". Fair Warning, the following chapters will spoil... pretty much the entire game. The only parts that it won't delve into (aside from some minor scenes and details) are "Another Day" and "A New Day" (the latter of which I chose not to play/watch while I was writing this arc). So, if you want to experience the game for yourself without this, go right ahead, and I hope to hear what you think when you come back. If you don't care for spoilers, I hope I've been able to explain things in a satisfactory way.
> 
> Also, speaking of TWEWY, there's going to be an anime adaptation of the game. I've got to say, I'm excited. What are your thoughts?
> 
> So, read on, and let me know what you think in a review.

“So, now what?” Riku asked, addressing the party in the cockpit of the Gummi Ship. They had finished breakfast and ascended to the cockpit to set off for a new destination, only to realize that they once again have no idea where they ought to go.

“We might as well just throw darts at a map and go from there,” Donald remarked, annoyed at the repetitiveness of their situation. Sora and Kairi tilted their heads quizzically, not familiar with the expression.

Jiminy sighed. “We’ve done the whole ‘go to the next world and hope for some helpful plot development’ thing before,” he noted. “It’s just that this time, we’ve already been to so many worlds, and we don’t even have a decent lead. We don’t even know who the last three members of Maleficent’s council are.”

“From what I understand, our enemies are also running around to different worlds and looking for the artifacts,” Aqua said. “They just have a more narrow field in which to look.”

Sora crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back into his chair. “Maybe we should treat this as going around to other worlds, helping people out, and maybe running into the bad guys along the way,” he suggested.

Goofy scratched his forehead as he considered the idea, then smiled. “A-hyuck. That is what we usually used to do.”

Aqua nodded. “He does have a point,” she agreed. “Granted, when I did the same thing, I didn’t have any idea what I was supposed to be looking for. I just flew around the cosmos until something happened to point me in the right direction.”

Riku sighed. “So, pick a direction, I guess?”

“Works for me,” Mickey replied. “Who’s up for flying?”

“Hey, how about we let Aqua take it for a spin?” Kairi suggested.

Aqua blinked in surprise. “M-Me?”

Sora grinned. “Great idea! You never had a chance with the controls yet. You want to give it a try?”

“I-uh-well…” Aqua stammered, unsure of what to say or do. After a moment of consideration, she decided that it might be a fun experience. Calming down, she smiled and nodded. “Sure, I guess.”

Donald smiled in approval. “Great! I’ll show you the ropes.”

“It’s always good to try something new,” Riku said. He turned his attention to Donald. “Like casting a fourth-tier Fire spell.”

“Congratulations, Donald!” Goofy cheered.

“Hot dog!” Mickey exclaimed.

“Yeah, way to go!” Sora agreed.

“He just went ‘waka-waka-waka-waka, then BOOM!” Kairi added, pantomiming the waving of a wand and casting of spells. Sora, Riku and Aqua laughed at the sound effects she had chosen.

Donald chuckled, enjoying the praise. “Well, why don’t we get this flying lesson started,” he said, turning the discussion back to the previous subject.

Mickey climbed out of the pilot’s chair to let Aqua take the seat. As Donald and Goofy were already in the co-pilot and gunner chairs, respectively, they simply strapped themselves in. Donald began to teach Aqua how to use the controls.

Sora prepared to strap in, but Kairi put her hand over his, drawing his attention. “Hey, I was wondering if you could show me some of your moves,” she requested. “Like the way you took on Mozenrath. Do you think you could teach me some of them?”

Sora raised an eyebrow at the request before ultimately grinning and nodding wholeheartedly. “Of course.” He stood up and turned to leave, only to stop and turn back to Riku. “Hey, you mind coming to help with the demonstration?” Riku nodded. Together, they left the cockpit and headed for the cargo hold, wishing Aqua luck as they exited.

Once in the cargo hold, they pushed a crate of mineral ores and a box full of maps against the walls, so that they then stood in an open space in the middle of the room. Sora and Riku stood across from each other, with Kairi standing aside and watching.

“Let’s start with some basics,” Sora said. He showed off some jabs, first at normal speed and then in slow motion so that Kairi would fully process the movements, on a stationary Riku. He then stepped away from Riku and stood in front of Kairi. “Alright, your turn. First things first, you need to get into position. Find your center, settle your body weight, and take a stance,” he instructed, repeating what Sion had told him during his lessons. Kairi did as he said, and threw jabs at him, repeating how he had demonstrated. He gave her advice when she needed it. He then demonstrated new moves on Riku, then repeated the process in teaching Kairi. After half an hour, Sora stood back from Kairi and nodded. “Alright. Ready to spar?” He took his stance, ready to test Kairi.

Kairi nodded, but before they could begin, the ship shook with a tremendous impact, causing them to stumble. “What the一?” Riku blurted.

“Sorry!” Aqua’s voice came from the loudspeaker above the door. They realized that the tremor was not due to an attack, but rather because Aqua must have accidentally strafed an asteroid. Sora was prepared to forgive her, as he had done the same more than once. Kairi giggled.

When they regained their footing, they retook their stances. On Riku’s cue, Kairi dealt jabs toward Sora, who effortlessly blocked most of them, though Kairi did get a few hits in. Sora retaliated with a few blows, some of which Kairi managed to block. She deflected one to the side and delivered a strike to his side. However, Sora grabbed her arm at that point and twisted around, dragging her along and throwing her to the ground. As a finisher, he threw a punch toward her chest but stopped an inch above it, ending the brief trial duel.

They took a moment to catch their breath. They began laughing. “Not bad,” Sora commended. He helped Kairi to her feet, only for both to stumble and him to fall on top of her when another impact shook the ship.

Riku used a crate to hoist himself to his feet and smirked at the position his friends were in. “I’ll, uh, go make sure the ship is still in one piece,” he said, excusing himself. As he ran out the door, he muttered: “I’ll leave you two be.”

Sora picked himself up and then helped Kairi to her feet, the two of them blushing at their momentary predicament. “So, uh, round two?” Sora suggested.

Kairi giggled. “If you’re up for it,” she replied teasingly.

They began another match, each throwing strikes at one another. Kairi’s blows became more precise as the sparring session went on. Sora still had the upper hand, but Kairi had more success countering him and she lasted longer against his attacks, avoiding his trap to pull her down to the ground. He did ultimately bring her to a knee by sweeping at her leg, leading to another match. During and between each match, Sora commended her on her progress. At one point, she elbowed him, but he grabbed her arm and tried to twist her around, only for her to actively go with it, maneuvering so that they both turned around, and she then backed them both up so that she had him pinned against a crate, with herself pressed up against his chest.

Sora smiled. “That was pretty good,” he said.

Kairi giggled. “Maybe one day I’ll be strong enough to go up against you,” she joked.

Sora laughed. “That’ll be something.”

They let go of each other’s arms and Kairi stepped forward. “Heartless and bad guys, beware! This skinny girl can beat the mighty Sora in a fight!” she bragged prospectively, pumping her fist up. She looked back over her shoulder and grinned.

They laughed. Kairi turned around so that she was fully facing Sora. “I’m glad you’re here, Kairi,” Sora said.

Kairi giggled sweetly. “I’m glad I’m with you, too,” she replied.

Sora sighed. “Honestly, I was kind of worried for you when you asked to come along,” he admitted. “I did want you traveling and exploring with us, but I never wanted you to get roped in all this danger. But, I’m glad you’ve been handling yourself the whole time.”

Kairi smiled with a hint of pride. “Well, I knew what I was getting myself into. And besides, I couldn’t have made it without you.” She took a step toward him.

“Does any of this ever scare you?” Sora asked.

Kairi tilted her head as she considered her answer. “A lot of the time, yeah. You?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Scared for myself, scared for the others… scared for you.”

Kairi nodded. “Same. Truthfully, I didn’t just come along so I could see the worlds with you. Well, that’s mostly why. But I also didn’t want to have to lose you again.”

Sora raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the first time around, when you closed the Door to Darkness, I was the only one to return home, while Riku was lost in the Realm of Darkness and you went looking for him, even when you had no idea if you’d be able to find a way back. Then I lost my memory of you almost completely, and Riku had to turn into Ansem. After we all went through so much, we finally made it back home together. I didn’t want to sit back at home, waiting for you to get back, only for you to disappear again.”

Sora put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “Well, then, I swear this time will be different. Kairi, you’re not going to lose me. I promise.”

Kairi smiled. “And I promise you aren’t going to lose me.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out her lucky charm. “I am always with you.”

Sora wrapped his hand over the charm in her hand, his fingers interlocking with hers. Kairi raised herself up onto her toes, while Sora leaned in.

They were interrupted once again by yet another tremor that shook the ship, causing them to topple to the ground. They started to pick themselves back up, blushing again.

“Okay, this time we are under attack,” Aqua announced over the intercom.

“Wak! Do a barrel roll!” Donald shouted.

“Hold onto something, everybody!” Mickey warned.

While the artificial gravity within the vessel kept them on the floor as the ship performed a three-sixty, the jolt of the action caused Sora and Kairi to roll across the floor. When they came to a stop, they pushed themselves to their feet again.

“We should probably head back up,” Sora suggested.

Kairi nodded and picked her lucky charm up, stuffing it back into her pocket. “Good idea,” she agreed.

* * *

After the crew fought off a Heartless-controlled ship resembling a humanoid robot with gun arms, they continued on their way. Aqua finally got the hang of piloting the Gummi Ship, although she still had a few rough spots, much like Sora had when he first took the controls officially. The scrapes and blasts caused the ship to lose a few blocks, but Mickey was able to repair it using spare parts from the cargo hold. They flew for a few hours, parking on an asteroid to take a lunch break, before they came upon a new world. It had the appearance of a big city with tall buildings, although it seemed less dreary than Midgar did on Shin-Ra. With the electronic billboards and colorful displays, it made Riku think of a brighter version of the Dark City below the Organization’s castle.

“This looks interesting,” Aqua mused. Sora, Kairi, and Goofy nodded in agreement.

“Alright, then. Let’s find a good point in orbit to leave the ship, then find a spot to beam down,” Mickey advised. He showed Aqua how to locate Safe Points where they could disembark. She selected a point, and the group stepped into the glowing circle.

* * *

They appeared in a department store, gathered a short distance away from the bathrooms. Looking around, they saw that the store was packed with shoppers, most of whom appeared to be teenagers and young adults in their twenties. The merchandise appeared to consist of fashion targeted at that age range. Sections were sorted by brand, with labels including  _ Mus Rattus _ ,  _ Sheep Heavenly _ ,  _ Tigre Punks _ , and  _ D+B _ .

“Nice choice,” Kairi said. “You know, I think I could use a wardrobe update. Come on, Sora!” She grabbed Sora by the arm and started to drag him along as she made her way to the  _ D+B _ section.

“We should probably stick together so we don’t get lost,” Donald warned.

“If we get separated, let’s just meet up at the entrance,” Riku suggested, pointed toward a glass wall with two sets of double doors that led outside.

“It couldn’t hurt to look around,” Aqua said. “I might get myself some new clothes, too. I’ve been wearing the same thing for over a decade.” She chuckled. “It’s probably out of style,” she joked.

“I wonder if I can find anything in my size,” Donald mused. “Everyone else got a change of clothes recently except for me.”

“Hopefully something that won’t tear or burn easily,” Mickey added.

Sora stood by as Kairi searched through the clothes that the store had to offer. He glanced over at the men’s clothing section to see if there was anything that would interest him. As he scanned around, he noticed a lanky teen with ash-blond hair who wore a light grey button-down shirt standing off to the side, watching him in a peculiar manner. Sora raised an eyebrow as he looked at the boy, sensing something odd about him but unable to figure out what it was. The boy snickered mischievously.

Kairi admired the selection. The clothes even came in her preferred colors. “Hey, Sora, what do you think?” she asked, holding one of the shirts by the coathanger in front of her.

Turning his focus away from the stranger and back to Kairi, Sora took in the amethyst-colored zip-up with dark purple pockets. He smiled, liking the look on her. “Looks nice.”

Kairi hooked the shirt back on the rack. “Ooh, but what about一” She stopped as she noticed the price sticker. Rather than the diamond-shaped symbol that the other stores used for Munny, the sticker used a strange “￥” symbol. “Sora? What’s this?” she asked.

Sora examined the price sticker and raised an eyebrow. “I dunno. Never seen it before,” he admitted. “They might not use Munny here. If we find a Moogle Shop, we should ask about it.

Kairi pouted, but sighed in defeat. “Let’s go find the others,” she said. As they left the clothing aisle, Sora glanced back to locate the mysterious boy, but he had vanished without a trace.

They searched the store, finding their friends in different aisles, all with an expression of disappointment. Riku stood near the checkout stands, listening to the cashiers and customers. Kairi surmised that they had all seen the price stickers as well.

Riku rejoined the group a moment after Sora and Kairi had caught up with them. “It turns out that in this world, people use paper currency called ‘yen’ rather than Munny,” he explained. “If we’re going to shop for anything, we’ll need to find a way to acquire some yen.”

“Gawrsh, I think I saw a Moogle Shop over in the back,” Goofy said.

“Do you think they do exchanges?” Donald asked.

Aqua shrugged. “Well, if they don’t take yen, then I can’t imagine why they would set up shop here.”

As they began to head toward the shop, they stopped dead as they heard dozens of girls and some boys screaming. They tensed up, anticipating danger, before realizing that the screams were not of terror, but of delight and excitement. A crowd formed, charging toward the middle of the store. Some less-courteous people shoved Sora, Kairi, Mickey, and Donald around, much to their displeasure. A few of the cashiers groaned, although one of the others swooned. Wondering what everyone was going crazy over, the group turned to the entrance and saw a handsome man in his upper twenties walk into the store. He had sandy blond hair and brown eyes, which some of the girls seemed to be lost in. He wore a sleeveless button-down white shirt, a white short-sleeved jacket that was attached more akin to a cape, a loose white cravat, brown jeans, a white belt, and light tan cowboy boots. He appeared to be a celebrity, judging from the fangirlish screaming.

Sora realized that, due to the still-swarming crowd, he had been separated from his friends. As most of the locals were taller than him, if only by a few inches in some cases, he could not see any of his companions, not even Kairi, who had been right next to him until only a moment ago, through the dense throng; he was barely able to see the cause of the crowd’s frenzy. Riku, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy managed to stick relatively close together, but Kairi was separated from the others and Mickey was lost completely.

Riku turned to one of the fangirls. “Who’s that man over there?” he asked.

“He’s only the hottest superstar in Shibuya: Eiji Oji, the Prince of Ennui,” the girl replied dreamily. “He’s the star of the most wonderful soap opera on television.”

“Really?” Riku said curiously.

“Just about everyone reads his blog,” the fangirl continued. “People just love his don’t-give-a-care attitude.”

Riku was confused by the unfamiliar terminology. “Blog?”

“Yeah.  _ F Everything _ .”

There was a pause as Riku was left unsure how to respond. “What?”

“I think we’re going to have to bump up the rating just for that,” Donald remarked. Aqua looked down at him in bemusement, having no idea what he was talking about.

“No, silly. The  _ F _ stands for  _ Fabulous _ !” the girl clarified.

“Uh, okay,” was the only way Riku could think to respond.

* * *

Not keen on being squashed in between a dozen raging fans, Sora weaved his way through the crowd, trying to make the quickest path into open space. Eventually, he freed himself, at which point he realized that he was at the store’s front entrance. Remembering Riku’s suggestion to regroup at the entrance, he decided to wait there until the crowd dispersed. He leaned against the wall and crossed his hands behind his head. While he waited, he watched the celebrity maneuver through the store. His adoring fans shifted to grant him passage. He was utterly amazed by the man’s reception; the most popular stars on the island did not receive nearly the same amount of wild praise as this guy. He did, however, recall the applause and ovation that he and his friends received at the Coliseum. In spite of that, the majority of their fans knew well enough to respect their privacy and personal space (which might have been helped by the fact that they slay monsters on a regular basis).

He glanced around the store, only to catch something out of the corner of his eye. Just outside, he saw the strange boy from a few minutes ago. He stood in the corner of the doorway, watching him still. When the stranger saw that Sora was looking at him, he smirked and stepped out of view.

While he knew that he ought to stay and wait for his friends to catch up with him before going out into the city, he had to figure out why the boy was watching him. He ran through the doors and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He turned to pursue the boy, but he had vanished again. Perplexed, he scanned around, wondering where he could have gone. He caught a glimpse of the sign over the store’s entrance, finding out that the store was named  _ Molco _ . He finally saw the boy a hundred feet to his left, it having taken him a moment to identify him among the passersby, in the opposite direction from where he thought he had gone. Confused, he followed him up the sidewalk. He weaved through the people as he passed them. He took quick glances around, so that he would be able to find his way back, but he did not focus too much on the surroundings, more intent on tracking the stranger.

He soon found himself in a back alley as the sky turned orange from the setting sun’s light. The walls of buildings on his left were covered in posters. In front of him, a set of stairs with a railing in the middle led up to a high wall that was decorated in elaborate, colorful graffiti art. There were many different shapes and phrases painted on the wall, though there were two designs that stood out to him: a refined white shape that appeared to be a monstrous skull with multiple spikes, which seemed rather ominous to him; and the centerpiece, which resembled a cartoonish cat head with bat wings directly below the ears, its tongue sticking out, and a pair of four-fingered gloved hands hovering above the head.

He looked around in confusion, because one thing he did not notice was the strange boy. He spun around, trying to find him, but he was nowhere to be found.

_ Who was that? _ he wondered.  _ He was watching me in the store, and I think he led me here. But why? _

Suddenly, he felt a presence directly behind him. He turned around to identify it, only to find himself staring down the barrel of a handgun.

He had no time to react, and he barely heard the  _ BANG _ .


	120. Chapter 119: The Reapers' Game

The party regrouped in front of a fast food joint on Spain Hill, having spent the whole night in search of Sora ever since they escaped from the crowd of Prince fans and gathered together to find their friend nowhere to be seen. After searching the whole store, during which time Mickey exchanged a large amount of Munny for yen at the Moogle Shop, they stepped out and split into two groups to search the city. Due to their unfamiliarity with the area, they went in circles a few times and were unable to explore every street. When they reunited the third time that night, it was already daybreak and they had not come across any sign of their errant friend.

“Still nothing?” Aqua asked, disappointed.

Donald shook his head sadly. “We can’t find him anywhere,” he lamented.

“Where could he have gone?” Goofy wondered.

“I said we should meet up by the entrance. What could have convinced him to leave?” Riku asked in exasperation.

“Maybe he saw something strange and felt he had to follow it,” the blonde girl next to him suggested.

“You were with him before the crowd formed. Do you have any idea what he might have seen, Kai...” Noticing that the girl spoke more softly than the way Kairi normally talked, he looked down at her only to find a small-framed girl, standing more than a head shorter than him, with long blonde hair that partially draped over her right shoulder, blue eyes, a white dress which ended at her thighs in an embroidered lace pattern, and light blue sandals decorated with yellow flower designs. Riku jumped in surprise as he recognized the girl, who stood where Kairi should be, as Naminé. “N-Naminé?” he gasped. Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua gaped as they noticed who the girl actually was.

“Where did Kairi go? And where did she come from?” Aqua asked.

Mickey turned to Aqua to explain. “Naminé is Kairi’s Nobody. We told you about her when we found you, remember?” he reminded her.

There was a pause as Aqua thought back to that conversation. After a moment, she nodded, recalling the part about Naminé. “You opened the way out of the Realm of Darkness, right?” Naminé nodded. Aqua smiled. “Thank you.”

“What happened to Kairi?” Riku asked.

Naminé shook her head. “I don’t know. It felt as though something pulled her away. And then I was just standing in her place, and I couldn’t feel her presence,” she explained.

“How long ago was that?”

“About two hours, I think.” Riku raised an eyebrow, wondering why she had not said anything. “I think I was in shock for a while. I couldn’t figure out what happened. I was barely able to keep up with you.”

“So first, Sora gets lost, then Kairi vanishes, but Naminé stays… I wonder what’s going on,” Goofy mused.

“I don’t know, but there might be a connection. It’s morning now, so let’s explore more of the city and see if we come across any of this world’s secrets,” Mickey suggested.

Aqua nodded. “Great idea. But first…” She placed her hand on her stomach as she felt it grumble. “Let’s find something to eat.”

* * *

Sora groggily opened his eyes. He saw the feet of dozens of people passing him by. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling his fingers press against an asphalt pavement. Had he fainted in the middle of the alley? To his confusion, no one seemed to see him. Taking a look around, he realized that he was no longer in the back alley, but he was in the middle of a four-way intersection. Looking down, he noticed that he was standing over a crosswalk that went diagonally through the middle of the intersection. The street was packed with pedestrians going every which way, though there did not appear to be any cars on the road. Most of the people were barely paying attention to what was in front of them; they all seemed to be talking to the air while holding something to their ears, much like that Shinra troop had done when he reported their presence. Wait, were those supposed to be like phones? Portable phones, not connected to a landline? Some people simply stood in place, staring at their phones.

“Ugh, what happened?” he wondered. “How did I get here?” He looked up and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Morning…?” He took another look around, wondering if anyone would be able to help him. “Excuse me. Can you tell me whereー” However, the person he attempted to ask did not seem to notice him, despite the fact that she was not preoccupied with a phone conversation. He decided to try someone else. “Hey, have you seen my friendsー” Still no reaction. “What is with everyone?” he complained, spreading his arms in exasperation. He then screamed in horror when he saw one person walk straight through his outstretched arm, as if it were not really there. He also noticed that no one reacted to his scream. It was as if he was just a ghost.

Something stung on the left hand. He looked at it to find, to his shock, a set of numbers burned into the palm of his hand, even exposed through his glove: 59:50. What was even stranger was that the second number was decreasing, like a timer, the burn mark reshaping on his hand, though he only felt the initial sting that must have been the moment when it had appeared. He wondered what the timer was supposed to be for.

Deciding to get a better idea of his surroundings, he took a look around at the surrounding buildings. To the west was a tall building labeled  _ 104 _ . Below the sign, there was a large television screen that showed advertisement signs, like an electronic billboard. To the east, he could see an overpass on which a train ran by. He sighed, unable to recognize any of his surroundings; it appeared as though he was nowhere near Molco or the back alley.

Unsure of what to do, he stuck his hands into his pockets casually. He felt his right hand touch something. He grabbed it and pulled it out to examine it. It appeared to be a circular pin made out of tin, with a black background and a main design that looked exactly like the white demon skull design on the graffiti mural.

“What’s this about?” he wondered aloud. He closed his fingers around the pin and tried to make sense of everything. However, things became stranger as the chatter around him became muted. He could see everyone around him in his mind’s eye, white silhouettes on a blue background, while he began to hear certain voices. He could see everything normally through his physical eyes as well. He focused his gaze on one of the people in front of him, who stood still and appeared to be lost in thought.

_ I’m so tired of plain old hamburgers. If only there were gourmet burgers… Like a caviar burger, or a foie gras burger, or a truffle burger! _

Sora raised an eyebrow in confusion.  _ That was weird, _ he mused. He turned his focus to a woman who was walking with a spring in her step, though she did not seem to be focused on her route.

_ Wonder if the Prince has posted anything new on his blog. Checking it every day is what I live for. _

Sora turned to a man who stood on the street corner.

_ Back on the stakeout. The suspect’s a blonde with dark skin and gaudy makeup. Geez, why do I keep getting these cases? I can’t tell these kinds of kids apart! _

Sora looked at the strange pin again. Was he… Was he reading minds? Did this pin let him do that? What is going on? First he is a phantom in this city, and now he has a pin that lets him read minds?

Before he could ponder more on his situation, he tensed up as he heard terrified screams. Looking around, he saw a couple dozen people cowering, though the rest of the crowd was oblivious. Were they in the same boat as him? Looking up, he saw red and black sigils materialize in the air. Rifts opened up in the sigils and creatures that resembled green frogs with black markings crawled out. They were quite clearly otherworldly monsters, but they were not Heartless or Nobodies. They radiated their own specific energy.

“Unversed?!” he gasped. He blinked in surprise and confusion. Why had he said that? “How do I know what those are?” He did not have time to ponder on it, though, as he saw the cognizant people run for their lives. The frogs attacked some of them, causing them to vanish into thin air. He gasped in horror. Resolving to stop whatever was going on, he slipped the pin back into his pocket and threw his arm to the side and willed his Keyblade to appear, but nothing happened. He looked at his empty hand in bewilderment, at a loss for what could have happened.

Suddenly, a frog hopped at him, hitting him square in the chest and sending him stumbling back. He held his hand out and tried to use magic. “Fire!” Nothing happened. “Uh-oh.” With no other option, he turned and ran. Seeing others run through the crowd in a southward direction, he followed them, glancing over his shoulder to keep an eye on the frogs. When he reached the street corner, he spied a trash can on the curb. He picked it up and threw it at two of the frogs that were chasing him. To his relief, the trash can hit the frogs and knocked them down, albeit briefly. He noticed that the people who previously had not noticed him screamed and ducked out of the way.

_ Okay. Going to have to be careful of these people when fighting back in here, _ he thought.  _ But how am I going to fight if I can’t hurt the people who don’t know I’m here? _

He continued running. A frog closed in behind him and leapt at him. Wanting to try something, he hopped up and twisted around, bringing one leg up and kicking the frog away. He landed and continued running, glancing back to see the frog hit the ground, only to get back up, uninjured.

After a few minutes, he came upon a plaza with a statue of a dog sitting atop a pedestal, with a semicircle of benches surrounding it. Some of the panicking people, who all seemed to be teens or in their early twenties at most, paired up, shaking hands, and suddenly relaxed. However, others were looking around frantically. Some of them were attacked by the frogs and apparently erased. Sora noticed one boy standing around apprehensively. He wondered if the boy was part of this horror movie scenario or if he was part of the crowd that was oblivious to the nightmare. The boy seemed to be shifting his gaze to each of the terrified teens. A sigil materialized behind him, and a frog prepared to throw itself at him.

“Get down!” Sora yelled. He sprinted toward the boy, then jumped into the air. The boy turned around in surprise and saw Sora and the frog. Just as the frog made its leap, Sora came down on it and blasted it across the street with a punch, sending it bouncing away. Hitting the ground and catching his breath, he turned back to the boy. “Are you alright?”

The boy nodded. He appeared to be a lanky young man around his age with blue eyes and spiky, bright orange hair. He stood a few inches taller than him, at least as tall as Riku. He wore a sleeveless purple-gray shirt with a high collar and a purple stripe down the middle, white cargo shorts with a loose-fitting black belt, a pair of shoes that perfectly matched his shirt and each had a pair of white straps in place of shoelaces, a yellow sweatband on his left wrist, and a set of purple headphones that pushed some of his hair straight back.

As Sora looked around frantically in hopes of finding some way for him and the others to survive the attack, the boy tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to turn and face him again. “Forge a pact with me!” he requested.

Sora was flabbergasted. “A what?” he asked.

“Listen! If we forge a pact, we can beat the Noise!” the boy said, dead serious.

“The what?”

The boy groaned. “Do you want to survive, or not?!” he shouted in frustration.

“Okay, okay!” Sora said, waving his hands defensively. “I accept!”

They clasped hands, and they were suddenly enveloped in a white light. Sora was bewildered, wondering what was going on, and why he suddenly felt as though he were being bound to the boy. When the light faded, Sora looked at the boy in confusion.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“I’ll explain later. There should be a pin in your pocket. Use its power to fight,” the boy advised.

“The mind reading thing?” Now Sora was even more confused, and he did not think that was possible. Then again, he did not think it was possible before waking up in the middle of a street with no one able to see or hear him, a timer etched into his hand, and an army of frogs trying to kill him, but the universe certainly knew how to surprise him.

The boy shook his head. “Not that. The other one. Just pin it to your clothes and you’ll be able to use the Psych.” He crossed his arms in front of him and took a battle-ready stance. “Get a move on!”

Sora reached into his pocket and pulled out a second pin. This one was red with an orange fire design. He hurriedly pinned it to the flap of his pocket and ran up next to the boy. He got ready to fight side by side with his new ally, but then there was a flash of light and he was standing on his own, with a frog monster in front of him.

“Okay, now what?” he muttered. He glanced down at the fire pin, wondering what he was supposed to do with it. “Use the Psych… I guess I’ll just do what feels right.” He held his arm out in the direction of the frog. He moved his hand from side to side, imagining a trail of fire. Indeed, a trail of fire materialized on the ground under the frog, moving over the street in the direction of his hand movements. The flames harmed the frog, which tried to hop to safety. However, Sora, now confident in his ability with the Psych, moved the fire trail to catch up with it. After a few seconds, the flames died out, and Sora realized that he would need to wait for it to recharge, much like when he uses up all of his magic energy. He ran to avoid the frog as it tried to attack him. When he determined that the pin was ready, he turned to resume his attack, only for the frog to fade away, fizzling out in a manner that resembled static on a television screen.

As he wondered what he would do now, two more frogs appeared, and he realized that the battle was not over. He used the flame Psych on the frogs, waving his arm back and forth to deal the most damage to both of them. When the energy ran out, he ran to avoid the monsters, then resumed his attack when the Psych charged back up. After a minute, the frogs both faded into nothing. There was another flash of light and he found that the crowd of people had reappeared, including the boy.

“Not bad,” the boy commended.

Sora flashed a grin. “Thanks. So, uh, what just happened, exactly?” he asked.

“We entered two different planes where we could fight the Noise. We were in separate zones, but the Noise existed in both of them,” the boy explained. “Fighting them on both sides erased them.”

“So, those frogs we just fought… those were Noise?” Sora began to unconsciously tap his feet as he faintly heard the music from his companion’s headphones.

The boy nodded. “They’ll try to erase the Players. But since we made a pact, they won’t directly attack us. If we want to grow stronger, we can use the Player Pin to scan for them and engage them directly.”

“Got it. I think. So, what now?”

“We complete the mission,” the boy answered. Sora tilted his head quizzically. The boy sighed. He held up his left hand, which had the same timer burn that Sora had, which now read 40:36. “Didn’t you get a text? We have to complete the mission before the timer hits zero. You should know this, shouldn’t you?”

The statement was starting to make sense to Sora, although none of it rang a bell. Was he supposed to already know that? He did not recall being briefed. And what did he mean by “text”?

The boy sighed. “Whatever. I’ll explain later. The mission is to get to 104. Let’s go.”

“Ten-Four?” Sora asked for clarification.

“The department store west of Scramble Crossing. Big numbers Ten and Four in red. You can’t miss it.”

“Oh.” Sora nodded. “Yeah, I saw it. Okay, let’s go.”

They started to walk north, back to the intersection which the boy had called Scramble Crossing. Sora nodded his head to the beat of the headphones’ music.  _ "Brain ware, main wave"/ psycho got a high kick/ collect and select/ show me your best set. "Crystals, blisters"/ it's all over now/ psycho cane/ you're so keen/ I need more candy canes. _

“Oh, yeah. I’m Sora,” he introduced himself.

The boy turned back to him. “Sora?” After a moment, he breathed a curse. “He really went and did it,” he muttered.

“Who did what?” Sora asked.

The boy shook his head. “Never mind. My name’s Neku. Neku Sakuraba.”

“Huh. Neku Sakuraba? That’s a mouthful,” Sora remarked.

Neku chuckled. “It’s really not.”

They continued walking, and soon were back in the intersection, which Neku had called “Scramble Crossing”. Sora noted that the name was incredibly fitting. He saw a pair of police officers standing around the trash can that he had thrown, apparently having been called to figure out why it suddenly went flying, and he recalled one of the morning’s anomalies.

“Say, Neku, how come nobody can see us?” he asked. A pedestrian walked straight through him. “And, you know, how does  _ that _ happen?”

“You, me, and the rest of the Players exist on a different plane from everyone else. We’re in the Underground, the UG, and they’re in the Realground, the RG,” he explained. “We can see them, but they can’t see or feel us. We can influence physical objects across both planes if we focus, along with some other stuff.”

“Did you say ‘Players’?”

“Yes. In the Reaper’s Game.” He sighed as he watched Sora’s expression display more and more confusion. “You don’t remember the orientation, do you? Fine. Whatever. I’ll explain everything I can. But we have to complete the mission first.”

Sora nodded. “Okay. It’s that building over there, right?” He pointed at the department store due west.

Neku nodded. “Yeah. Come on.” He ran in the direction of the building before stopping just before the beginning of the street. “Hang on. There’s probably a wall here.” However, Sora failed to heed the warning and ran headlong into an invisible force field, which flashed a honeycomb pattern on impact.

Sora groaned as he hit the ground. “Man, I hate those things,” he complained.

Neku shook his head. After a moment, he turned to Sora and helped him to his feet. “Wait, you’ve seen these walls before?” he asked. He wondered how Sora was unfamiliar with the Reaper’s Game, yet he was familiar with one of the tricks used to impede or direct Players.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Though they usually haven’t been used to keep me out. More to keep me in or to keep my friends from helping me fight. They’re really annoying.” He shook his head. “So, I guess we’re going to have to fight some monsters or do something to lower the wall.”

Neku nodded, surprised. “Yeah. See that guy?” He gestured to a man wearing a red hoodie and a camo hat who was standing in the middle of the intersection. “He’s a Reaper. He’s supposed to guard the wall and challenge the Players to do something before he’ll lower the wall. Usually, it involves fighting a bunch of Noise, though a few times a Reaper quizzed us.”

“Okay. So, let’s go talk to him.” He approached the man that Neku had called a “Reaper”. Neku simply stood back, staring in confusion with one hand on his hip and the other fiddling with a lock of his hair. “Hey, there.”

The Reaper’s expression did not change as Sora made an attempt to talk to him. Sora could not see his eyes, which were heavily shaded under the brim of his hat and his hood, but he felt as though the man was staring into his soul. “Pact confirmed,” was the only thing the man said, and it seemed as though it were more to himself than anything.

Neku crossed his arms as he thought about his own experience. “Wait… The wall on the first day was just to make sure the Players formed a pact, right?” he muttered to himself. “I wonder if he already decided we were set…” He turned around and reached out to touch the wall, only for his hand to pass through empty air. “It’s down.” He began to step forward and proceed to the destination before he stopped, remembering something. He turned around to see Sora still trying to talk to the Reaper. “Hey, Sora! The wall’s down. We can keep going.”

Sora turned to see that Neku had stepped past where the wall had been. “Oh. Okay. Wait for me!” He ran after Neku.

As Sora caught up to him, Neku checked the timer on his hand. It now read 19:55. There was plenty of time left. Glancing around, he saw a few more pairs of Players running through Scramble Crossing in order to get to 104. Deciding that he wanted to get there and complete the mission first, he started running, with Sora right alongside him.

When they reached the sidewalk in front of the 104 building, they felt a sting on their left hands and came to a stop. Checking their hands, they saw that the timers were gone. “Today’s mission is done,” Neku said.

Sora nodded and smiled. “So, now what?” he asked.

Before Neku could answer, they heard someone chuckle. “Please. You think you’re done for the day just like that? Where’s the fun in that?” They turned to find the source of the voice, but were only able to catch a glimpse of a pink hoodie and a skeletal black wing before two Noise sigils flew toward them.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t attack us!” Sora shouted, surprised by the ambush.

“They will if the Reapers send them directly,” Neku clarified. “Listen. We may be in different zones, but we’re still fighting together. Keep the fight up, and we’ll share strength. The Light Puck will make our Psychs stronger. Got it?”

Sora nodded. “I get the idea.”

“Don’t mess this up!”

There was a flash of light as the first sigil reached them, and they were divided between planes again. Sora used his flame Psych against the frogs, keeping Neku’s words in mind. In the other zone, Neku, armed with a lightning bolt pin, directed bolts of lightning at the Noise. After a few moments, his body began to emit a green glow, and he felt a surge of energy. With his strength boosted, he blasted the frogs while silently thanking Sora for being a quick learner. After some time, the green glow faded as the Light Puck was passed to Sora. Sora noticed the green glow and felt the Light Puck boost his strength. Letting out a shout of “Power”, he fried a frog Noise, erasing it, before moving on to the next. The process repeated until the battle was over and they were back in the UG field. With that set vanquished, a larger sigil hit them. When the fight began, Sora found himself face to face with a large grey bear with orange and brown skeletal arms that almost looked like floating tattoos. The bear swiped at him with its tattoo arms, knocking him back the first time, but he worked to dodge the subsequent attacks and keep at a distance while using his Psych to burn the large foe when he had the Light Puck, then letting his Psych recharge while he passed the Puck off to Neku. The bear did not last long; it was soon Erased, and Sora and Neku reappeared in the field.

Sora and Neku looked around, but were unable to see their attacker. “Who was that guy?” he asked, irritated.

“Just another Reaper punk making things difficult for the Players,” Neku replied bitterly. “Something tells me we’ll see him again. No point looking for him now.”

Sora sighed in resignation. “So, we beat the mission and survived another Noise attack. What do we do now?” he asked.

Neku reached into his pocket and pulled out a device that was attached to a cord that went in his shirt and connected to his headphones. He fiddled with the device and lowered the volume of his music. “Well, we just chill until the Reapers knock us out for the day and we wake up tomorrow in time for them to send out the next mission. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the week. After the seventh day, the Reaper’s Game ends for the week.”

“So, what exactly is the Reaper’s Game?”

Neku crossed his arms and stared at Sora intently, trying to figure out what was up with him. “You don’t remember the orientation?”

Sora shook his head. “No. None of what you said earlier rings a bell.”

Neku raised an eyebrow.  _ Huh. Sounds a lot like me when I was in my first Game, _ he mused. He let out a gasp as an unsettling thought entered his mind.  _ Could they have taken his memory? _

“Sora, do you remember anything from before this morning?” he asked bluntly. He knew that it would be a shock to insinuate that he had his memory removed, but he had to broach the subject.

“Huh? Of course I do.” Sora nodded. “I remember my home, my family, and my friends. Before today, I was journeying with my friends across…” He trailed off, realizing that it was probably best to not expose Neku to the existence of other worlds if it were not absolutely necessary, and he had not seen any indication that the city was facing any danger from external threats. “I was with my friends, and we stopped in this store… Molco, I think it was called. We got separated in a screaming crowd.” He noticed Neku roll his eyes at this. The local teen had a good idea of what the crowd had gone wild over. “I saw this weird guy watching me and I followed after him. I found myself in this back alley with a lot of graffiti… Next thing I know, I wake up in the intersection.”

Neku crossed his arms again.  _ So, memory loss is out of the question. But what could have caused him to forget about the orientation? And what got him in this, anyway? The back alley… Could it be…? _ He sighed. He figured it was best to not worry about that question for the moment, and instead tell Sora what he could.

“The Reaper’s Game is a week-long contest overseen by people called the Reapers. They each have a different role to play in the Game. On the streets, you’ll see Support Reapers, who test the Players and monitor their performance. Kinda like the guy in red we saw earlier. We’ll also run into Harriers, like the jerk in the pink hoodie. They’ll attack you and either try to Erase you by siccing Noise on you or try to make sure we fail the mission. They get points depending on how they do their jobs, and if they fall short, they get Erased. There are also Officers, who manage the UG. Among them are the Game Master, who sets the missions and is the final boss of the week, and the Conductor, who runs the show behind the scenes. The Players have to work with their Game Partners to complete the missions and survive the Game. The missions vary from fighting some monster to helping a company sell its products or even getting from Point A to Point B. But they’re really trials to test the Players so the Officers can determine if they deserve a second chance at life. It doesn’t matter who completes the missions, but they grade us for ourー”

“Wait. What was that last part?” Sora asked suddenly, interrupting Neku’s exposition.

“Which part?” Despite asking, Neku had a good idea what he was referring to.

“What’s this about a ‘second chance at life’? Do you mean…”

Neku nodded solemnly. “The Reaper’s Game is for people whose lives were cut short too soon, usually teens. That’s why we’re on a plane of existence above everyone else in Shibuya. All of the Players are dead, and they’re trying to win a chance to come back to life.”

Sora was shocked. He did not know how to respond. A Game to win a second chance at life? All of the Players are dead? Did that mean… Was  _ he _ dead too?

Neku shook his head. “Sorry to hit you with that,” he said sympathetically. “It was hard for me when I found out in my first Game.”

Sora blinked in surprise, his thoughts turning from shock at his own situation to concern for his new friend’s. “Your first Game? Neku, were you in this before?” he asked.

Neku nodded. “Yeah. I was. About a year ago.”

“And… you died again?”

Neku did not answer. He slowly turned the volume up on his music, indicating that he was not going to answer. Sora wondered what secrets his Game Partner was keeping to himself. Was it related to how he died? Or was there something else that he was hiding?

But Sora was once again more worried about something other than his mysterious new friend. “I’m… I’m DEAD?!” he blurted in shock.


	121. Chapter 120: CAT Street

Sora’s eyes shot open and he pushed himself to his feet, grumbling. He noticed that they were back in Scramble Crossing, plastered on the asphalt. It was morning again. He did not remember falling asleep, or even night falling. He suddenly understood what Neku had meant when he said that the Reapers would knock them out for the day until morning. “Would it kill them to lay out blankets or something for us?” he complained.

Neku stretched his arms out. “You know, I almost forgot how awful that feels,” he remarked.

“This might sound stupid, but dying must suck in this world.”

Neku nodded. “Can’t argue with that. Wait… What do you mean by ‘this world’?”

Sora gulped, realizing he had slipped up. “Uh… Just an expression…?”

Neku raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying his excuse. However, he simply shrugged, deciding to leave it alone. Hearing a beep, he pulled out his phone, a purple flip phone, and opened it up. “Well, time to get to work,” he said.

“What do you mean? Ow!” Sora clutched his wrist and saw that a timer had appeared on his hand. This time, it counted 07:59:52.

Neku checked his hand as well. “The mission, of course. You didn’t get it?”

Sora checked his pockets, but did not find a note that would have told him the mission. “Where should I have gotten it?”

“On your phone…” Neku was perplexed, but he soon deduced the cause of the confusion. “Do you… not have a cell phone?”

Sora shook his head. “Nope.”

Neku put a hand on his hip and tugged at his hair. “I guess the Reapers just assumed that all Players would have a phone,” he surmised. “What are we going to do about you?” He stopped and stood up straight when he had an idea. “I know. Hold on for a second.” He stepped aside and dialed a number into his phone. He put it to his ear, waited for the recipient to pick up, and started talking. “Mr. H. Yeah, turns out my Game Partner doesn’t have a phone, so he can’t receive missions. You got anything to help with that? Thanks. See you there.” He hung up and put the phone away, then turned back to Sora. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Sora asked.

“We’re getting you a cell phone,” Neku replied.

“But what about the mission?”

“We’ll have time. Besides, there are plenty of other Players who can work on it.”

“Okay. But do you think the Reapers will mind us ducking out on the mission to go shopping?”

Neku smirked. “That’s their problem.”

Sora smiled, liking his reasoning. He knew what it was like to have enigmatic weirdos appear suddenly and try to set the rules then leave as he and his friends flounder around. Any measure of defying them and refusing to dance to their tune made his day, which is something that a dead boy had to take when he could get.

Neku beckoned him on and they ran through the city streets, heading north. They passed a building labeled “Shibu Department Store” and came upon another store labeled “Cadoi City”, which appeared to sell clothing, furniture, and jewelry, before Neku came to a stop, a thought having crossed his mind. He turned around to talk to Sora.

“We should probably get some practice fighting the Noise while it’s early in the week,” he suggested. “Especially if you want to take on stronger enemies.”

Sora nodded. “So, how do we start fights?” he asked.

Neku took his Player Pin out of his pocket and showed it to Sora. “First, we scan the area. You’ll see the Noise sigils floating around. To engage them, reach out to them like you would when reading minds,” he explained. “When you connect with them, they will float toward you and strike. You can engage a lot at once, but they’ll grow stronger, as you stack them, so I’d hold off on that until you can handle them better.”

“Okay. I’ll give it a shot.” Clutching his Player Pin, Sora reached out into the mindscape of the people of Shibuya, still hardly able to believe that he was actually reading minds. As a blue filter fell over the world which he perceived with a sixth sense, he saw floating red-and-black sigils appear. He focused on one of the sigils, a medium-sized shape, and watched as it moved toward him. As it floated closer, lines of white static crossed the gap between him and the sigil. Finally, a burst of white light exploded from the sigil, enveloping him.

The Noise that appeared took the form of grey wolves with purple tattoos in place of forelegs and floating green minks with elongated, twisting bodies and green tattoos for limbs. In both zones, the Garage Wolves lunged and slashed at Sora and Neku while the Thrash Minks slashed and spun in tornados, but the Players were able to defeat the monsters using their Psychs. When Sora erased the final wolf, a pin fell out and flew into Sora’s hand. The pin was purple with a white stripe, with a design resembling a profile of a purple skull with a bat-like wing on top of the purple-and-white background.

_ Huh? What’s this for? _ Sora wondered. Before he could reflect any further, there was a flash of light and he was back in the UG field.

“Glad you’re getting the hang of it,” Neku commended.

“Hey, Neku, when we beat that last Noise, it dropped this,” Sora told his Partner, showing him the pin. “Any idea what it’s for?”

Neku leaned in to examine the pin, and his eyes widened. “I think that means you just got another pin to use in battle. Funny. Most other Players can only use one Pin, but I can also use a lot of them. See? I got another one, too.” He took a pin out of his pocket, showing that it depicted a purple background with a light blue spike jutting up from a blue ground.

“That’s weird. Why do you think that is?” Sora asked.

“I’m not quite sure.” Neku clipped the pin to his shirt, right next to the Pyrokinesis pin. He crossed his arms as he contemplated what it could all mean.  _ Last time, I think I was able to use most of the Pins because I was chosen. But how come he can? Can he do it naturally? Or was he chosen too? Dang it, did you really… _

“Neku?” Neku turned around upon hearing a familiar voice and gasped as he saw two girls running toward him. Sora glanced past Neku to see the girls, who appeared to be the same age as them. The first one he saw had long red hair that curled up at the tips and brown eyes. She appeared to be slightly shorter than Neku. She wore a red, midriff-baring short-sleeved shirt with black trim, a short yellow hoodie with white trim and a white hood, a necklace with a puzzle piece-shaped pendant, a low-cut green denim skirt with a brown pouch wrapped around her waist, knee-length brown boots with yellow stripes, a yellow bracelet around her left wrist, and a brown newsboy cap with a tin pin clipped on. She appeared to be very curvy, despite her skinny and small frame, but he quickly realized that this was only because her waist was incredibly thin, appearing to be barely wider than Sora’s arm.

The girl next to her was somewhat more plain-looking, with green eyes and short, black hair. She wore a loose green jacket over a black shirt, a tan knee-length skirt with a light oak leaf pattern, black leggings, brown sneakers, and round spectacles with black frames. She held a stuffed black cat with white eyes in her hand. She was taller than the other girl, appearing to even be roughly an inch taller than Neku. She waved to Neku before she and her friend ran over to him.

“Shiki?!” Neku gasped. He quickly lowered the volume on his music player. “And Eri? What are you doing here?”

“Well, good to see you, too, Neku,” the taller girl, Shiki, teased.

The taller girl, Eri, waved. “Hi, Neku,” she greeted.

“You know what I mean!” Neku countered. His tone and expression reverted from momentary exasperation to concern. “What are you doing in the UG? Don’t tell me you’re…”

Shiki shifted uneasily. “Well, not quite…” Averting her eyes, she noticed Sora, and quickly perked back up. “Oh! Hi, there. You must be Neku’s Partner. My name’s Shiki Misaki.” She did a little bow in greeting.

“I’m Eri Menbuta,” the redhead introduced herself, holding up two fingers in a V shape.

Sora smiled and pointed his thumb at his chest. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Sora.”

Neku looked Shiki up and down. “You still look like you,” he noted. “What’d they take this time around?”

Shiki shook her head. “Neku, we’re not dead.” Sora was taken by surprise, as, based on his understanding, only dead people could be in the Game. Then again, he recalled that Neku was being evasive when he brought the issue up in reference to him. “We’re… Well, it’s complicated. I think it’s best if we show you. Are you going to WildKat?”

Neku nodded. “Yeah. Have to get this guy a phone,” he remarked, gesturing to Sora. Sora simply shrugged modestly.

“Well, come on.” Shiki beckoned them on. Sora noticed that Eri looked uncomfortable at the idea of going to the place that Shiki had called “WildKat”. He wondered what they would find there.

As a group, the four Players continued north, turning right at a record store and soon entering a tunnel that ran under the train tracks. Sora noticed that the walls were covered in graffiti, and saw two college-age boys adding their own uncommissioned art with a few cans of spray paint. On the other wall, he saw a teenage girl wearing a red hoodie over top of Gothic Lolita attire with her own spray can, who appeared to be venting about her algebra homework. They took a moment to scan for Noise and fight. Sora quickly discovered that his new pin let him fire an energy beam from his hand, while Neku used his new pin to conjure spikes of ice from below his enemies. After defeating the Noise, Sora received a new pin, which Neku explained granted the power of psychokinesis. He then clarified as to what psychokinesis was, and Sora beamed at the idea of using a technique that his enemies had abused in the past.

“Wait, you can use a bunch of pins, too?” Shiki asked, astonished.

Sora nodded uncertainly. “I guess.”  _ Is it really just me and Neku who can use so many pins? _ he wondered.

Shiki giggled. “Now we’ve got two Psych geniuses on our hands!”

_ Oh, brother, _ Neku complained inwardly.  _ There she goes again. _

“Look out, Reapers’ Game! Here we come!” Shiki cheered.

_ You do realize that you can only use one Pin, right? _ Neku remarked mentally. “Whatever. Let’s keep going.”

They passed through the underpass, not noticing as the girl in the hoodie scowled in their direction, and came out into another district of the city. Sora saw a nearby sign with the graffiti-painted words “CAT Street”. The first building they came upon was a coffee shop, with the window displaying the name “WildKat”.

“In here,” Shiki said, beckoning them on. She opened the door, ringing a bell as the four teens entered. They maneuvered around the customers, some of whom stepped aside to let them through, and approached the counter, where two baristas busily prepared and handed out drinks. One of the baristas was a middle-aged man with black hair combed up at the front, a stubble of a moustache and beard, and gray eyes. He wore a white short-sleeved button-down shirt, which had some of the top buttons undone, a dark gray vest that was pinned at one button, black slacks, black sandals, and black sunglasses. His nametag read “Hanekoma”.

When Hanekoma saw them, he flashed a grin. “Hey, there! Something I can help you with?” he greeted. He turned to the other barista. “Hey, can you cover for me for a bit?” The barista nodded. “Come on in,” he told the teens, leading them into the manager’s office. Sora quickly determined that Mr. Hanekoma was the owner of the shop. “You guys want coffee?” he offered, turning on his office espresso machine.

“Two sugars,” Eri said.

“Café Latte, please,” Shiki requested.

“One cream, one sugar,” Sora said.

“Black,” Neku said.

“Comin' right up.” He scribbled their names on cups and began brewing coffee for them. Sora raised an eyebrow in confusion as he watched Hanekoma write his name一both in kanji and in English letters一without him having introduced himself. He briefly considered that Neku would have told him when he called ahead, but then realized that he had not actually said his name, and even if he had, he should not have known that he prefers to write his name in English.

“Sorry, but, who are you?” he asked.

Hanekoma chuckled. “Name’s Sanae Hanekoma. To the guys out front, I’m a hip café barista, and I design pins and do art, too. But to others, like you kids, I watch over things behind the scenes in the Game.”

“So you’re a Reaper?” Sora surmised.

“Mm, not quite. I keep the Reapers in line, making sure they don’t bend the rules to score cheap Erasure points,” Hanekoma clarified. “Think of me as a guardian a-” He stopped himself. After an awkward pause, he coughed and cleared his throat. “Uh, so, kid. Phones here says you need a cell phone. Is that right?”

Sora tilted his head in mild confusion. “‘Phones’?” he parroted, confused by the nickname.

Neku, however, was familiar with the appellation, and he was also picking up on Sora not being very tech-savvy. “He means my headphones,” he whispered, leaning close to Sora and tapping the accessory on his head.

“Oh,” Sora breathed in response.  _ So that’s what that’s supposed to be. _ “Yeah. I didn’t have a cell phone before… you know… and I was dropped in here without a way to get any of the Reapers’ messages.”

Hanekoma laughed. “Well, Spike, I think I can hook you up with something. Gimme a sec.” He began rummaging through his desk drawers. Intermittently, he would stop what he was doing to give each of the teens their requested drink and start preparing the next one.

Sora turned to Neku. “So, how do you know this guy?” he asked.

“He helped me out of a tight spot more times than I can count when I was in the Game last year,” Neku answered. “He also helped me see things differently. Gave me a clearer perspective. Said I shouldn’t keep being a pathetic lonely jerk, that I need to expand my world and let other people in if I want to enjoy life.”

Sora smiled, thinking of the scores of friends that he had made on his journeys across the worlds. “Sounds like some good advice,” he agreed.

“He’s also CAT, the coolest artist in Shibuya,” Eri added with a hint of a squee. “Neku’s his biggest fan.”

“Really?” Sora smirked.

Neku smiled and studied his wrist as he proudly reflected on how much he had grown. “‘Enjoy every moment with all you’ve got.’ That’s his motto. Of course, I took it the wrong way, and I didn’t realize that the way I chose to live only hurt myself and others.”

“Well, I’m glad you figured it out,” Sora said.

“Aha! Here it is!” Hanekoma stood up, holding a dark red flip phone. “I’ve been tinkering with the functions and coverage options.” He handed the phone to Sora while also delivering the last coffee to Neku. “I linked it up to the GM’s mass-text. I also stuck in some of my special apps. Phones can fill you in on them later. And this one’s for when the week’s over: I call it ‘Lifestream Reception’. You know about the Lifestream Leynodes? The spots where you feel all warm and fuzzy and charged up?”

“Safe Points?” Sora guessed.

Hanekoma snapped his fingers. “Exactly. Where the energies of the worlds criss-cross and shoot up to link with the other worlds.”

“What the heck is he talking about?” Neku asked Sora.

“You travel through space?” Eri wondered, trying to figure out what Hanekoma meant. She gasped. “Are you an alien?!”

“What? Uh, it’s not exactly as clear-cut as that…” Sora tried to explain.  _ Am I really like an alien to this world? _

“Or are you from an alternate world? Omigosh, is the Multiverse a real thing?” Eri seemed very giddy at the idea.

Sora waved his hands defensively. “I-I don’t know what that means!” he stammered.

“Calm down, kiddo. He can explain it in a way that makes sense later, if he’s comfortable with it,” Hanekoma advised. “The idea is, when you sync up at one of those Leynodes, the Safe Points, you can call anyone who has a phone from anywhere on the world you’re on. The spirit of the world will be your cell tower. I mean, so long as the person you’re calling has a lick of reception, even if they’re on another world.”

Sora flipped the phone open and stared at it in wonder. “Wow,” he muttered.

Neku snickered. “Suck it, T-Mobile,” he muttered.

Sora blinked and tilted his head in confusion as he realized something. “Uh, how do I turn it on?”

Hanekoma pointed to one of the buttons. “You hold the ‘end call’ button,” he explained. Sora raised an eyebrow, thinking that it did not seem very intuitive. “And I added a bunch of contacts for you so you’ll know who’s calling and who you’re calling, though you won’t be able to use some of them until you get back to the RG.”

Sora turned the phone on and studied the display on the screen, then began fiddling with it to figure out how to use it. “Thanks, Mr. Hanekoma,” he said.

“No problem, Spike. Happy to help.”

“Mr. H, there was actually something else we wanted to ask you about,” Neku said. He turned to address the girls as the topic of conversation. “How are Shiki and Eri in the Reaper’s Game?”

Mr. Hanekoma’s expression turned solemn. “Follow me.” He led them through a door behind his desk, marked “Authorized Personnel Only”, into a room that appeared to be a CAT art studio, with canvas parchment on the walls and Hanekoma’s trademark graffiti painted on the back wall. But rather than the artwork, what drew everyone’s attention was the two tables set in the middle of the room.

On either side of the tables, a heart rate and breathing monitor was set up. One of the tables carried a girl who looked exactly like Shiki, sound asleep or in an induced coma. On the other one was a girl who looked exactly like Eri, except that part of her midsection and one of her arms were bandaged, an assisted breathing unit was set up and connected over her mouth and nose, and she was hooked up to an IV unit. Neku and Sora gasped while the girls stared somberly. Neku deduced that the resting girls were Shiki and Eri’s living bodies in the RG. Grey and white symbols floated around the bodies, as if shaping a protective barrier.

“What happened?” Neku asked in disbelief.

“A few days ago, we were attacked by a monster,” Shiki explained. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I never thought something like that could exist in the RG. Eri was hurt, badly. Thankfully, Mr. H was there, and he drove the monster off, then helped me bring Eri here.”

“They’re lucky they weren’t far off,” Hanekoma mused. “I did what I could, but it wasn’t an ordinary wound. The only way to save her is to destroy the source of the power cursing her. So I put her in stasis and used a backdoor trick to put Shiki to sleep as well and sneak both of their souls into manifestations in the UG. Technically, I’m not allowed to do that, but you know what they say about desperate times. I also got them to bypass the entry points right under the Reapers’ noses.” He chuckled at his own resourcefulness. “So, they didn’t have to worry about the whole ‘Entry Fee’ business.”

Sora crossed his arms and contemplated what Hanekoma had said. He noticed that he had turned to look directly at him, and realized that the last part of the explanation was purely for his benefit, as if he was the only one who needed the explanation. He decided to save that peculiarity for later, focusing on another question that the conversation had raised. “Do you know what the monster was? Was it a Heartless? An Unversed?” he asked, once again stopping to wonder how he knew the word “Unversed”.

Hanekoma raised an eyebrow, apparently wondering the same thing. He then turned his gaze away. “It’s something that shouldn’t even exist,” he replied with a bitter tone. This only made Sora more curious about the enigmatic “guardian”.

Neku cleared his throat. “Well, thanks for all the help, Mr. H,” he said. “We should probably get back to today’s mission.”

At that moment, Sora heard a beep coming from his phone. He looked down at it and saw a message appear on the screen. “‘Defeat the master of A-East. You have 480 minutes. Fail and face Erasure,’” he read. “What’s A-East.”

“Say, Neku, that mission sounds very familiar,” Shiki noted.

Neku nodded in agreement. “Yeah. It’s the exact same one that we had for our third mission in our first go-around. Except we have more time.”

Shiki considered the reason that would be. “Well, it has been a year. Maybe they’re recycling missions,” she suggested.

“Or someone’s having the same problem as last time, and a Noise showed up to make things worse.”

“But we have more time this time.” Shiki checked her phone to verify. “Didn’t we only have six hours last time? Now we have eight.”

Neku shrugged. “I guess the problem’s a bit more complicated than last time. Or they’re not in as much of a rush and can spare an extra two hours.”

Sora checked the time on his phone. “Well, either way, I think it took us an hour to get here, so now we have seven left, meaning we should get going.” He turned back to Mr. Hanekoma. “Thanks for the phone.”

Hanekoma smirked. “No problem. Oh! I’ve got something else for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pin, then tossed it to Sora, who caught it and examined it. Unlike all of the other pins, which had a unique design printed on them, it was completely white. “It’s called a Harmonizer Pin. Sync up well enough with your Partner, and you can use it to fuse your energies together and blast the enemy in a powerful joint attack.”

“Like a team attack?” Sora asked, recalling the moves he performed in conjunction with his friends, breaking the limits on what he could do on his own.

Hanekoma nodded. “Exactly like that. Now, listen: the greater the energy you build up with your teamwork, the stronger your Fusions will be. If you have any questions later, Phones’ll be sure to fill you in. He has experience with the Harmonizer Pin.”

Sora nodded. “Thanks. We’ll make it through the Game and help Shiki and Eri,” he promised. He, Neku, Shiki, and Eri turned to leave.

Hanekoma chuckled again. “I’m sure you will. Just remember. If you want to survive the Reaper’s Game, you need to trust your Partner.”

Sora grinned. “Of course,” he replied, as if it was not even a question for him. And it was not.

They left the café and made their way back the way they had come. Shiki showed Sora how to look up a map on his phone so that he could get a sense of direction. He studied the map and understood that Shibuya was split up into several districts. Each district was labeled on the map, so he could figure out how to get to each section of the city. He quickly determined the location of A-East and figured out the most direct path to get to the area. The route involved returning to Scramble Crossing, passing 104, and going through a street called Dogenzaka.

“You know, there’s really something off about that guy,” Sora remarked. At that point, they had returned to Scramble Crossing.

“Who? Mr. H?” Shiki asked.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. He knows a lot more than he should. He knows a lot more than  _ anyone _ here should.” To demonstrate his meaning, he held up his coffee cup, showing how Hanekoma had written his name in two different written formats.

“Yeah, I did pick up on that,” Neku admitted. “He also said something about you traveling between worlds. Whatever that means.”

“I’ll explain later,” Sora said simply.

“I don’t totally understand him myself,” Neku continued. “He has his secrets. I guess they’re too big for the UG. I think there’s only one person who knows his true nature, whatever that’s supposed to be.”

“That doesn’t concern you?” Eri asked.

Neku shook his head. “Nah. I trust him. His secrets are his to keep. And besides, he did save your life.”

Eri smiled. “I guess you have a point.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” Sora conceded. “It just caught me by surprise, you know?”

Neku nodded. “I know the feeling.”

“Maybe he told you he knew all that as a way of letting you know that you could trust him,” Shiki suggested. “He’s saying you can ask him for help with whatever you’re doing, when there’s no one else around here you can ask.”

Sora shrugged and crossed his hands behind his head. “Maybe he is. I guess he can help my friends figure things out, too. I wonder what they’re doing. I haven’t seen them since the other day.”

“They must be worried sick,” Eri said sympathetically. “I bet people are worried about me and Shiki, too. Mom, Dad, Mina, Ai, Rhyme…” Shiki nodded in agreement. After a moment, Eri stopped and went flush. “I-I mean, th-they’re probably worried about you, too, Neku!” she stammered, fearing that she had made a misstep that indicated a lack of concern for Neku.

Despite her apparent concerns, Neku did not appear offended. “It’s okay. I catch your drift.”

Laughing nervously, Eri kept walking, not noticing that Neku, Shiki and Sora had stopped. As a result, she walked into a barrier next to the 104 building, revealing a honeycomb pattern on contact as it zapped her and sent her stumbling back. Shiki quickly helped her maintain her balance while Neku and Sora took notice of a man who was dressed like the Support Reaper from the day before. Two exasperated teens were trying to reason with him, but he stonewalled them.

“Has no one really taken the wall down?” Neku asked aloud in disbelief.

“Well, it is only the second day. And the first wall to get through,” Shiki argued. “Beat and Rhyme had trouble with their first wall. And it doesn’t look like that many people woke up here. I guess everyone else ended up on the other side, like when we woke up inside A-East last year.”

“Not everyone’s an instant expert like you,” Eri remarked.

“Fair enough. Let’s just get this over with. Sora?” Neku turned to see that Sora had gone over to talk to the Reaper.

“Hey, there. How do we take down this wall? Is it alright if I ask you that?” Sora inquired.

“Clear the area of Noise to proceed,” the Reaper said simply.

“We get that, but how are we supposed to find them?” one of the exasperated Players complained.

“You’re supposed to use the Player Pin to scan for them,” Sora told them.

The Player slapped himself on the forehead. “Why didn’t anyone tell us before?!” he whined.

The Reaper shifted nervously. “Oh… Uh, was I supposed to tell you how to do that?” he asked, his tone betraying embarrassment. “Ugh, I am so dead. Conductor’s not gonna like this.” He shivered in fear at the thought.

“You new to this?” Neku asked.

The Reaper nodded. “Yeah. My first week as a Reaper.”

“Oh. Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s a learning curve,” Sora assured him. “Let me take a look.” He scanned the area and saw three Noise sigils floating around. He went back to normal perception. “You guys want to split the work between us? One pair per battle?”

“Oh, yeah! We could use some practice,” the second Player agreed, excited.

Sora nodded. He turned back to Neku, Shiki, and Eri. “You guys with us?”

Neku nodded. “Ready.”

“Let’s do this, Eri!” Shiki cheered encouragingly.

Eri seemed less than enthused. “Uh, I, uh…” However, Shiki did not notice, and she scanned the area and drew a sigil toward her.

When her battle began, Shiki saw two bears on either side of her. She maneuvered around them and stood so that they were both in front of her. Her stuffed cat, named Mr. Mew, danced at her side, animated by her Psych but acting largely autonomously. “This won’t be hard,” she declared confidently. She pointed toward one of the bears, selecting a target for Mr. Mew. The stuffed doll ran up to the Noise and jumped, delivering an uppercut. Air hardened into claws around its round felt paw and sliced into the Noise. Mr. Mew dealt a few more “scratches” to his opponent. A green light formed around Shiki, and the Light Puck was passed to the other zone, just in time for Shiki to cease her attack and duck aside to avoid an attack from the other bear.

Eri was not as confident as her Partner. She shivered in fear at the sight of the bears and their large, sharp tattoo claws. She could barely build up the will to move. One of the bears ran toward her and drew its arm back to strike. She panicked and raised her arms to brace herself. As if in response, the Psych held in her pin, “Dream Weave”, conjured crackling sparks which formed into a rectangular shield in front of her, and pushed outward. The bear charged straight into the shield and was knocked back. Eri opened her eyes and lowered her arms, causing the wall of sparks to dissipate. As the other bear started to make its way toward her, Eri turned and ran. She ducked behind a car, hoping that it would be sufficient protection against the Noise. However, when she heard one of the bears knock something down, she realized that it was a futile wish. Wishing for a desperate way to defend herself, she saw a ball of sparks appear in her hand. At the same time, the Light Puck appeared around her. Turning and peeking over the hood of the car, she threw the ball in the direction of the bears. It hit and burst, sending one of the bears flying back. The other bear continued to close in, so Eri desperately conjured another ball and threw it. She felt the Light Puck leave for the other zone, and she took the moment to run and try to stay away from the Noise.

Shiki did not let up on fighting the bears. When she was at a safe distance, she directed Mr. Mew to attack. As Mr. Mew was animated with Psych energy and did not have the kind of life force they were looking for, the bears ignored it in favor of bearing down on Shiki, to their own peril. Within minutes, the bears had been Erased. Shiki pumped her fist into the air and did a little hop. “Talk about seamless,” she cheered. A few yen notes escaped from the remains of the Noise and slipped into her pocket.

A moment later, everyone was standing back in the 104 plaza. Shiki and Sora cheered at the victory, but stopped themselves when they noticed that Eri was shaking in her boots.

“Hey, are you alright?” Sora asked. Eri took deep breaths to try and calm down. Sora put his hand reassuringly on her shoulder and breathed with her. “That’s it. Nice and easy,” he coached her, recognizing how scared she was and trying to help her relax.

“You did great, Eri,” Shiki assured her friend.

“Challenge met,” the Support Reaper said. “That’s what I’m supposed to say, right?” he muttered. He shrugged and did what he was supposed to do, lowering the wall.

“Well, sounds like we can keep going,” Neku said.

“Awesome! Let’s get to A-East!” one of the other Players exclaimed. He and his partner ran through where the wall had been.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Neku said, beckoning his companions. He led them down Dogenzaka street, heading up the hill that would lead them to A-East.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now you've been introduced to Shiki, Eri (who was just a minor character, if that, in the game), and Mr. Hanekoma. Mr. H is actually my favorite character in the game.
> 
> Disclaimer: I have nothing against T-Mobile. I simply thought that would be a funny thing to say when bringing up the superpowered cell reception that Sora will get. And neither Verizon, AT&T, nor Sprint rolled off the tongue as well.


	122. Chapter 121: Game Master

As they made their way up the street, Sora felt his stomach grumble. “Hey, is there a good spot where a dead guy can stop for lunch?” he asked.

Shiki nodded. “Of course. There are plenty of spots. In fact, just over there is a great ramen shop,” she replied, directing his attention toward a shop labeled “Ramen Don”.

Sora grinned. “Cool.” He blinked as he thought of something that did not add up. “Wait. I thought people couldn’t see us. How do we order food?”

“Certain stores are marked to let Players know that we can go in and buy stuff and still be seen by the people in the RG,” Neku explained. “And when we fight Noise, we get yen so we can pay for it.”

Sora took the notes that he had received from his battles out of his pocket. “Ah, so that’s what this is.” Shiki and Eri looked at him with puzzled expressions. “Most of the other worlds use a different form of money. It’s kinda weird how Shibuya is the odd one out.”

“Well, I’m with you on getting lunch,” Neku said. “Let’s stop in. Ken Doi makes some really good ramen.”

* * *

A few minutes earlier, Riku, Naminé, Mickey, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy had the same idea of stopping for lunch. During their investigation, they had noticed some peculiarities around Shibuya, but nothing that they could properly make sense of, nor could they see any sign of Sora. Evidently, no one had seen him, for some reason, although it seemed as though Shibuya was comprised of the sort of crowd that Sora could get lost in without anyone noticing him as the odd man out. They entered Ramen Don and each ordered a bowl of the special. Around the time they heard another group enter the shop, the waiter brought their food out.

“Gosh, what could have happened to him?” Mickey wondered aloud.

Donald shook his head in dismay. “I don’t know. I tried every kind of locator spell I could cast at all of the Safe Points I could find, but it’s as if he’s not even on this world.”

“We tried investigating the strange cases around the city, like yesterday’s flying trash can incident,” Riku said. “But we couldn’t find anything.”

“I did pick up on some strange energy,” Naminé added. “It wasn’t anything I’m familiar with, though it felt as though it was passing by all around.”

“You think it might be dangerous?” Donald asked.

Naminé shook her head. “It didn’t feel hostile, though there was something else in the air that seemed less stable. But then it started to wane before I could get a better idea of what it was.”

Riku sighed. “Either way, it doesn’t look like we’ll be getting any leads at this rate,” he said regretfully.

“I wish we could figure it out,” Aqua lamented. “Have your keen senses picked up anything out of the ordinary, Goofy?”

“Hmm… Well, I didn’t see anything before. But look over there. Doesn’t that look like…”

The group turned to see where Goofy was pointing and noticed a group of teens, one of whom looked familiar from the rear. The familiar teen took a glance around and noticed the group at the table. He grinned from ear to ear and waved. Riku, Aqua and Donald gasped as they realized that he was Sora. Sora hurriedly approached his friends. The other teens he was with looked around in confusion as they noticed he had run off before quickly locating him again.

“Hey, guys! I’m so glad I found you!” Sora greeted ecstatically.

“You found us? We were looking all over for you for the past two days!” Riku remarked, incredulous. “Where have you been?”

Sora chuckled nervously. “It’s kinda weird. Just… don’t freak out.”

“It’d have to be pretty serious to even warrant a freakout,” Aqua said. Donald crossed his arms and shot Sora a light glare.

Sora sighed. There was no point in dancing around the subject, so he decided to spit it out. “I’m dead,” he said bluntly.

“WHAT?!” Riku blurted. The other customers and staff turned to them curiously. Sora chuckled in an attempt to laugh it off and convince everyone that there was nothing to be concerned about. After a moment, everyone turned their attention back to their food and the conversations that they were engaged in.

“I’m not really sure how it happened,” Sora admitted. “One minute I was chasing some strange kid into a back alley, and the next thing I knew, I’m involved in some kind of ‘Reapers’ Game’.”

Neku, Shiki, and Eri came over, and Neku summed up what he had told Sora. At the same time, everyone exchanged pleasantries. One of the waiters walked over to take the Players’ orders and noticed that they were chatting with the other group, so he and another waiter moved their table and chairs over so they could sit together, then he took their orders. Eri’s eyes widened as she looked everyone over and, after asking the waiter for a pen, began sketching their clothes on a napkin.

“So, basically, you’re stuck in this ‘Underground’ until you beat the Game at the end of the week?” Riku paraphrased.

“Basically,” Shiki said sadly.

“And you’re all… dead, too?” Naminé asked Neku and the girls.

“Not quite,” Shiki replied. Eri went pale as she flashed back to the attack that had gotten her into the mess.

“We’re actually in the Game to try to figure something out, and stop something that’s threatening Shibuya,” Neku explained. Sora raised an eyebrow. His suspicions were correct: Neku did not get into the Reapers’ Game the same way that he did. He probably got in the same way Shiki and Eri did.

“Something’s threatening Shibu… Shebee… Shibuya?” Goofy parroted, briefly struggling with the word “Shibuya”.

“What’s going on?” Naminé asked.

Sora crossed his arms. “Yeah. What is…” He trailed off and turned around as he finally noticed the one person who was not with the group the last time he was with them. He jumped in surprise as he realized who she was. “Naminé? Sorry. I didn’t see you at first. How are you doing?” He stopped again as he noticed that something else was different. “Wait… Where’s Kairi?”

Naminé shrugged. “She just vanished shortly after you disappeared. We’ve been trying to figure out what happened to her, too, but we couldn’t find anything.”

“Who’s Kairi?” Shiki asked.

“She’s our friend,” Sora replied. “She’s… really special to me.”

Neku nodded. “I think I get it,” he said. “Kairi was your Entry Fee.”

“My what?” Sora asked. Thinking back, he remembered that Mr. Hanekoma had mentioned something about an “Entry Fee”, but had not explained to him what it was.

“When you’re put into the Game, the Conductor takes what was most important to you as collateral. If you win and return to life, you get it back. But if you’re Erased, it’s gone forever,” Neku explained.

“What?! That’s not fair! You mean if I die, Kairi dies too?” Sora protested.

“Afraid so. In my first week, my Fee was my memories. The next week, it was Shiki. The week after that, all of the other Players were taken away in a cheat move to try to get rid of me.”

Shiki sighed. “My Fee was my appearance. I ended up looking like Eri, because I was jealous of her.”

Sora looked down, despondent. He clenched his fists in frustration and determination. “We have to win this Game,” he asserted.

Riku nodded in agreement and put his hand on Sora’s shoulder in a reassuring manner. “You focus on doing whatever you need to do to make it through the week.” The waiter came over and delivered the Players’ food. “Neku, you said something about something threatening Shibuya?”

Neku nodded as he ate the first noodles. “Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on, though. I was just told that something was coming and that it could destroy both the UG and the RG. It might have something to do with what attacked Shiki and Eri before the Game began.”

“Then I think we should do what we can to look into that on our end,” Mickey suggested. “Any way we can check for leads?”

“You can go talk to Mr. Hanekoma. He runs the café in the northeast corner of the city,” Neku advised.

“He knows we’re from other worlds, so he should be willing to tell you what you need to know,” Sora added with a forewarning.

“Thanks for the tip,” Riku said. “So, this Reapers’ Game, what’s it like?”

Sora shrugged. “Can’t really give a full opinion. It’s only day two. But it takes some getting used to. I don’t have my Keyblade, or magic, so I have to fight these weird creatures called Noise with the power of these pins.”

“That does sound like quite an adjustment,” Naminé commented.

“Yeah. Like having to use playing cards to chain together effective attacks,” Riku retorted with a smirk.

Sora shot Naminé an incredulous look. “Was that really a thing?” he asked.

Naminé giggled. “I didn’t make the rules,” she said defensively. Aqua burst into laughter, then coughed as she almost choked on ramen. Everyone else started laughing as well.

“You know, I think it’d be a good idea to have Keyblade and magic users in the RG, if there are monsters running around where the rest of us can’t take them on,” Sora said, detecting a possible benefit to their situation. Perhaps he could use his status to get the Players to convene and swap notes with his friends.

“I don’t really get what you’re talking about, but I agree,” Neku said. “Whatever’s going on, we could use all the help we can get.”

The conversation waned down and everyone finished their lunch. Checking their timers, Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri stood up to get going. Shiki laid down yen to pay for everyone’s food. “Well, it was good to see you guys again,” Sora said. “I guess we’ll catch you later.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Shiki said.

“Same here,” Aqua replied.

“Good luck, Sora,” Naminé said. “Be careful.”

Sora grinned. “When am I not?”

“The fact that you’re dead speaks volumes,” Donald snarked.

“Touché,” Sora conceded. He waved good-bye as he, Neku, Shiki, and Eri exited the restaurant. The others watched after them, still incredulous as to what they had just discussed.

* * *

The Players arrived at A-East, standing outside of a darkened concert hall.

“So, the ‘boss’ is in here?” Sora determined. “Let’s go get it.”

Neku shook his head. “It won’t be that easy. There’s a whole other problem to resolve before we can lure it out.”

“We should ask around. See if the other Players figured out what to do,” Shiki suggested.

Sora wondered how they were going to figure out who around them was a Player and who was a living person in the RG who would not hear them or help them. Eri, however, noticed a pair of teens, a girl and a boy, who appeared to be scanning, then who promptly opened their eyes and caught their breath.

“I think I found some,” she said. She approached them. “Excuse me. Hi. We got here late. Do you guys know what we’re supposed to do about the mission?”

One of the teens let out a laugh. “Don’t worry about it. It looks like we’re supposed to find a way to turn the power back on in there,” she told her.

“Yeah. I talked to one of the guys in charge, and he said his flaky tech guy’s supposed to be getting a new fuse, but he must’ve gotten himself lost,” her Partner added.

Neku swore. “Again? Don’t tell me it’s the same guy,” he complained.

“Probably is,” Shiki replied.

Sora crossed his arms. “Okay, so where did you get the fuse from last time?” he asked.

“Cosmic Corner, the secondhand store down Dogenzaka,” Shiki answered. “But we had to remind the tech to go get it.”

“How did you do that if he couldn’t see you?” the second Player asked.

“We used our phones to imprint the thought into his mind with a ‘meme’,” Shiki explained.

Sora tilted his head in confusion. “A… ‘meme’?”

Neku sighed. “Follow me. We’ll find the tech guy and show him how it works.”

The group of six went back to Dogenzaka and found the tech, a thin man with a black t-shirt and a nametag lanyard, as he was leaving the store next to Ramen Don,  _ Shadow Ramen _ . Sora noticed that he appeared to be lost in thought.

“Okay. How do we imprint memes?” Sora asked, fumbling with his phone.

Neku held up a hand to stop him. “First, let’s do a scan. Last time, there was a Noise possessing him and feeding on his emotions.”

“Last time? You’ve done this before?” the female player asked in disbelief.

“Dang, that sucks,” her partner remarked, clearly thinking that Neku had died a second time.

“Okay. I’ll take a look,” Sora said. He did a scan. While he noticed Noise sigils floating in the surrounding area, he did not notice any near the tech. He decided to read his mind.

_ Man, has it really been a year? I really miss the guy. I remember, before his last show, I was really jealous of his fame, how he was the guy in front and how everyone loved him. Just thinking about that makes me feel like… _

Sora ceased the scan and shook his head. “No Noise,” he reported.

“Well, let’s get to work, then.” Neku pulled his phone out and opened up an application, labeled “Imprinting”. “You type the thought in here. It’s easier if the message is simple, like, say, ‘Fuse’. Then you point to the person you want to Imprint, and hit ‘Send’. Watch.”

He typed the word in, aimed at the tech, and sent it. A few seconds later, the tech tensed up and his eyes widened. “The fuse!” he exclaimed, remembering what he was supposed to be doing. He immediately ran to the secondhand store.

“Well, that was easy,” Sora remarked.

“Great! Let’s go wait at the concert hall and see what happens,” the male Player said enthusiastically. He and his Partner ran back to A-East.

Shiki nodded in agreement. “Let’s head back, too. We’ll need to be on high alert to make sure the ‘master of A-East’ is destroyed completely.” She and Eri started to run over as well.

“Okay. Sora and I will stay here and make sure the tech doesn’t get lost again,” Neku said. Sora waved the girls off.

“You think he’ll be fine?” Sora asked.

Neku shrugged. “You never know with that guy. Funny how it’s the same guy at the same place. I wonder who’s in charge of the stage.”

“That one guy said that he talked to one of the guys in charge. You think he’s a Reaper?”

“That would make sense. For the most part, those are the only people who can see the Players outside of select stores.”

They turned around as they heard a mischievous giggle. A woman stepped out of the shadows, flapping a pair of skeletal wings that identified her as a Reaper. She appeared to be a year or two older than the two teens. She had blue eyes, pink hair, and pink lipstick. She wore a gloved turtleneck sweater that opened up at the bottom to expose her navel, a white corset tied with green lace, a pair of black shorts, and knee-high white high-heeled boots. Neku rolled his eyes as he recognized the woman.

“Ugh. You’re in the boat this week? So not cool,” she complained as she realized who she was approaching. She sighed, covered her displeasure with a smirk, and strolled toward them. “Wow. You’re really good at this. It doesn’t seem fair.”

Neku sighed and crossed his arms. “What do you want, Yashiro?” he asked, annoyed.

“Oh, come on! If you guys are such experts, what are Reapers like me supposed to do? If we don’t Erase you, we don’t get points,” the Reaper, Uzuki Yashiro, mock-pouted.

“Sorry, but if you  _ do _ Erase us, we stay dead,” Sora retorted.

Uzuki scoffed. “Well, how 'bout I give it a try anyway?” She sent a medium-sized Noise sigil at them.

They found themselves up against two Garage Wolves and a green fox Noise. Neku zapped one of the wolves with lightning, then raised a spike of ice from the ground to strike the other one. Sora swept a trail of fire over the wolves. The Psychedelifox threw a green flame at Sora, but he dodged. He thrusted his arms forward, wrists together, palms out and released a solid beam of energy at the enemy. On recovering from the hit, the fox teleported above him, transforming into a statue and dropping onto him. Sora dodged just in time, but he was still launched across the street by the shockwave, allowing one of the wolves to attack him. Noticing a bicycle leaning against a street light, he used Psychokinesis to pull it toward him, knocking the wolf off of him. Neku blasted each of the Noise with balls of fiery energy. It was not long before the Noise had been eliminated.

When she saw them blink back into the scene and catch their breath, Uzuki gritted her teeth. “See! This isn’t fair! Day two and the Players are Day Seven-tier!” she whined angrily. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Calm down, Uzuki. Remember what Kariya said. Remember therapy. Deep breaths. Think of your happy place.” After a moment, she seemed to calm down. “Well, I guess you have this Reapers’ Game in the bag. No monster can stand a chance against you.”

Sora gave Uzuki a confused and suspicious look. “Uh… thanks?”

“Oh, but you never know what will happen. Any sort of fluke could throw your whole game plan down the drain. After all, you’re here in spite of it all. Right, Spiky?”

“Spiky?” Sora was incredulous. “Would you people please leave my hair out of this… Pinky?”

Uzuki sighed. “Low blow, kid.”

_ That didn’t even seem that mean, _ Neku mused.

“Well, like I said, you could still lose, even if you power through like this,” the Reaper continued. “And something tells me you can’t afford to lose. Why, it’d be even worse than for other Players if you up and ‘poof’, were erased.” She put one finger to her lip in a playful manner.

“What are you talking about?” Sora asked warily.

“Oh, you know. Your girlfriend. Kairi, was it?” She giggled, teasing him. “Why, if you were gone, she gets lost forever. And we can’t have that, can we?”

Sora scowled. “You leave Kairi out of this!” he shouted.

Uzuki smirked. He was letting his emotions take control. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a say in what’s chosen as your Fee. But I think I can help you out. I’m a sucker for true love.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can get you out of the Reapers’ Game, nice and easy.”

Neku gasped. “Sora! Don’t listen to her!” he warned. He remembered how Uzuki had played the same trick on him. He could only hope that Sora would not make the same mistake that he nearly made.

“You back there! Shut up!” Uzuki barked. “Now, are you in or out?”

Sora’s tense pose slackened. He let out a sigh. “Kairi…” He looked up at Uzuki, wondering what she had in mind.

Uzuki smirked again, thinking that she had him in her clutches. “Game set? Good. Oh! I almost forgot. If you fail… I Erase you!”

“Huh?” Sora gasped.

“Sora! Don’t!” Neku pleaded. Uzuki tried to snap her fingers to get him to be quiet, though she failed due to her hands being gloved, so she settled for flapping her wings to send a gust of wind back at him.

“Luckily, the rules are very simple,” Uzuki continued, attempting to sound reassuring. “You have one minute to Erase that brat!”

“What?!” Sora could not believe what she had just said. He could not just Erase Neku.

“Yep. Just pretend you’re Erasing the Noise. It’s about as easy. Okay. Ready? Start!”

“I-I couldn’t!” Sora protested. Was this real? There was no way that he would do something like that. But if he did not, would she really…

“Tick tock, shorty.” Uzuki let out a sigh in exasperation. “Really? Fine. I’ll help you out there. Your ‘Partner’? He’s not with you. He’s spying on you for the Reapers!”

“What?”

“She’s lying!” Neku protested.

“Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. How he knows too much about the Game. How he’s so good at all of the Pins that he has. And all that playing with his headphones? He’s been in contact with us since before you even met!”

Neku touched his headphones guiltily. He had previously blared his music to stay in his own world and keep the “noise” of other people out. While he had taken them off as a sign of changing, old habits die hard, and he still listened to his music as he went about, even in social situations. He realized what kind of message that presented, but he had been trying to not let himself be isolated. His shame was also mixed with anger, as Uzuki was pulling the same trick that she had done on him, using Shiki’s habit of looking at a picture of her and Eri to try and convince him that she was a spy. Was Sora actually going to fall for it?

“Sora…” he attempted to plead, but he only saw his Partner staring at his hands. Sora turned around to face him, wearing an expression that Neku could not discern (although, he still was not very good at it anyway). He could not tell what he was thinking.

“Ten seconds,” Uzuki chided. Sora balled his hand into a fist. “Come on, shorty. Be the hero. Save the girl. Go home and see her on the other一”

She was cut off as Sora spun around and swung, connecting his fist with her jaw. The powerful blow sent her reeling. She stumbled back and fell onto her rear. “O-OWW!” she screamed in pain, rubbing her aching jaw.

“Leave Kairi out of this,” Sora demanded, his expression ice cold.

Uzuki glared at him. “You little BRAT! Fine! You’re not gonna do the mission? I’ll just Erase you myself!”

Sora shook his head. “Really? Because it looks to me一” He opened his palm, showing the timer counting at 03:02:32 “一like the timer’s still counting for our mission.”

Neku breathed a sigh of relief while Uzuki gaped in shock.

Sora turned back to Neku and flashed a cheesy grin. “What? You thought I’d fall for that?”

Neku smirked, glad to see that Sora had not fallen into the Reaper’s trap. “You should probably get going, Uzuki, before your bosses figure out you weren’t playing by the rules. Give it a rest today.”

Uzuki scowled, wincing as she did so, and stood up. “Huh. I guess you’re smarter than you look,” she remarked. She turned to Neku. “And smarter than you.” She flapped her wings and shot into the air, flying away faster than the Players could watch her go.

Neku turned back to Sora and noticed the tech guy walking up the street, the replacement fuse in hand. “Looks like he got what he was looking for,” he commented. “Let’s go back to A-East.”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.” They started walking. When they turned the corner and entered the A-East district, he turned to face Neku. “You didn’t really think I was going to Erase you, did you?”

Neku sighed in shame and lowered his head, letting his bangs cover his eyes. “I don’t know. I fell for the same trick once before, and… I nearly Erased Shiki.”

Sora’s face fell. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“If Mr. H didn’t come to the rescue, we both would’ve been gone for good, and it would’ve been my fault,” Neku lamented. “That was on the second day of my first week in the Reapers’ Game, back when I was an antisocial jerk. I still think about that day. My lowest point. I almost killed the first person who ever tried to reach out to me since...” He trailed off and slumped as another painful memory filled his mind.

Sora put his hand on Neku’s shoulder. “You know, you remind me of my friend,” he said. “He went down a dark path and nearly hurt some people. He turned things around and came out a lot better, but he still beats himself up over his mistakes.”

Neku looked up and met eyes with Sora. “How does he bear it all?” he asked.

Sora nodded his head to the side. “Me and my friends have been with him through it all. And he’s been trying to cope by making jokes about it.”

Neku shrugged. “I guess it’s worth a try.” He smiled. “Thanks.”

Sora nodded. “Wait. You mean just the first part, right? Because I don’t think the second part’s going to be too healthy.”

Neku chuckled. “I’ll figure it out as I go.”

They approached the entrance to the concert stage and rejoined Shiki, Eri, and the other two Players. The tech guy was already inside, and they could faintly hear chatter from inside.

“Well, looks like we did it,” Eri said.

However, Neku disagreed. He shook his head. “Not yet. The timer’s still going, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to face something else.”

Sora nodded in agreement. “Neku’s right. Besides, if it was something that they didn’t need us for, why make it into the day’s mission?”

“Yeah. We should go in and take a look,” Shiki suggested.

“Um, we’ll keep watch out here, in case something shows up,” the female Player said. “I’m not a fan of dark places.”

Sora nodded. “Okay. Sure. We’ll see you when the mission’s complete.” He waved as he, Neku, Shiki, and Eri went inside. The building was still completely dark, so Shiki used her phone screen to illuminate a small area. They approached the back, where they saw the tech working on installing the fuse, with two men watching. One of them was dressed like the Support Reapers, while the other wore a black hoodie and a red bandana over his mouth. The one in the black hoodie held a flashlight to illuminate the fuse box.

“Okay, it’s set up,” the tech said. “Now, let there be light!” He dramatically flipped the main power switch, only for nothing to happen. Confused, he flipped it off, then back on. “It’s not working.”

“What’s wrong?” Eri asked.

“Something must be drawing all the power,” Sora guessed. “That means the ‘master of A-East’ has to be in here.”

Neku nodded. “Sounds right. We’ll scan and take it on. Shiki, Eri, if we think we beat it but the timer’s still going, you’ll need to find it again and finish it.”

The girls nodded. “Got it,” they affirmed.

Neku scanned the area and found a large Noise sigil, which was crackling with electricity. He drew it in and pulled himself and Sora into a fight.

Sora stood in the hall’s agora, which was still pitched in total darkness. He heard the flap of wings and felt a gust of wind. He rolled aside as a giant form flew past him, and raised a stream of flames, but the monster was completely unharmed.

_ I get it, _ he thought.  _ It’s like Barbossa and the Illuminator: it must be draining the power in the other zone so it won’t get hurt. Good thing I’ve got a good Partner. _

Neku stood up in the rafters, his view lit by sunlight pouring through the windows and holes in the ceiling. Looking around he saw red bats spread their wings and take flight.

_ Yep. Been there, done that. Except this time, I’m in this zone. I’m gonna have to take these guys out and build up a Light Puck so Sora can take on the boss. _

He blasted individual bats with lightning bolts, then took out some more with energy bolts. Soon, the bats had dwindled in number to the point that they could not maintain their energy absorption sufficiently, and Neku noticed lights turn on below his feet. At the same time, he felt a green glow build up and then move over to the next plane. Smirking, he knew that the duty had been passed to Sora. But to be safe, he decided that he would use his free time to take out the rest of the bats, and began by raising an icicle from below two, sending them reeling on contact.

The lights turned on suddenly, causing Sora to shield his eyes until they adjusted. The giant Noise flew at him again, but he jumped above it just in time. Turning around to locate it, he saw a massive bat with yellow fur and red tattoo wings. The bat, which the Reapers named Vespertilio Canor, let out an ear-splitting screech. He pointed his hand toward the beast and conjured a trail of flames that danced all over it. Just as the pin ran out of juice, he landed on the floor and dodged another sweep. He retaliated with an energy beam from his hands that hit the beast dead-on. He dodged and fought for a few minutes when, eventually, the lights turned on full blast. Feeling the intense light as floodlights turned onto it, the Canor screeched in agony. He smiled as he felt the Light Puck charge him up. Using Psychokinesis, he threw speakers at the bat, then laid a trap with Pyrokinesis, letting the bat flee from the flying objects and straight into a wall of fire. After diving straight into the trail of flames, it turned around to escape and get revenge on Sora for the attack, but he blasted it with a Nexus Ray.

The all-white pin began to glow, and Sora felt a new energy fill him. A design materialized on the pin, taking the form of a crown that was the exact shape of his pendant wearing a set of headphones. Sora knew instinctively that he and Neku had charged up a strong synchronization. Glaring at the Canor, he held his hand over his heart and smiled. “Okay, Neku. Let’s finish this!”

As he concentrated on fusing power with Neku, he saw an image of his Partner appear next to him. They both took a battle-ready stance. White flames began to dance around Neku’s hands while a glowing light formed above Sora’s palm. The light expanded in two directions, then flashed away to form a Keyblade. Smirking with fierce determination, and suddenly realizing how much he missed his familiar weapon, he grasped the handle with both hands and prepared to charge.

“Power!” Sora shouted.

“Right up yours!” Neku added.

They charged across the hall at breakneck speed, Sora slashing through the Vespertilio Canor with his Keyblade while Neku carved through it with the flames around his hands. They made their dash several times before finally turning and charging toward the Noise head-on. Sora drove the point of his Keyblade forward while Neku clapped his flaming hands together, the front-most point on each stopping mere inches from one another. The energy from both of them intermingled and formed a sphere of energy, which exploded into a blast of light that disintegrated the Noise’s form.

“That’s how it’s done,” Neku remarked. He and Sora crossed forearms as the white flames and Keyblade faded. A light flashed and they were back in the UG, which was still in total darkness.

“Did we beat it?” Sora asked.

Neku checked his hand and shook his head. “No. We just weakened it. Its real self bounced. Shiki! Now!”

“Found it!” Shiki announced after scanning the area. “Let’s go, Eri!” She engaged in battle with the Noise, which appeared as a normal-sized gold bat. She sent Mr. Mew to attack the bat, but it flew out of the doll’s range. Meanwhile, Eri noticed its non-threatening appearance. Eager to finish the mission, she ran after it. Drawing a series of crackling lines between her fingers and pulling them taut, she closed in on the bat and threw her arms around it. With her hands and the crackling lines in front of the bat and resolving to not give it any room to escape, she pulled back, catching the lines on the bat’s neck. It struggled, but she continued to garrote it until it faded into nothing.

A moment after the girls returned to the UG, the lights came on. “Huh. I guess we had to let it fit in,” the tech guy mused, unaware of the true nature of the power outage.

The four teens checked their palms and breathed a sigh of relief as their timers vanished. “Mission complete,” Neku said.

“Nice job,” Sora complimented. “You guys did great. Okay, I didn’t see what you did, but I never doubted you.”

Shiki smiled warmly. “Aw, thanks, Sora.”

“You did pretty good, too,” Neku returned the compliment. “And hey, you did most of the work fighting the boss.”

Sora shook his head. “We’re Partners. We worked together to beat it,” he countered. “I couldn’t have done it without you. I mean, that’s what this thing is for, right?” He tapped the Harmonizer Pin.

Neku chuckled. “Maybe Mr. H was right to give it to you. He gave it to me to encourage me to open up more and work with my Partners. But it all comes naturally to you. Even when, for all intents and purposes, you can do all the fighting on your own, you don’t hesitate to draw strength from your friends.”

Sora nodded. “I kinda have a saying about that. The Keyblade isn’t what makes me strong. Neither are the Pins. My strength comes from my heart, and the bonds I made with my friends. My friends are my power!”

Neku, Shiki, and Eri burst out laughing. Sora’s grin faded as he looked at them in confusion. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“That’s so corny!” Neku said, laughing wildly.

Sora pouted. “Gee, thanks,” he said sarcastically.

“I actually think it’s kinda cute,” Shiki said, still giggling.

Sora frowned. “It’s not supposed to be cute. It’s supposed to be cool,” he mumbled.

“Hey.” The teens turned around to see the two men, who were all but confirmed at that moment to be Reapers, approaching them. “You guys took care of the interference?” the guy in the black hoodie asked.

Sora nodded. “That’s us,” he replied.

“Well, thanks. We owe you big time.” The Reaper did a double take as he took notice of who was in the group. “Hey, I remember you! It’s, uh, Neku, right? Man, you’re in the Game again? Tough break.”

Neku crossed his arms and stared as he tried to figure out who the Reapers were. “Uh, I’m sorry. Who are you again? You guys all dress the same,” he admitted.

The Reaper in the black hoodie laughed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably been a year. You helped us figure out what happened to the mic, remember?”

Neku gasped. “Wait a minute… BJ? Tenho?”

The Reaper in the red hoodie, Tenho, chuckled. “What do you know? He does remember us.”

Shiki and Eri gasped as they recognized them as well. “Weren’t you guys in  _ Def Märch _ ?” Eri asked, letting out a squee. “Oh my gosh, I am such a huge fan!”

“Thanks. We really appreciate it,” BJ said.

“So, what are you guys up to?” Neku asked. “You performing tonight?”

Tenho nodded. “Yeah. It’s been a year, so we thought we’d join back together for tonight. We’re holding a memorial concert for Hiraku.”

“Who?” Neku asked, not recognizing the name.

“777,” BJ clarified.

“Oh.” Neku knew full well who they meant, and he remembered what had happened.

“‘Triple-Seven’?” Sora parroted, confused.

“He was the lead vocalist of  _ Def Märch _ ,” Neku explained. “He was a Reaper too. A year ago, during my third week, he was Erased by that week’s Game Master, because he refused to kill me and my Partner.”

“Yeah. We wanted to honor his memory, for ourselves and for our fans,” BJ said. He sniffed. “Hiraku was our best friend. Things sometimes got rocky between us, but we always had each other’s backs.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sora said sympathetically.

“So, hang on. Was it really a Noise that was responsible for the power outage?” Tenho asked.

Neku nodded. “Looked the same as the one from last year, even.”

“What is the Noise’s beef with quality music?” the red-clad Reaper whined, incredulous.

“Well, thanks again for taking care of it,” BJ said. “You guys should come to the show. Our treat. VIP guests. Then again, I don’t think it’ll make a difference if the planes are still separated in this building.”

“Oh, thanks! We’d love to attend,” Shiki said.

Neku nodded. “Sure.” He was not sure if they would be able to attend, however. For all he knew, the Game Master would have them faint within the hour, only to wake up the next morning. Shiki had the same thought, but hoped that BJ and Tenho would be able to pull a few strings.

“Well, we need to finish setting up. We’ll see you tonight. Nine,” Tenho said.

“Okay. Later,” Eri replied cheerfully.

“Take care,” Sora said. The four teens exited the building. They noticed that the other two Players were nowhere to be seen, most likely having gone elsewhere after the mission was found to be over. Instead, an unfamiliar man stood just outside. He had blue eyes and black hair with bangs covering his forehead. He wore a pair of blue jeans, a white t-shirt, the short sleeves exposing his skinny arms, with a picture of Crono on it, a thin blue wristband on his left wrist, and grey shoes that were red on the front and which had white tongues. Finding something off about the man, who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, Neku tried to scan him. He only detected a faint twinkle of light over his heart, indicating that he could not be scanned. He did not appear to have wings, but he had met Reaper Officers who did not manifest them, and something told him that the young man was not a mere Player.

Neku crossed his arms and stared at the man suspiciously. “Um, can we help you?” he asked.

The man chuckled nervously as he realized that the teens were staring at him. “Oh, hi. My name’s Osamu Takagi. I’m the new Game Master around here,” he greeted in a friendly tone.

“Okay…” Neku traded confused glances with Sora, Shiki and Eri. “So, the mission’s over. What are you doing here?”

Takagi let out a good-spirited laugh. “Well, I figured I could stop by and get to know the all-new Players this time around.” He stood up and bowed. “Ah, Neku Sakuraba. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“You know me?”

Takagi chuckled again. “ _ Everyone _ in the UG knows you. Uh, well, I guess it’s just the Reapers and a few of the Players. But you’re kind of a legend at the Pad. You left quite a mark on the UG last year. Three weeks in a row? And for the fate of Shibuya? Best. Month. Ever!”

Neku was taken aback. “Uh… thanks…?” he said, flustered. He was not expecting the GM to act like that. In his experience, all of the GM's had been hostile and cruel. Takagi seemed to be a really nice guy.

Takagi turned to Eri. “And Shiki Misaki, lovely as...” He stopped when Eri gestured to her friend. Embarrassed, he laughed and turned to address the real Shiki. “Oh. Sorry. My mistake. I forgot that hadn’t been your true form. But is it alright if I don’t retract what I was about to say?”

Shiki giggled and held Mr. Mew out toward Takagi. “I’m fine with that.”

“Right. Because if I did that, this little guy would cut me to pieces,” he joked, leaning in toward the doll. “What’s he supposed to be again?”

“Pig,” Neku quipped.

“Cat,” Shiki corrected, giggling. Sora and Eri laughed as well.

Takagi laughed. “I know. I just wanted to hear you two do that.” Lastly, he turned to Sora. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around Shibuya. You must be Sora.”

Sora jumped back in surprise. “You- You know me?” he asked, bewildered.

Takagi nodded. “The upper brass hears about things that go on beyond Shibuya, though the Officers don’t hear as much as the Conductor and Composer do,” he explained. “And what you do, flying around and saving the worlds, is just awesome. It really is an honor to meet you. Though, I’m actually surprised.”

“What do you mean?” Sora asked.

Takagi shrugged. “I sort of have this image of you being this unstoppable warrior, cutting through anything that came your way. You being here and all, you know… It’s kinda hard to wrap my head around.”

Sora nodded in agreement. “I don’t know how I died either. I’m still trying to process it.” He thought back to his last memories before the Reapers’ Game. He entered the alley, turned around, and then everything went black. He saw something when he turned around, but he did not have the time to identify it. Was that the murder weapon?

“Well, it was nice to meet you. I’ll see you around. I’ve got some other matters to check in on,” Takagi said. “Oh, and just so you know, I’m going to let you and the other Players stay awake until midnight. So, you can go to BJ and Tenho’s concert. Well, see you. And good luck on the missions.” He flashed a backwards peace sign before running off.

The Players watched him leave. “Well, that was… interesting,” Neku said.

“He was a lot nicer than most of the other Reapers,” Shiki noted. “I think it’s a nice change of pace.”

“Well, two days down, five to go, right? I think we can make it,” Eri claimed with growing confidence. “I think we should take all the breather we can, and go to that concert tonight.”

“Great idea,” Shiki agreed. “What do you think? Neku? Sora?”

“Sounds like fun,” Sora said.

“Sure,” Neku replied simply.

“We have some free time before the concert, so let’s take a walk around Shibuya,” Shiki suggested. “We can show Sora around Shibuya, or at least as far as the boundaries will let us. Maybe even go shopping.”

“I’m up for it,” Sora said.

“Fine by me,” Neku agreed.

“Okay!” Shiki cheered. “Let’s go!” With that, she led Sora, Neku, and Eri up down the northern street to Shibuki Main Store as the starting point to the tour.


	123. Chapter 122: Broken Rules

In a high-rising building that does not appear to exist in the Realground, accessed only by a tunnel hidden underneath Shibuya’s Underground layer, three Reapers watched the city begin its Tuesday morning. One of them was Uzuki Yashiro, whose jaw had largely recovered from the previous day’s blow, though she still held an ice pack for the persisting ache. One of the other Reapers was a man who appeared to be a couple of years older than Uzuki, with brown eyes and orange hair that was combed in the front with a strand on either side of his face but permitted to grow wild and unkempt in the back. He wore a white sleeveless undershirt, a black hooded, sleeveless, zippered jacket with a skeletal torso design on the front, a pair of brown slacks, white shoes, rectangular orange-tinted glasses, and a chain that looped from the belt at his left thigh, with links resembling spiked cross-points. He sucked on a bean paste-flavored lollipop and hummed one of the songs that BJ and Tenho had played the previous night, holding himself with an aura that suggested that he did not have a care in the world. The third Reaper was a man who, physically, appeared to be a year older than the orange-haired Reaper, although he was one of the most recent Reapers to be recruited. He had brown eyes and black hair, which he dyed a dark blue color, and there was a thin scar on the back of his right hand. He wore a pink hoodie with a white Reaper Skull design on the right side of the stomach, black jeans, white shoes that were blue on the front and back. He stared down over the cityscape with a cocky smile. All three were Harrier Reapers, ready to begin a new day of Player-hunting.

“Well, this week has gotten off to an interesting start,” the orange-haired Reaper, Koki Kariya, commented.

“Tell me about it,” Uzuki replied. “I can’t believe that Neku twerp is in the Game again.”

“I can’t believe you let his partner slug you, Yashiro,” the pink-clad Reaper, who called himself Yoko Imaga, teased.

“Hey! You watch your mouth!” Uzuki spat. Yoko grabbed his jaw, smirking behind his fingers, in a way to only mock her further.

“Well, you sort of had it coming for trying to trick him into Erasing his own Partner,” Kariya remarked. “Which, if I recall correctly, you were specifically told off for doing last year. If you keep breaking the rules for cheap points, they’ll never think you’re qualified for Officer.”

Uzuki shrugged. “Eh, whatever. I’ll have my fun while I’m here.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“Well, you two have fun. I’m gonna go set up my Noise traps and wall challenges, then I’m getting myself some sushi,” Yoko announced. He flapped his wings and flew through the open skylight, heading out to the city.

Uzuki gritted her teeth and tugged at her hair. “Ugh, that newbie! He really gets on my nerves!” she complained.

“Everything gets on your nerves, Uzuki. And I think you mean ‘she’,” Kariya corrected.

“Pardon?” Uzuki asked.

“Yoko said she identifies as female, so she would prefer the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her’,” Kariya explained.

There was a brief silence as Uzuki processed the information. “Whoops. My B,” she said apologetically, expressing feelings shared by the narrator.

“I don’t think she’ll take issue with the first mistake,” Kariya assured her.

“Right. Well, we should probably set out traps too.”

“Ready to nab some Players?”

“Of course I am! Speaking of Players, what’s with the cast?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t notice? That brat with the headphones is in the Reapers’ Game again.”

“You mean Neku? Yeah, that is weird, isn’t it?”

“You think there’s a funny reason for it?”

Kariya shrugged. “Well, last time he was in the Game, it was because the Composer chose him for his fun little contest with Kitaniji, right?”

Uzuki nodded. “Yeah. You think the snot pulled a fast one again?”

“Who knows? But I agree that something’s fishy. I’ve heard bizarre reports from the other Reapers, and Takagi said that all of the Reapers should form Pacts.”

“Huh. I wonder why he thinks we need to do that.”

“I don’t know, but all of the Officers are on edge. And there’s something else that makes me think we need to worry.”

“What’s that?”

“That kid who slugged you yesterday, Sora. He just showed up and Partnered with Neku. Thing is, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him before.”

“Shibuya’s a big place, and there are a lot of people with funny hair like his,” Uzuki argued.

“Yeah. I’m not the best with faces, so I figured the same thing at first. But then I noticed he was asking a lot of questions about Shibuya, as if he knew nothing about the city.”

“But his memory wasn’t his Entry Fee, was it?”

Kariya shook his head. “I don’t think he’s even  _ from _ Shibuya.”

Uzuki took a step back and drew a circle in her forehead, trying to make sense of it all. “If that’s so, Kariya, then who is he? What’s he doing here? And why is he in the Reapers’ Game?”

Kariya smirked. “That, my dear Uzuki, is the riddle of the day.”

* * *

Sora woke up to find himself on his side, with the ground appearing to be a few feet below him. Dead ahead, he could see the dog statue that he had seen when he first fled from the Noise, and immediately realized where he was. He pushed himself into a sitting position and noticed that he was on one of the benches surrounding the statue. Groups of people were standing around the statue or sitting together on the benches while individuals sat and appeared to be waiting for their friends. Thankfully, no one had decided to sit where he had been sleeping. He yawned and stretched his arms out as he stood up.  _ Well, at least it’s not in the middle of a crosswalk, _ he thought.

He looked around and saw Neku standing a few feet away, jamming to the music on his headphones. In spite of the purpose of headphones, he could still hear the music, which was one of the songs performed at the  _ Def Märch _ memorial concert.  _ Now, open your eyes, the pieces are all over. Now, you should accept this / It is over. You, keep your eyes on this corruption. Come on, yes, you should watch this transformation. _ He wondered how loud the music sounded to Neku’s ears.

He approached his Game Partner and waved when Neku noticed him. Neku lowered the volume so that Sora could no longer hear it, but he suspected that the song was still playing. “Morning,” he greeted.

“Hey,” Neku replied.

“At least they didn’t dump us in the middle of the street,” Sora joked.

Neku nodded in agreement. “Haven’t woken up at Hachikō before.”

Sora tilted his head in confusion. “What’s that? Is that the dog?” Neku nodded. “What’s the story?”

“Hachikō was a dog owned by a university professor who lived in Shibuya,” Neku explained. “When his master was at work, Hachikō would meet him at the train station every day after his commute home. One day, the master died, and never made it back. But the dog still waited for him. He went back every day for nine years, until he passed away himself, waiting for his master to come home.

“That’s so sweet,” Sora commented.

“The statue of Hachikō was put up in his honor, and for decades, it’s been a popular place for people to meet up.”

Sora crossed his arms and smiled up at the bronze statue. He thought about how Kairi had waited at the beach every day for a year for him to make it back after he had closed the Door to Darkness, and how Roxas would always meet up with Axel on the Twilight Town clock tower for ice cream. Even after his friendship with Axel crumbled and he was placed in the Simulated Twilight Town with fake memories, he would still eat with his friends up on the clock tower, which was not a tradition that those friends shared in the real world. Maybe, even after all that had happened between them, whatever the problem had been, his heart still yearned for that reunion.

“That’s why the Reapers picked this spot as a meeting ground for Players to form Pacts,” Neku continued. “And it’s where my friends and I met after we got out of the Reapers’ Game.”

Sora nodded appreciatively. “Sounds like a nice spot for that.” He felt a sting on his hand, then heard a beep from his phone, signaling the start of the day’s mission. He checked his messages and read the text. “‘Balance the unrest at Towa Records. You have four hours. Fail and face Erasure. -The Reapers.’ You know, that doesn’t really sound like the guy we met yesterday.”

“I think they’re supposed to all read like that,” Neku clarified. “I don’t really know for sure, since the second week’s Game Master was a nut and a maverick, and the third one didn’t send out missions. She just posed a challenge in person and set everyone to try to kill us.

“Got it. Towa Records is the place we passed on the way to CAT Street, right?” Sora asked.

Neku nodded. “Yeah.”

“I wonder what the unrest is about,” Sora mused.

“Let’s go find out.”

They made their way up to Scramble Crossing, where they saw Shiki and Eri approaching from the 104 district, and veered off to meet up with them. When the girls saw them, they waved excitedly.

“Oh my gosh, wasn’t that an amazing concert?!” Shiki asked, still in wild fangirl mode.

“Yeah. It kicked butt,” Neku agreed.

“ _ Def Märch _ rules!” Eri cheered.

“What was with the megaphone?” Sora asked.

Shiki shrugged. “I was wondering the same thing,” she admitted.

“The band’s microphone was stolen last year,” Neku explained. “Joshua and I helped them figure out what happened to it, but they never found it. So they decided to use the megaphone that the thief left behind.”

“Who’s Joshua?” Sora asked.

“He was Neku’s Partner in his second week,” Shiki told him. “I didn’t get to really meet him properly.”

“Why was that? Did something happen to him?”

Neku shook his head. “No. He just… has his own things.”

Sora raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, wondering what the real story was. He was aware that there was a lot that Neku was not telling him. While he would accept this mystery as a personal matter regarding a friend, he felt as though it was important to the situation at hand, yet something that was treated as being on a need-to-know basis. So, who was this “Joshua”?

Sora was distracted from his musings when he saw Riku, Naminé and Mickey enter 104. He pointed them out to the others, and they agreed to go in and say hello. They caught up to his friends and exchanged greetings. Mickey explained that Aqua, Donald, and Goofy were searching in a different part of town.

“Was Mr. H able to help you?” Neku asked.

Riku nodded. “Yeah. He told us all about the Reapers’ Game. He also said to stay on guard, because whatever’s happening in Shibuya might not be limited to the UG.”

Shiki nodded. “That sounds about right. Eri and I are in this mess because of a monster in the RG,” she confirmed. Eri shivered.

“You’re given a mission each day, right? What are you supposed to do today?” Mickey asked.

“There’s some kind of unrest at Towa Records,” Sora answered.

“The yellow building near the café?” Naminé asked.

Sora nodded. “That’s the one. We’re supposed to get everything settled down in…” He checked the timer on his hand. Naminé winced when she saw it. “...three hours, forty-five minutes.”

“What’s supposed to happen then?” Riku asked.

Sora shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

Riku crossed his arms as he was lost in thought on how he and the others could help the Players. Mickey held a finger up as he began to formulate an idea. “You can’t talk to people in the RG, right?”

“We can only do that if we’re inside a store, so we could probably talk to someone inside the record store,” Neku clarified.

“And we can read people’s minds outside,” Shiki added.

“Really?” Naminé asked, amazed.

“How about we all check out what’s going on. We can ask around, and you can read minds,” Mickey suggested. “We’ll meet back up in an hour and piece together what’s going on.”

“That’s a great idea!” Shiki said.

Eri nodded in agreement. “We should do whatever we can to help.”

“Where should we meet?” Naminé asked.

“How about Mexican Dog, on Spain Hill?” Neku suggested.

Sora, Riku, Shiki, Eri, and Naminé all nodded in agreement, though Mickey had an expression of confusion on his face, finding something odd about the name.

“Alright. Let’s go check it out,” Sora said.

* * *

Making their way to the district dominated by Towa Records, they found that a crowd had formed in front of the record store. In both planes, they could feel the tension building. Some stood around patiently while others appeared to be less patient. A few complained, whining about a “hold-up”. The living party members were unable to move past the crowd and check the building out up close, so they elected to ask around.

“What’s going on?” Riku asked.

“The new  _ Odoriba Soul _ album was supposed to drop this morning,” one man said. “But now they won’t open the doors.”

“What do you think the issue is?”

“I dunno, but I heard some people saying that the release might get delayed, or something worse.”

Riku stared at him, having no idea how to react. He took a step back and turned to Mickey and Naminé. “Don’t tell me  _ this _ is the source of the ‘unrest’,” he remarked.

“It doesn’t sound like much, but I can tell people are annoyed. Some are even getting angry,” Mickey noted.

“True, but the way it sounded, it seemed like something that would lead to an angry mob,” Riku countered. “This… looks like that would be… blowing things a bit out of proportion.”

“Well the situation is supposed to be here. I wonder what Sora and Neku can come up with一”

“Excuse me.” Riku and Mickey turned to Naminé. “I can feel something in the air all around us. Some kind of negative energy,” the girl said. “I think I can feel it reacting with everyone’s hearts.”

“Like that weird energy you felt yesterday?” Riku asked.

Naminé nodded. “It’s similar to the unstable kind, but it’s different. It feels… hungry.”

“Interesting. Let’s see if we can get closer to the store and get a better look at what’s going on in there.”

* * *

“You see what I’m seeing?” Neku asked.

Sora nodded. “Noise. Everywhere.”

“Well, now we know what’s fueling the unrest. We just have to clear these things out to start calming people down, then we can work on solving the heart of the issue.”

They engaged a string of three Noise sigils, clashing with a set of yellow wolves with purple tattoo limbs and a yellow shrew with gray tattoo claws, a set of red penguins with lightning bolts on the sides of their heads and red kangaroos with purple tattoo feet, and a red and black dragon with a red tattoo body, head and tail. The Noise became stronger with each fight, but they prevailed, finishing the Doom Metal Drake off with a Fusion attack.

“You know, Neku, I’ve been wondering: what’s with the different colors?” Sora asked after they reunited.

“Different colors?”

“The sigils. You know how most of the ones we dealt with before were all red. But these are yellow. And I think I saw a green one earlier. What’s that all about?”

“Oh. The red ones are the chumps, the standard issue Noise. The yellow ones are Negative Noise. They’re similar to the chumps, but they possess people and objects in the RG. They feed on their imagination and flood them with negative emotions. Like, you know, anger, sadness, and resentment.”

“I guess that explains the rousing rabble.”

Neku nodded. “The greens, Pig Noise, carry special rewards for whoever can defeat them.”

“Okay. Got it.” Sora noticed a new shape moving around in the scan field. “So, what about the black and gray ones?”

Neku turned pale. “Black and gray ones?” he parroted. Sora pointed, and he turned to see what he was referring to. He gasped when he saw a large Noise sigil with a gray outline flying straight toward them. “Use the Light Puck! That’s the only way we can fight一” he warned, right before the sigil reached Sora and pulled them into a battle.

Sora had a sinking feeling as the Noise materialized. They took the forms of the wolves and a bear, but they all were black and dark gray in color, with demonic-looking red eyes. Sora was immediately worried, as he could tell immediately that these Noise were not at all like the other breeds. Neku had said that they would not attack them unless a Reaper directed them to, but this batch sought them out all on its own. The fight had only just begun, but he could already tell that these Noise were more dangerous than the others.

The two wolves dashed toward him, faster than the others, leaving trails of black flames in their wake. Sora rolled out of the way and used Pyrokinesis on the wolves, only to see that it did minimal damage. He dodged a slash from the dark bear Noise and continued using Pyrokinesis until it ran out.

_ Okay. He said I’d need the Light Puck to fight these things. I guess we just need to build up enough energy in our fights until one of us gets the Puck, then we can pass it around and whoever has it can fight these things. _

As he completed the thought, he felt a familiar glow, and realized that he had the Light Puck. He turned in time to see the bear slam its hand to the pavement and somersault toward him. In response, he thrust his hands out and fired a Nexus Ray, blasting it back across the street. The wolves made their way toward him again. Looking around, he saw a car parked not too far away, except he stood between it and the wolves. This did not worry him, though. Using Psychokinesis, he pulled the car toward him. He ran toward it, jumped onto the roof and off on the other side, and threw it at the wolves, sending them toppling. A few seconds later, he felt the warmth of the Light Puck fading and passing on to Neku.

_ Okay, these guys are all yours. I’ll try not to die while you take care of things. _

Neku nimbly avoided the Noise’s attacks, although he was scraped by a few of them. Finding that the wolves were too fast to be caught in his lightning strikes, he focused those attacks on the bear while he raised icicles under the wolves’ feet. One of the wolves lunged at him, but he blasted it with bolts of energy until it was Erased. The Light Puck was then passed on to Sora.

Sora started out by throwing the car at the grizzly, then using Pyrokinesis on the car, causing it to blow up as soon as it hit the bear. The fiery explosion consumed the Noise, Erasing it. The second wolf slashed at him, sending him tumbling to the ground. He rolled aside as the Noise made a lunge at him, then conjured fire around it. The wolf jumped out of the flames to attack, but he blasted it to ash with a Nexus Ray. There was a flash of light, and he and Neku returned to the UG plane.

“What were those things?!” Sora asked.

Neku clenched his fists and muttered a curse. “Taboo Noise. They’re a special breed, so dangerous that the Reapers aren’t allowed to use them,” he explained. “Last time, a rogue Reaper used them to wreak havoc, Erasing a bunch of Players and Reapers alike.”

“So why are they here now?”

Neku looked down, his bangs obscuring his eyes. “Is this why you came to me?” he muttered. “Is this why you wanted my help?”

“Mr. H said that the threat is something that ‘shouldn’t exist’,” Sora mused. “You think he meant those?”

“It’s possible. But there’s no way they could be the monsters in the RG that attacked Shiki and Eri.”

“Well, what else could they have been?”

Neku shook his head. “I don’t know. But we should tell the others.”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. And warn any other Players we run into. We need to make sure they stay safe.”

* * *

“Really? That’s it?” Shiki asked.

The manager of Towa Records nodded. “Yeah. It’s a shame it happened. I’m not sure what we’re gonna do about everyone,” he replied.

“Well, thanks for the heads-up,” Shiki said. She and Eri slipped out of the side door, through which they had entered the record store, and stepped off to the side, standing near the Miyashita Park underpass.

“Do you think we can fix this?” Eri asked uncertainly.

Shiki shrugged. “Well, if we can’t find a way to satisfy everyone, we won’t be able to do anything permanent about the Noise.”

Eri nodded, understanding. “I guess you’re right. Well, I guess we should meet up with the others and一 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!”

Shiki jumped in fright at the sudden scream. Eri pointed to something behind her, causing her to turn around. She jumped again and let out her own scream as she saw a black kangaroo with glowing red eyes hop toward them. They turned around and tried to flee, but it closed the gap in seconds. Black lightning crackled around them, and there was a bright flash of light as they were pulled into battle zones.

Shiki gulped as she stared down the monsters, which looked a lot like Noise, but seemed different. A horrible memory flashed before her eyes.  _ Could… Could these be… _

She swallowed her fear and set Mr. Mew to attack the monsters, running around to avoid being hit. However, she quickly realized that her doll’s attacks were not harming the monsters.  _ Great. What am I supposed to do now? _

She felt the Light Puck generate and pass over to Eri, but she wondered if it would do any good.

At that moment, Eri was hiding behind a car, cowering in fear. She felt that she could barely manage to survive the regular Noise, but these monsters appeared to be  _ much _ worse, much more terrifying. She felt the Light Puck energy flow through her, but she could not work up the courage to fight even with that extra strength. She felt a shockwave under her feet as one of the kangaroos jumped high into the air. She glanced up and saw that it was positioning itself so it was above her. Yelping in fright, she jumped up and ran, just in time to avoid the Noise as it landed. Rather than try to find a way to escape, she just kept running. She did not know if she could escape it, but she felt that she had to try. As she fled, tendrils of black lightning crackled around her, slowly fading.

There was a flash of light, and Shiki and Eri were back in the UG plane. Shiki looked around in surprise, wondering how she had been pulled out of the fight. She noticed that the Noise were looking around in confusion as well. Before she could process what was going on, she felt Eri grab her by the hand and pull her along.

“Run!” Eri shouted, sprinting as she dragged Shiki with her. When the smaller girl regained her bearings, she ran as fast as she could to keep up with Eri, though she stumbled a few times due to Eri keeping up a greater pace due to her longer legs. Pretty soon, however, she looked over her shoulder and realized that the Noise were nowhere to be seen. They slowed down and came to a stop, catching their breath.

“What were those?” Shiki asked, shaking at just the thought of the monsters.

“I don’t know. But they looked a lot like一”

“How can that be possible?”

“I’m scared, Shiki,” Eri admitted. “I know we’re supposed to try and fight them, but I couldn’t do it. I ran as fast as I could until we were out of there. I was too scared.”

Shiki put her hand on Eri’s shoulder supportively. “You might’ve just saved us both. I tried to fight them, but… Mr. Mew, he couldn’t do anything to them.”

“What’s going on?”

Shiki shook her head. “I don’t know. But we need to find Neku and Sora, and warn them!”

Eri took a deep breath to calm her nerves, then nodded in agreement. “Right.”

* * *

The girls quickly found the boys and they explained the situation to each other. Deciding to stick together from then on, they spent the rest of the hour fighting Negative Noise and finding other Players and letting them know about the Taboo Noise. At the same time, Shiki and Eri shared what they had learned about the mission with Sora and Neku as well as the other Players. They finally made their way to Spain Hill to convene with Riku, Naminé and Mickey.

“Taboo Noise?” Riku repeated, not liking the ominous name.

Neku nodded. “I still don’t know everything about them, but I’m pretty sure they were forbidden. Can’t say I’m surprised. They attack their prey freely, and they don’t care if they go after Players or Reapers. The only way you can survive them is if you fight with the Light Puck. I only ever met one pair of Reapers that shared one. Most of the other Players and Reapers that faced them were Erased.”

“You said a rogue Reaper summoned them, right?” Sora recalled. “What happened to him?”

“Sho Minamimoto. He was the Game Master in my second week, but he went rogue almost immediately. He stopped giving out missions after the second day, and went to do his own thing.”

“His own thing?” Mickey parroted, curious as to what sort of character the Reaper was.

“Building piles of junk in the middle of the streets, coming up with confusing math puns, and creating Taboo Noise to slaughter Players and Reapers so he can overthrow the Composer and Conductor and take over. Joshua and I defeated him, but he came back by fusing with the Taboo Noise, then tried to take them out himself. But he didn’t get very far, and he was taken out.”

“So, if he’s gone, who could be behind this?” Riku wondered.

Shiki shook her head and squeezed Mr. Mew close to her chest. “I don’t know, but those monsters… Those things attacked me and Eri last week,” she said.

Neku, Sora, and Riku gasped. “What? Are you sure?” Neku asked.

Eri nodded. “They had the same black and gray colors and red eyes. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those eyes.”

“But how is that possible?” Mickey mused. “You said that the Noise don’t appear in the Realground, right?”

“Whatever’s going on, we need to be on our guard,” Neku declared. “The Taboo Noise are incredibly dangerous. If they’re somehow in the RG, then you’ll need to be careful, too. In the meantime, we need to focus on the mission.”

Sora nodded. “Right. So, what did we learn?”

“The crowd is annoyed that the record store failed to release a band’s album this morning,” Riku explained.

“I still can’t believe something like that can cause a serious situation,” Naminé remarked.

Mickey shrugged. “I’ve seen people riot over a dipping sauce.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Riku said in disbelief.

“If the Noise are charging their negative emotions, simple annoyance could explode into a total riot,” Neku argued. “To calm everyone down, we’ll need to get rid of all of the Noise.”

“But we’ll also have to figure out what to do about the album,” Sora added. “If that’s not taken care of, the Noise will still be drawn to everyone’s annoyance, right?”

Shiki nodded. “We won’t be able to Erase all of the Noise until everyone calms down.”

“So, what’s the problem with the album?” Mickey asked.

“The manager said that copies of the albums were supposed to arrive early in the morning, but they got a call saying that something happened and the people who are supposed to bring it won’t be able to deliver,” Shiki explained.

“You guys deal with the Noise. We’ll check that out,” Riku said. “Where is this, exactly?”

“Shibuki Main Store area,” Eri replied.

“Okay. We’ll tell some of the other Players, in case you need some help in the UG,” Sora said.

“And we’ll tell them to fiddle with something to let you know they’re nearby, so you can ask about what’s going on and they can hear you,” Neku added.

“How do they do that?” Sora asked, amazed.

“The same way you threw that trash can on the first day. Players and Reapers can focus on touching and moving material objects in both the UG and the RG,” Neku explained. “There’s even a divination-type game built around it called ‘Reaper Creeper’.”

“Oh! I know that game!” Eri cheered.

“Alright. Thanks,” Riku said. “We should get to work ASAP.”

* * *

They finished their lunch and went their separate ways. Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri returned to Towa Records, telling the plan to whichever Players they could find, while Riku, Naminé and Mickey went over to the Shibuki Main Store area. The latter group spoke with the employees who were trying to set things right and get the album out, and worked out the problem to the best of their ability. The first group began fighting the Noise. Eri felt more at ease with her and Shiki fighting smaller Noise, and she began making use of the “Imagination Spark” that her Pin, “Dream Weave” allowed. She waved her hands around to shape her crackling sparks into a hammer, then swung it around to hit the frogs, which were a variant that was yellow with purple tattoo feet. When the frogs were destroyed, she let the hammer dissipate and formed a slingshot, which she fired at the purple bats. When she felt the Light Puck power her up, she felt a swell of confidence. She shot the bats out of the air, then formed a rake and ran it over the bats. Pretty soon, the Noise had been erased, and she and Shiki returned to the UG plane.

“Woo! That’s it!” Eri cheered. “Did you see that?”

“Afraid not,” Shiki quipped. “But I sure felt it. You were amazing!”

“Glad to hear you’re getting a handle on this,” Sora commended.

“That’s good, because we have a lot more to push through,” Neku added.

Eri took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

They continued fighting Noise. From a nearby balcony, Yoko Imaga watched the Players clear the monsters out. Noticing that the swarm of Noise was dissipating faster than the Player count was, she conjured some of her own Noise sigils and sent them into the fray. She smirked as she saw some of the Players grow exhausted and eventually, unable to keep up, vanish. However, many Players remained, including Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri. The former pair carried most of the load due to their experience in battle.

* * *

“Is that seriously what the problem is?” Riku asked in disbelief. “They have a flat tire, and they can’t change it because someone stole their lug wrench?”

“And they can’t use another truck to deliver the crates?” Mickey added.

“It looks like the police are looking around the block. I think a few of them said something about junk being stolen all over the place,” Naminé noted.

“What do the Reapers expect them to do? Find the thief? Get the lug wrench back?” Riku wondered. “I don’t know how they run the Game, but that seems like a pretty weird way to run a mission.”

“Hold up, now. What’d you just say?” Riku, Mickey and Naminé turned around to see two teenagers approaching them. They dressed in a similar way, and they both had the same blue eyes and blond hair. One was a tall, muscular boy, around Riku’s age, while the other was a younger girl, around thirteen years old. The boy wore a white tank top with red lining, long beige cargo shorts, red-and-black shoes, a black bracelet on his left wrist, a large chain on the left side of his shorts, a dark skull necklace, and a black knit cap with a large grey skull design. The girl wore a long-sleeved coral-colored shirt with a black skull-and-crossbones design stylized in the shape of a heart, a pair of white overall shorts with the top half hanging down around her waist, sneakers that were similar in color design to Sora’s, a necklace with a bell attached, and a black knit cap with a small white skull design. The boy had a look of annoyance on his face, though that might have been present before he elected to insert himself into the conversation, while the girl appeared more curious.

“Uh, can we help you?” Riku asked.

“Did you just say something about the Reapers’ Game?” the boy repeated.

“Um, yeah. We’re trying to help our friends Sora, Neku, Shiki一” Naminé began to answer.

“BWAH?” the boy gasped. Naminé jumped and let out a yelp in shock.

“You know Neku and Shiki?” the girl asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Riku answered. “Are they your friends?”

“You bet! But if they’re in the Game together, then that means…” the boy replied, coming to a sad realization.

“Don’t worry. From what we understand, they’re not dead,” Mickey assured them. “And, technically, they aren’t in the Game ‘together’. Neku’s Partner is Sora and Shiki’s is Eri.”

The girl gasped. “Eri too?”

“Wh-What do you mean they ain’t dead?” the boy shouted, worried.

“Shh! Calm down! We’ll tell you everything we can,” Riku said. “Just let us explain, and don’t shout it for the world to hear.”

The boy took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m chill.”

“Oh! Where are our manners? You can call me Rhyme,” the girl said, introducing herself. “The big guy’s my brother, Beat.”

“Beat and Rhyme,” Naminé muttered, amused at their names. Although, given the names that they have heard around Shibuya, they were most likely nicknames. “I’m Naminé.”

“Riku.”

“I’m Mickey. Nice to meet ya!”

“Back atcha. So, what’s going on?” Beat asked.

Riku, Mickey and Naminé did their best to sum everything up.

“BWAAAAAAAAAH!” Beat blurted, having difficulty in processing what was going on. “That’s crazy, man!”

“So, is there anything we can do to help?” Rhyme asked.

“Well, for starters, have you seen a lug wrench around anywhere?” Riku asked.

“Did the record producers have that stolen?” Rhyme guessed. “If only we were so lucky.”

“Yeah. Some punk stole my skateboard, too,” Beat griped. “We’ve been looking for it all day, man.”

“Oh. That stinks,” Riku said sympathetically. “They said that they called the auto shop, but they’re unable to help because they’re having some trouble of their own.”

“Yeah. I hear the thief hit them, too,” Beat confirmed.

“Gosh, do you have any other ideas?” Mickey asked.

“Ah!” Rhyme smiled as she thought of something. “We could use Dad’s truck. It’s a flatbed, so it can carry the album crates.”

“Yo, Rhyme! You’re a genius!” Beat cheered. He turned back to the others. “Wait right here. We’ll be back in a minute.” With that, he and his sister were off.

“Wow. That was very helpful,” Naminé noted.

Riku nodded. “Yeah. I’m glad Neku and the others have them in their corner.”

“While we’re waiting, maybe we should look into the ‘stolen junk’ situation,” Mickey suggested.

“Yeah. I would like to know what that’s all about,” Riku agreed.

“It’s a lot of junk. It would have to go somewhere,” Naminé mused.

“And for someone to keep making trips to grab the junk, it would have to be pretty close by,” Mickey added.

“But somewhere the police haven’t already looked. One would think to search in a garage or a warehouse.” Riku paced back and forth, trying to think like a police detective. He stopped and snapped his fingers as something clicked in his mind. “I think I saw something suspicious on the way over here. Follow me.”

He led Mickey and Naminé back the way they had come, weaving around the police officers, pedestrians, and cars, and approaching a crowd that had gathered around a strange object. “Here,” he said. When they had first passed it, he was not focused on taking note of strange landmarks, so he had not paid much attention to it. However, he now realized that there was something suspicious about the structure.

It was an art sculpture, constructed and arranged to resemble a haphazard pile of junk. It was built out of various, seemingly-random items that looked like they had been ripped off of the street or out of someone’s garage. If one looked closely, he could see a garbage can (with garbage still inside), a stepladder, an amplifier, three hubcaps, and much more.

“This might be it,” Riku said.

“Look!” Naminé pointed to something that was sticking out of the pile. Riku grabbed it, lifting the junk above it to make sure that none of it fell, and pulled it out. He held it out in front of him and saw that it was a black skateboard with a white skull and the kanji for “bīto” painted on the top.

“This must be Beat’s skateboard. This is definitely the stolen junk.” Riku nodded to his friends and tucked the skateboard under his arm. “Let’s tell the police. We’ll give this back to Beat when he and Rhyme get back.”

* * *

Beat and Rhyme returned in a black pickup truck ten minutes later, and they seemed overjoyed to have the skateboard returned. The police took their time sorting through the junk and returning the individual items to their annoyed-yet-relieved owners. The record producers thanked the party for the assist and began loading the crates into the back of the truck. With everything resolved, everyone involved with the mission went over to Towa Records. The crowd, largely pacified by the elimination of the majority of interfering Noise, finally calmed down, applauding as they watched the crew unload the crates. The store’s manager apologized for the late start and promised that they will be all set in an hour. In the meantime, Sora, Neku, Shiki, Eri, and the remaining Players vanquished the last of the Noise. When the last Noise faded from existence, the timers on their hands disappeared, signaling that the mission was a success.

At dinnertime, the four Players, three living world travelers, and Beat and Rhyme met up in Ramen Don. The head cook, Ken Doi, waved, happy to see the group together. Beat pulled Neku into a bear hug, crying about how scared he was that he was dead.

“Loosen… up… or… I… will be!” Neku retorted, gasping for air. Shiki and Eri giggled.

“So, you were also in the Reapers’ Game?” Sora asked, putting the pieces together.

Rhyme nodded. “Yeah. We all met in the same week. I partnered up with Beat, though I didn’t remember who he was.” Her expression turned somber. “I’m afraid I didn’t make it through the whole week,” she lamented.

“So, how are you here now?” Riku asked.

“You gotta thank Coffee Man for that, yo!” Beat answered. “He gathered what was left of Rhyme up and put her in a pin, then had me make a Pact with the pin. But I couldn’t make the pin work and talk to her, man. So I joined the Reapers, and I got the power to call Rhyme back up as a Noise. Then I quit to help Phones survive the last week and end the Game. Yo, he never woulda made it without me!”

“He’s right,” Neku confirmed. Beat grinned proudly, then did a double take toward Neku.

“Then they gave us all back our second chance at life. Even me,” Rhyme finished. “Although, I don’t think I got my Entry Fee back.”

“What was your Entry Fee?” Eri asked.

“We’re not entirely sure,” Shiki admitted. “From what I understand, Beat’s Fee was Rhyme’s memory of him. We still haven’t figured out for sure what Rhyme’s was.”

“I still feel bad, yo,” Beat lamented. “If I hadn’t been so stupid and walked right into that trap, you wouldn’t’a been Erased. Then you woulda gotten it back.”

“Oh, don’t beat yourself up over it, Beat. You didn’t know then. And hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Rhyme consoled him.

“We’ve all made our fair share of mistakes,” Riku assured him. “We’ve all been our own brand of stupid.”

“Besides, whatever I lost, I’m sure I’ll be able to make up for it,” Rhyme said cheerfully.

“I’m sure that, even if it is lost, a shadow will still be in your heart. So, maybe one day, you will unlock it again,” Naminé said.

Beat scratched the back of his neck as he considered her words uncertainly. “Uh, I’m not too sure that’s how it works,” he replied.

Naminé shrugged, not bothered by his skepticism. “Well, I don’t know how it works, so I’m just going off of what I know.”

Sora nodded. “That’s not a bad practice. So, Naminé? How was it, helping with the mission today?”

Naminé smiled. “It was fun. And it felt nice to help everyone out,” she answered.

Sora smiled warmly. “That’s good to hear. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“So, then, what should we do about the bigger mission?”Mickey asked.

Neku shook his head. “We don’t know enough about what’s going on to know for certain,” he said. “But the Taboo Noise are back, which means things really are serious in Shibuya.”

“Could the pile of junk be related somehow?” Riku wondered.

Neku shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. Might be worth keeping in mind, though.”

“Mr. Hanekoma seemed evasive when we talked about it, and avoided saying what the issue was,” Shiki recalled. “Since we know that the Taboo Noise are involved now, he might be more willing to open up about what’s going on.”

Mickey nodded. “That’s a great idea. We’ll head over tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. Tonight, we’ll take a look around town,” Sora said. “We’ll scan around and track Noise patterns.”

“Good idea. We’ll meet up with Aqua, Donald and Goofy and see if they found anything out,” Riku added.

“Alright,” Neku said. The party finished their dinner and paid the tab. “Well, I guess we should get going.”

Riku nodded. “Okay. See you.”

The nine of them left the ramen shop simultaneously, but from the RG party members’ perspective, their UG friends ran off as soon as they were outside, as the powers set in place by the Composer altered their memories so that they did not realize that they appeared to have vanished into thin air. Only Naminé, due to her own powers over memory, was unaffected, instead looking around in shock as she noticed how Sora and the others were no longer there all of a sudden.

“That is freaky,” she mused.

“Well, let’s go see if we can find the others,” Riku said.

They went up the street, off to check the northern end of the city. As they made their way through the Shibuki Main Store district, they stopped as they heard a noise coming from a nearby alley. They glanced around, trying to locate the source, but it seemed to be hidden in the shadows.

“Who’s there?” Beat asked. Mickey shushed him. They turned to the alley, squinting as they tried to make out a shadowed shape. They watched in silence, waiting for their stalker to make a move. The suspense seemed to drag out the seconds. Finally, two red dots appeared against the blackness, and they heard a snarl. Rhyme let out a scream. Beat stepped in front of her protectively. Naminé ducked behind him. Riku and Mickey conjured their Keyblades as the creature lunged out of its hiding place, revealing itself to be a wolf with black and dark gray fur and white skeletal forelegs. Beat let out an uninspiring scream of terror as he recognized the beast.

The Grunge Wolf threw itself at its prey, but Riku slashed at it, knocking it away. Mickey jumped into the air and cast a Pearl spell at another wolf that attempted to attack them from behind. The light bolt caused the wolf to stumble, but it regained its footing, and began to chase after Mickey, ignoring the defenseless teenagers, while the mouse jumped around to avoid the monster.

“Are these一” Rhyme questioned, horrified.

“How is this possible, yo?” Beat asked, panicking.

“Are these what Sora and Neku were talking about?” Naminé asked.

Beat nodded. “Yeah. They’re the things that hunted us in the Reapers’ Game last year. They’re Taboo!”

* * *

While the two Keyblade wielders fought desperately to survive and protect their friends, a figure sat on the roof of a nearby building, grinning maliciously as he watched his handiwork. “Huh. I wonder who the new variables are. Whatever. They think their power[^] is greater than or equal to my Taboo? Ha! Their power[^] is garbage!” He punched is fist into his palm to emphasize his point. “CRUNCH! I’ll add it to the heap!”


	124. Chapter 123: Player Hunt

“Ugh. Yesterday was nuts,” Uzuki complained. “You know where I can get some aspirin?”

“Here.” Kariya tossed her a bottle.

“Huh. I never took you for someone to have some on hand.” Uzuki popped an aspirin and swallowed it with a sip from a water bottle.

Kariya shrugged. “I’ve been packing these since Konishi became an Officer.”

Uzuki sighed as she remembered the calculating woman. “I know what you mean. I’m  _ so _ glad that witch is gone.”

“So, what’s giving you a headache?” Kariya asked.

“That Yoko Imaga. She went and rubbed the number of Players she Erased yesterday in my face. Ugh. It’s not like it’s a contest or anything.”

“Um, isn’t Reaper Game Number One ‘Player Hunt’? Meaning it is a contest?”

“Yeah, but we weren’t playing it!”

“But didn’t you use to do the exact same thing in your first year?”

Uzuki sighed. “I see your point. I guess I’m just gonna have to put up with it.”

“The Spring Chicken does have some zest. I’ll give her that.”

“I thought I was ‘Spring Chicken’,” Uzuki pouted.

“Sorry, Uzuki, but you aged out at three years,” Kariya replied.

“Aw… Ahem, uh, whatever,” she amended, trying to make it seem as though it did not bother her. While the nickname had started to annoy her after the first few months, she had recently started to warm up to it as she and Kariya grew closer. “So, what were you saying about Yoko?”

“She’s only been a Reaper for a few months, but she’s setting Noise traps and Erasing Players like she’s been at it for years. And she’s pretty confident to so casually compete with you.”

“I think she picked up on some of the general Reaper tactics while she was still a Player. I caught her following Takagi around a few times.”

Kariya nodded. “I saw that too. Can’t say he was a bad pick to shadow; it’s almost unheard of for a Support Reaper to get promoted to Officer without having to spend a few months or years as a Harrier. Might be because the top brass was trying to fill the office after the Composer’s Game, but I’d say he deserved that bump.”

“Oh, and have you seen the way Yoko was looking at Takagi during the briefing when Takagi was made GM?” Uzuki let out a giggle. “I think she’s got a crush!”

Kariya chuckled. “It took you this long to notice?” he asked mockingly. “You should’ve一”

“ _ Ahem! _ ” The throat-clearing of a deep voice interrupted them. Jumping to attention, the two Reapers fearfully whirled around to face a towering figure. The man was tall, standing nearly six-and-a-half feet in height, and built like a truck. He appeared to be forty years of age, although the fact that Reapers tended to stay at the same physical age for long stretches of time left his true age as a mystery. His black hair was slicked back, and his chiseled features sported a short moustache and beard. He wore a white button-down shirt, a black suit jacket with gold buttons, black slacks, black dress shoes, and a red tie. His red eyes stared right through the Harriers, his thick eyebrows furrowed in disappointment. His posture showed that he was completely calm, but his aura was enough to intimidate them.

“M-Mister Atukaze!” Uzuki gasped. “We were just…” However, she could not think of a suitable excuse to explain away her gossiping.

“I respect that you find comfort in one another’s presence, and that you are at ease with your position. However, I ask that you mind the manner in which you carry yourself,” the Harriers’ superior advised. Hiroto Atukaze was the Conductor of the Reapers, directing and giving orders to the subordinate Reapers, from Officers down to Support rank, and expressing the will of the Composer, Shibuya’s true overseer. He had served in the position for nearly a full year, having been chosen to fill the role following the Erasure of the previous Conductor, Megumi Kitaniji.

“Y-Yes, sir. Our apologies,” Kariya stammered. He quickly gave Atukaze a bow, which Uzuki replicated.

“This may be called a 'Game', but it is no place for lackadaisical tomfoolery. It is a life or erasure contest where all is at risk of destruction, especially in these times. I will tolerate none of your childish antics,” Atukaze warned. Uzuki and Kariya nodded quickly. Satisfied, Atukaze turned to leave. Halfway across the room, he stopped and turned back to the Harriers. “Oh, and be sure to respect Nobuo’s privacy.” With that, he left.

“O-Of course, sir,” Kariya replied, too scared to correct him on Yoko’s preferred name. Several seconds after Atukaze had gone, he turned back to Uzuki. “He has a point. Things are getting serious.”

Uzuki shivered. “Are you talking about the attacks?” she asked.

Kariya nodded. “I’m almost certain they’re Taboo.”

“WHAT?!” Uzuki gasped. “Who would create them? They nearly slaughtered us all last year!”

Kariya shook his head. “I don’t know, but we need to be extra careful. If those things are back, Shibuya’s in real danger.”

“Takagi said we should sit tight while the Officer runs their investigation, but I don’t feel comfortable vegging out while all this is going on.”

“Well, I know a way to make you feel better.”

Uzuki raised an eyebrow, then realized what he had planned and smirked. “Sounds like fun.”

* * *

When he woke up, Sora saw that he was in front of a store identified with a sign that read “AMX” in blue letters next to an encircled image of a running twin eighth-notes figure. He turned to see Neku standing up a few feet away. “Another music store?” he guessed.

Neku nodded. “Yep.”

“Still haven’t found anything to help us track down the Taboo Noise,” Sora lamented.

Neku shook his head. “Nope. We really don’t have enough information to figure anything out.

Sora slumped in dismay. “If only we weren’t all alone in this world trying to find what we’re looking for,” he whined, aware that aside from Mr. Hanekoma, they had no one to really turn to and get clues from.

“Look out!” they heard Mickey shout. At the same time, they heard heavy footsteps and the crunch of bent steel. They turned to see what was going on and jumped in shock. Mickey and Aqua were running in their direction, Keyblades drawn. Civilians were also fleeing, screaming in terror. As the crowd passed, Sora and Neku saw the reason for the panic. A Taboo Noise, which resembled a rhinoceros with a massive tattoo horn and two long spikes over the shoulder blades, was charging at them. Aqua turned around and cast Fira at the Trance Rhino, but it seemed to have no effect.

“The ARE in the RG!” Sora exclaimed, realizing to his horror that Shiki and Eri were right. “And… Are they immune to our一their magic too?”

Neku shook his head. “Can’t say. They’re invulnerable from the front,” he explained.

“Phew. At least we know how to deal with that,” Sora said, relieved. Watching the fight, he wondered if his friends would figure that out. “You think I can use the ‘meme’ thing to tell them to attack from behind?”

Neku nodded. “That should work.”

Sora nodded. He took his phone out, opened the app, typed in “Try the back”, pointed the phone’s camera at Mickey, and hit “Send”. Mickey blinked as the thought became imprinted into his mind. He did a backflip over the rhino and attacked its rear. This time, the Noise noticeably flinched. Sora breathed a sigh of relief, only to tense back up as the fiend whirled around and tried to gore the mouse with its horn. However, this left it open to Aqua, who cast Blizzaga at it. She closed in and dealt a series of attacks, then finished it off with a spiral of magic energy exploding up around her. The Noise disintegrated into a haze of television static.

“Was that one of the monsters you ran into last night?” Aqua asked.

Mickey nodded. “Yeah. It’s a good thing our Keyblades and magic work well enough against them, instead of just the Light Puck that Sora and the others said they use.”

“I guess our magic follows different rules to what works here,” Aqua surmised.

“Like how our magic hurt the cursed pirates,” Sora mused, “but only when they were exposed under the moonlight.”  _ That might also explain why I don’t have my Keyblade or magic in the UG, _ he thought.

“The what?” Neku asked.

“Uh, something I ran into a while back,” Sora handwaved. “On another world. Don’t worry about it.” He no longer bothered with the complicated cover-up now that the cat was out of the bag.

“Uh, okay. Anyway, I guess it is a good thing that their weapons work for them,” Neku noted. “Otherwise, no one would be able to fight the Noise in the RG.”

“But if they are running around in the RG, then we need to check up on the others. Naminé doesn’t have a Keyblade, or magic.”

Neku’s eyes widened as he registered the implication. “Neither do Beat and Rhyme.”

Hearing the sound of screams in the distance, they ran to find the source. As they could pass through civilians, they caught up far quicker than Mickey and Aqua could. Arriving in front of the Shibu Department Store, they saw Donald and Goofy running away from a “Wall of Grizzly” Taboo Noise. Goofy threw his shield at the fiend, but it seemed to have no effect as the bear continued to lurch toward them. Donald cast magic, which seemed to slow it down, but it was too resilient and was gaining too fast.

“Donald has magic, but neither of them have Keyblades!” Sora realized. “We’ve got to do something!”

“What can we do?” Neku asked skeptically. “We can’t just go into the RG.”

An idea clicked in Sora’s mind. “What if we bring it to us? We can scan and draw it in.”

“You think that will work?”

“They’re usually not visible on our plane, right? And we go into another one to fight anyway. It’s worth a try.”

“Okay. Give it a shot.”

Sora scanned the area, then reached out toward the grizzly. Sure enough, black and grey energy strands connected from the Noise to him. As the energy grew denser, there was a flash of light and he found himself in an unpopulated zone, face-to-face with the Wall of Grizzly.

_ Sweet! It worked. _ He checked his pins to recall what was in his arsenal. He had: Pyrokinesis; Psychokinesis; Big Bang (armed with the Nexus Ray power); Lightning Moon (which would create an electric charge revolving around him); Storm Warning (which let him call down a bolt of lightning); Masamune (which let him slash through the air and blast through what was in front of him); Cure Drink (which conjured a soda that restored his health like a Potion); and Icy Stare (which could freeze an enemy). He smiled, ready to bring the monster down.

He called down three bolts of lightning to strike the Noise, then conjured flames around it. The bear swung its arm, striking a garbage bin and sending it flying toward Sora. Sora did a dodge roll, letting it fly over him. He spun around with his arms outstretched and created a circle of electricity, then threw himself at the bear, letting the electricity burn the monster, then jumped away as it attempted to retaliate. Feeling the Light Puck charge him up, he dashed toward the Noise again and dealt a horizontal karate chop at it, visibly charging up the air that his hand passed through and cutting into the bear’s stomach. He delivered a string of karate chops until he finished with an explosive blow, sending the bear tumbling back. With that finisher, the Light Puck disappeared to the other zone.

Neku possessed a similar, but slightly different arsenal. With the Light Puck in his possession, he shot bolts of energy at the bear until the pin ran out of juice, used the First Gear pin to teleport out of the way of its attack and behind it, raised an icicle spike to impale it from below, summoned three bolts of lightning to strike it, and then slashed at it with the Masamune Pin’s Psych, Shockwave. With a final explosive force bursting from the last slash, the Light Puck went back to Sora as the bear worked to push itself to its feet. The fight continued until the Taboo Noise was no more, and both Players were back in the UG.

Donald and Goofy breathed a sigh of relief as they saw the bear dissolve, unaware of Sora and Neku’s presence. One pedestrian showed pictures that he had taken of the monster to his friend. Everyone else looked back and forth, trying to make sense of what they had just seen.

“This is bad,” Neku said. “If these things can’t be hurt normally, people are going to die.”

“Will anyone else know what that was?” Sora asked.

Neku shook his head. “Some of them might have been in the Game, and would probably think it was a Noise. But no one in the RG would know what a Taboo Noise was. All of the Players were Erased by those things in my second week except for me and Joshua. And there weren’t any other Players in my third week. So, I guess only Beat and Rhyme would recognize them.”

“What about Joshua?” This question gave Neku pause. “Would he be in Shibuya?”

“Yeah. But he wouldn’t be part of the crowd. He probably knows what’s going on, though.”

Sora decided not to give any indication that Neku may have said more than he wanted to, and wondered what he meant.

Whatever he was thinking, Neku shook it from his mind. “You know, it’s strange that we haven’t gotten a mission yet,” he remarked.

Sora checked his hand, which had not been given a timer. “You’re right. I wonder why that is.”

As if on cue, their phones beeped. They took them out and checked the new message. It read: “No mission today. Busy on our end. Watch your backs. -The Reapers.”

“Well, I guess we have the day to ourselves,” Sora said.

Neku crossed his arms. “They must be working on the Taboo problem,” he guessed.

“We should meet up with the others. We need to catch up on what’s going on,” Sora suggested.

Neku nodded. “Then Imprint away.”

Sora opened the app. Taking a moment to formulate the message, he typed in “Gather the others; meet friends at 104.” Just to be safe, he imprinted the “meme” into the minds of both Donald and Goofy.

“Hey, we should get everyone and meet at 104,” they both said. Realizing that they had the exact same thought and not knowing why, they laughed, then went off to find their friends.

Sora smiled, proud of himself. “Okay. I guess we should start heading over too.”

* * *

“What’s going on, man?!” Beat yelled. Naminé winced at the volume, so Rhyme helpfully plugged her ears with her fingers. Mr. Hanekoma waved his hand over his office door, creating a sound-proofing spell that ensured that his employees and customers did not hear the calm, peaceful discussion that was taking place in that room. “Those Taboo are supposed to be gone!”

“They  _ were _ supposed to be,” Hanekoma agreed. “But someone must have gained access to the Taboo Arts, and learned to create the Refinery Sigils on their own.”

“How could someone do that?” Riku asked.

“How did Pi Face do it in the first place?” Beat shouted.

“'Pi Face'?” Riku repeated, wondering what he could possibly mean by that.

“Sho Minamimoto. The rogue Reaper from last year,” Rhyme explained.

“Oh.” Riku recalled that Neku mentioned that the man had been big on math puns.

Hanekoma sighed, a hint of shame in his expression as well as uncertainty; he seemed to be debating how and whether to answer. A few seconds later, he chose to respond. “I taught him.”

“WHAT?!” Beat and Rhyme shouted together. Naminé clamped her hands over her ears. Rhyme immediately apologized, then resumed her shocked expression.

“Let me explain,” Hanekoma pleaded. “The Composer wanted to destroy Shibuya. The Conductor opposed that, and to convince him to spare the city, he tried to turn everyone into mindless drones. The way I saw it, there were only two options to save Shibuya, one easier but more reprehensible, the other riskier but better. The second option was to change the Composer’s mind about Shibuya, by saving the heart of his proxy. But if that failed, then either way, Shibuya was toast. Both the Composer and the Conductor would have to be stopped. I was prohibited from direct intervention, and I was already on thin ice. So I needed a proxy of my own. I picked Minamimoto, who was already a wild card who didn’t play well with others, and I taught him to conjure the Taboo. His goal was to have them destroy the Reapers in his way and get to the Conductor and Composer, whom he would then destroy, then take over. I didn’t like it, but if things didn’t work out with Phones, I had to let that happen.”

“But it did work out,” Rhyme noted. “Neku changed his mind, the guy with the sunglasses lost, and Shibuya’s still here.”

“And Pi Face got crunched, yo,” Beat added. “So how come this is happening? You didn’t teach no one else, did you?”

Hanekoma shook his head vehemently. “Of course not,” he insisted. “Believe me, this was a shock to me, too. And I don’t know how they managed to breach the Taboo Noise into the RG.”

Riku cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Mr. Hanekoma, from what I understand, you’re a lot more powerful and knowledgeable than you look. You seem practically omniscient. Do you know who is behind this?” he asked.

Hanekoma sighed. This sigh carried a mix of uncertainty and regret. “I have my thoughts, but I can’t be sure. Unfortunately, while I’ve been trying to track him, he’s been using Taboo techniques to conceal his aura. I can get a general idea of where he is, but I can’t confirm who he is,” he admitted.

“Whoever he is, he seems to know who’s looking,” Riku deduced. “So he would have to know who you are.”

“Unfortunately, that’s all I’ve got for you. I passed everything I know to the Composer, so he has the Reapers on the hunt and doing whatever they can to look into it.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Beat asked, still irritated.

Hanekoma shrugged. “Be careful. Keep your eyes peeled. And stick together, especially since, out of the four of you, Riku here’s the only one who can actually hurt the Taboo.”

After a brief moment, Riku shrugged. “I guess that’s all we can do right now,” he said. He calmly finished his coffee and tossed it into the recycling bin, then stood up from his chair. “Let’s get going.”

Naminé and Rhyme nodded in agreement. The four teens turned to leave. Hanekoma removed the sound-proofing spell.

“Hey, Naminé,” Hanekoma called out as the teens were almost all out of his office. Naminé stopped and turned around, wondering what he wanted.

“Yes, Mr. Hanekoma?” The barista beckoned her to come closer. She complied.

“I don’t really know much about you, so this is just a hunch, but…” He opened a folder on his desk and picked up a card. It was plastic and had a glossy image on the front, like a trading card. However, its shape was different from the traditional rectangle: on the top edge, three triangles extended outward, so that they gave off the image of a crown. Naminé studied the card curiously. The image on the front depicted an artboard and a pencil that was in the process of drawing a Reaper symbol, in front of a net of chains that criss-crossed in the background. “I think this will be of help.”

Naminé flipped the card around between her fingers. “What is this?” she asked.

“Something tells me you’re someone who can make your own rules. A look into the grinds showed me a room transforming around you and phantoms of people appearing at your whim.”

Naminé gasped, shocked as she wondered how he would know about that. “B-But… That was only in Castle Oblivion,” she argued. “I had some tie to that place. I don’t think I can do it anywhere else.”

Hanekoma nodded. “True. Whatever that place’s rules, it let you into the control booth. That’s what I’m going for with this. Play this, and you’ll be able to sync your powers with a frequency that will have clout. The city will be your canvas, and this your pen. But you’ll need to use it responsibly,” he advised. “Rules are being bent here. I have a feeling that to save Shibuya, we’re gonna have to bend a few more. Can I trust you to do what you’ll need to?”

Naminé was taken aback. This man was asking her to use her powers in a big way. She had always been afraid of her abilities, believing that she could only do harm with them. Sure, she had managed to put Sora’s memories into place, but that was only after she had ripped them apart in the first place, and the process had taken far longer because she was extra delicate with them, not wanting to make a catastrophic error with a small mistake. She had no idea if there was even a “right” way to use them. What did Mr. Hanekoma expect her to do? Was she supposed to destroy something, or someone? Or did he believe that her powers could be used to help people? Could she really…?

“I… I’ll do my best,” she said. She was not sure of herself, but she did not want to let him down. “Thank you.” She took another look at the card and realized that she had nowhere to put it. She regarded it with mild embarrassment as she imagined she would have to hold it all day.

Hanekoma chuckled as he noticed her plight. “You can just dismiss it like your friend does his Keyblade,” he suggested. “Pass it off to that pocket dimension that their magic gives them access to.”

“Oh. I was wondering how everyone did that,” Naminé mused. Deciding to give it a try, she focused her gaze on the card. She imagined letting it go off to a safe place, and the card vanished in a flash of light.

“There you go, kiddo. Well, good luck. And don’t worry. When the time comes, I’m sure you’ll know what to do with it,” Hanekoma assured her.

Naminé nodded and gave him a bow. “Thank you.” She left the office and rejoined Riku, Beat and Rhyme.

* * *

Sora and Neku, now joined by Shiki and Eri, ran into Scramble Crossing, but stopped dead in their tracks when they saw a small pack of Taboo Noise wolves surrounding two figures, Uzuki and Kariya. Sora tensed and prepared to move in to help them, but he stopped himself as he noticed the Noise disappear one by one. With each frame, the Reapers became more agitated and a bit more tired, but in the span of a few moments, which probably meant a few minutes of fighting in their zones, the Noise were all destroyed. The four Players ran to catch up to them.

“Are you okay?” Sora asked, concerned.

“We’re fine,” Uzuki answered curtly. “We didn’t need your help.”

“I can see that,” Sora retorted snidely. “Say, how’s your jaw?” Uzuki glared at him and balled a fist. Eri’s eyes widened. Shiki stifled a giggle as she put together what had happened.

“Don’t mind her,” Kariya said. “Thanks for checking up on us.”

“Hey, can you tell us why the Taboo Noise are back?” Neku asked.

“Hmph. Why should we?” Uzuki shot back.

“So we can help you and the other Reapers put a stop to them,” Sora answered.

“They’re just as much a threat to you as they are to us,” Shiki entreated.

The Reapers looked past Sora and Neku and noticed the girls. Uzuki groaned as she recognized one of them. “Really? You’re in this again, too? What is this? Recycling week?” Uzuki complained, her gaze focused on Eri.

Eri gulped nervously. “Um, I don’t think we’ve met before,” she said defensively.

Shiki took a step forward. “You’re looking for me,” she said defiantly, drawing the temperamental Reaper’s attention away from her friend.

Uzuki scoffed. “New face this time, huh?”

“Never mind that,” Kariya interrupted. “I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to tell you anything, even if we wanted to.”

“Aw, come on!” Sora pouted. “Why not?”

“If the Conductor or the Game Master say so, then we’ll talk. Until then, our lips are sealed.” Kariya made a popping noise with his lollipop and his lips to emphasize the point. “Now, we’ve got to get going. See you around. Oh, and, uh, be careful, will you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Neku replied. Kariya nodded respectfully. Uzuki scowled. The two Reapers walked off, Uzuki grumbling complaints.

When they were gone, Shiki and Eri turned back around and started laughing. “Oh my gosh! You punched her?” Shiki chortled.

Sora flicked his thumb across his lip proudly. “Kinda,” he said teasingly. He heard a growl from a distance away, and his smile faded. “We should probably go inside and wait for the others.”

“Good plan,” Eri agreed nervously.

* * *

Less than an hour later, Riku, Naminé, Mickey, Aqua, Donald, Goofy, Beat, and Rhyme joined them in 104, and they quickly apprised each other on what they found. Most of them had already come to the same conclusions: that the Taboo Noise were wreaking havoc in the Underground and the Realground and attacking indiscriminately, but they could still be hurt with a Keyblade and magic. However, they were no closer to understanding what brought the Taboo Noise into existence or how they breached into the Realground.

“Mr. Hanekoma said that the culprit is using something called ‘Taboo techniques’ to conceal his location,” Riku said. “Do you know anything about that, Neku?”

“Well, last year, Minamimoto used a symbol to create the Taboo Noise,” Neku recalled. “He had another one set up to resurrect him as a Taboo-Reaper hybrid.”

“Mr. H said that he taught Mister Pi-Face how to create the Taboo,” Rhyme noted.

Beat nodded. “Yeah. And when Phones and I took pictures of the past, we saw Coffee Man fixing up one of those symbols,” he added.

Sora, Riku, Naminé, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua did a double take, bewildered by Beat’s statement. “Excuse me, but… ‘pictures of the past’?” Mickey repeated, wanting further details.

“Mr. H upgraded our phones so we can pick a time in the past and take a picture of what was there at that instant,” Neku explained. “I think yours can do it too, Sora.”

Sora grinned as he considered the possibilities. “I’ve got to give that a try.”

“Okay, but bear in mind that you can only take three of those pictures per day.”

“Does that mean you have a picture of the Taboo sigil?” Naminé asked.

Neku nodded. “Yeah. I should still have it in here.” He searched his phone’s gallery and brought up a photo of Mr. Hanekoma drawing on a black and grey sigil made of Noise symbols and other different letters. He showed it to the others.

Naminé looked around at everyone. “Does anyone have a pen and paper?” she asked. “I think the one Kairi had disappeared with her.”

“I’ll ask one of the clerks,” Eri said. She went off to do just that. While she was gone, Naminé examined the photograph closely, trying to capture the image in her memory, and doing her best to guess what the symbols that were obscured by Mr. Hanekoma looked like.

“What’s on your mind?” Riku asked.

“I want to draw that sigil so we can all have a visual aid for what we’re looking for,” Naminé answered. “We can use it to search for the sigil.”

“Great idea, Naminé,” Sora commended. “If we want to stop the Taboo Noise for good, we’ll need to find and destroy the Sigil.”

“There’s a small problem with that,” Neku argued. “How do we destroy it?”

There was a thoughtful pause before Sora simply shrugged. “I guess we’ll figure it out when we get to that.”

“I have a feeling that Mr. H and the Reapers have a better idea of what to do than we do, and they’re on our side with this,” Rhyme assured everyone.

Eri returned with a sheet of paper on a clipboard and a pen. “Here you go.”

Naminé took them from her hands. “Thank you.” She took another look at Neku’s phone and began sketching.

Riku gave her a thumbs up, then turned back to the others. “While she’s doing that, what should we do?” he asked.

“Well, we don’t have a mission today, so nothing’s time-dependent. And to be real, I don’t want to run around the city like this without any real leads to go on,” Neku said.

“But I think some of us should patrol, at least in the RG,” Mickey suggested. “The Noise are still running around and nobody can fight against them. Gosh, it’s even worse than the Heartless situation.”

Aqua nodded in agreement. “I’ll go with you,” she said.

“Us too,” Donald and Goofy added in unison.

“Okay, then. What should the rest of us do for the next few hours?” Riku asked.

Shiki perked up. “Ooh! We could go shopping!” Riku and Neku shot her confused and skeptical looks. “Come on! We’ve spent the last few days just doing missions, fighting Noise, and talking about fighting Noise.”

“The Noise thing is pretty important to be dealing with,” Riku remarked.

“Just a few hours. We can browse, try on new clothes, just hang out as friends.”

Sora, Riku, Neku, and Beat looked at each other, considering the idea, before nodding in Shiki’s direction. “Okay. Why not?” Riku agreed.

“Sounds like fun,” Sora said.

“Great!” Shiki popped a foot into the air and pumped her fist up.

“Well, we’ll see you later. Have fun,” Aqua said. She, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy waved as they left the store.

Shortly after, Naminé finished her drawing. Most of the image was an accurate recreation, though she simply drew squiggling lines to fill the section that had been obscured in the photo. The others applauded her for her work. Shiki and Eri then dragged her to join them on their shopping adventure. They had her try on new clothes, and Eri convinced her to pose like a runway model, much to Riku and Beat’s amusement. At first, Naminé was embarrassed at having to do it, but she quickly came to enjoy it, posing with more confidence with each outfit. In the meantime, Sora and Riku checked out some clothes for themselves, with Shiki and Eri voicing their opinions on how they looked on them. They noticed a woman wearing a large fur coat arguing with one of the employees, but elected to ignore her outburst.

When they were done, they paid for the clothes that they wanted to buy. Sora and Riku talked Naminé into buying some for herself, despite the fact that she expected to fuse back with Kairi at the end of the week. Sora, Neku, Shiki, Eri, Beat, and Rhyme took pictures of Naminé’s sketch for reference as the Players elected to set out and search for the sigil. Riku, Naminé, Beat, and Rhyme chose to conduct their own search, also with the intent of tracking down any Taboo Noise in the RG so that Riku could destroy them, after Riku sends his, Sora’s and Naminé’s clothes up into the Gummi Ship at a Safe Point. They agree to meet back up along with Mickey, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy at the same place.

“Really? The clothes you wear affects the strength of your Psychs?” Sora asked after Neku and Shiki explained yet another of the Reapers’ Game’s rules.

Neku nodded. “I guess it ties in with the whole ‘brands’ thing. Your threads can affect the strength of your attacks, the flow of passing the Light Puck, and the rate at which your strength grows,” he clarified.

“And skirts and dresses have a greater effect?” Sora asked in disbelief.

“Sure looks that way,” Shiki replied.

“Apparently,” Neku added sheepishly.

Sora shrugged. “I just can’t imagine that crossdressing would be conducive to saving the world,” he remarked.

“I didn’t make the rules,” Neku said defensively.

“What if it’s just not your thing?”

“Then just do you. You seem to do fine with your magic clothes.”

Sora nodded, accepting the point. “And you do fine with that high-collar,” he returned.

Suddenly, Shiki gasped in apparent horror. Sora shot his gaze around, expecting a Taboo Noise attack, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He turned to Shiki, wondering what had startled her. He saw that she was staring at Neku’s pants, and was reaching into her pocket to pull out a sewing needle and thread.

“Neku! Your button’s coming undone!” she announced.

Sora looked down and noticed that she was correct: the button on one of his pockets was hanging loose by a thread. “So it is. What does it matter?” he asked, not sure why it was such a big deal. However, Neku sighed in resignation.

“It matters!” Shiki shouted, shooting a glare at Sora, which took him by surprise. She turned her serious gaze back to Neku.

Neku sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Pants. Off. Now.” He turned to face Sora and Eri. “Would you mind…?” Sora and Eri obligingly turned around, Sora trying to hide his embarrassment and Eri trying to stifle her giggles. Hoping that there were no other Players or Reapers in the area, Neku removed his shorts and handed them to Shiki.

Less than a minute had passed before Shiki had declared “Done!” After giving Neku a few extra seconds to put his pants back on, Sora and Eri turned around to find that the button had been sewn back up. “Good as new!” She turned to address Sora, realizing that he was unfamiliar with that quirk of hers. “Sorry about that. Loose buttons drive me nuts. You probably think I’m a weirdo, huh?”

Sora shook his head. “What’s wrong with it? Besides, you’re amazing at sewing,” he complimented.

Shiki smiled. “Thanks. It’s kinda my passion.” She held Mr. Mew up for Sora to see. “I made him myself. See?”

“That’s really good,” Sora said, studying the threadwork.

“I’m going to be a seamstress.” Shiki threw her arm over Eri’s shoulders. “Right up with the next big fashion designer.”

“Awesome. What about you, Neku? You have any big plans for your future?”

Neku shrugged. “I haven’t totally figured it out yet.”

Sora nodded and shrugged as well. “Yeah. I’m still trying to figure things out for the long run,” he replied.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Shiki assured him.

“Yeah.” Sora smiled, but it faded as he recalled that at that moment, he was dead, and in a situation where a simple error could lead to him being Erased completely. If something went wrong on any of the missions, he would never see that future. He would never get to make those plans. He also knew that Kairi would never get to have a future either, if he were Erased, all because he cared for her.

He shook his head. He could not bother to think about that. If he and the others did the missions right and stopped the Taboo Noise threat, he and Kairi would be back in the living world. They would continue their quest, and they would succeed and make it back home, and they would have the time to plan their future.

“You okay, Sora?” Shiki asked, pulling Sora out of his thoughts.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Thanks,” he replied.

Upon hearing a hiss and a set of heavy footsteps, they all tensed up and turned to the source of the sound, and saw two Eurobeat Boomers (the kangaroo Taboo), a Death Metal Mink, and a Trance Rhino. Sora, Neku and Shiki took on battle stances, but Eri quaked in her boots.

“Let’s do this!” Shiki cheered confidently.

However, Eri was not encouraged. The sight of the monsters, particularly the fiery glare of the rhino and the dark glint on its horn, terrified the girl. “I-I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “I c-can’t do this!” She turned around and ran.

“Eri!” Shiki called back as she watched her friend flee. She turned back to Sora and Neku and apologized before running after Eri.

“Don’t worry,” Neku said. “We can take these.”

Indeed, they managed to defeat the Taboo Noise in two rounds of fighting. They looked around for Shiki and Eri, but it appeared as though they were still hiding.

“Pfft. Girl can’t even hold her nerves against a few Noise?” Sora and Neku turned to the owner of the voice. Yoko Imaga approached them, a cocky smirk on her face.

“Well, you can’t blame her,” Sora countered. “They’re in this mess because of one of those things.”

Neku glared at her. “Hey! You’re the Reaper from the first day!” he accused.

Yoko waved her hand dismissively. “Well, yeah. I do have a job to do, anyway,” she remarked. “I’m Yoko Imaga, and I’ll be your Reaper rival this afternoon.”

“Yoko?” Neku parroted, confused by the gender that such a name is usually associated with.

“That’s what I called myself,” Yoko said.

Neku breathed an “Oh” as he figured it out, though Sora was oblivious, not even realizing that there was anything to question about her name or her gender.

“So, you’re going to throw more Noise at us?” Sora guessed.

Yoko shrugged. “Well, since there isn’t a mission today, and we Reapers have been assigned to other tasks, I’m not really permitted to try to Erase you,” she admitted. “But seeing you strutting yourselves and jumping into Taboo fights, it got me curious. So, I thought I’d jump in and see what you’re made of. Get ready!”

“Whatー” Before Neku could respond, Yoko initiated a fight. He and Sora were in separate zones, but they both saw the Reaper standing across from them.

“Think fast!” Yoko taunted. She held her hand out and a bolt of electricity shot toward her opponents. They dodged out of the way and retaliated with attacks of their own: Neku with lightning and Sora with Pyrokinesis. After weathering the first few seconds of damage, Yoko jumped out of the way. Neku threw himself at her and lashed out. She struck back with an electrically-charged backhand, knocking him back. Sora stared, perplexed, as he saw the exact same move, even though he was several feet away. Shrugging, he used Psychokinesis to throw a garbage can at Yoko, knocking her down. Neku was confused as he saw the Reaper suddenly stumble and fall to the ground, but he took the moment to push himself back up and call up an icicle from below Yoko, which she barely rolled out of the way of.

“What are you doing?” Neku asked. “We should be focusing on dealing with the Taboo Noise!” He conjured another icicle, but Yoko avoided it and shot a bolt of electricity at him, which he avoided.

“We’re all keeping an eye out for that,” Yoko replied. “But I can’t just sit back and miss out on all the fun.”

Sora heard the same thing and saw the bolt of electricity sail a few feet to his left. “What are you talking about?” Yoko glanced over to him for a second and groaned. She shot a bolt of electricity at him, but he rolled away and conjured flames around her, forcing her to jump away and pat the fire out on her jeans. This gave Neku another opening to lash out at her.

“Well, if you keep wasting your energy fighting Players when you should be surviving, you’re the one who’s going to get Erased,” Neku retorted.

“Shut up!” Yoko spat. She blasted Neku back with a bolt of electricity before she felt Sora knock her back with a set of slashes.

“I didn’t say anything,” Sora said, wondering why Yoko was shooting the breeze, in a figurative and literal sense, without his input in the conversation.

Yoko cursed. “I think I did something wrong in splitting myself between zones,” she muttered. “Takagi said I shouldn’t instigate anything without practicing first. Guess I shoulda listened.”

Sora and Neku were left confused for a few more seconds before they figured out what was going on: Yoko had divided her body between the two zones, but she had not been able to divide her consciousness. Ergo, she was using the same attacks, saying the same things, and reacting to the same damage in both zones. They knew exactly how they would win the fight: they would attack her and divide her attention; she could only focus on one of them at a time, they reasoned, and one set of attacks from either Player would stun or distract or stun her and leave her open to the other’s attacks.

Sora cast a circle of electricity and rushed toward Yoko, zapping her as he charged and punching her across the street, interrupting her attempt to blast Neku. Neku shot bolts of energy as she went down, the effects of which Sora only saw in the form of Yoko spasming on the asphalt. Yoko stood up and shot electricity in two directions, aiming at both Players, but they both dodged, with Neku retaliating with some Pyrokinesis and Sora firing back with a Nexus Ray. Sora saw Yoko jolt due to what he assumed to be several Shockwave strikes from Neku. Rather than attack the vulnerable Reaper, he ran around her until he stopped several feet behind her. When she was sent flying from Neku’s finisher, Sora delivered his own attacks with the same Psych. The finisher sent Yoko tumbling across the street. The Reaper groaned in pain. She snapped her fingers, and the three of them were returned to the UG plane.

Yoko pushed herself to her feet and brushed herself off. “Huh. I can see why the other Reapers talk about you with such high respect, Neku Sakuraba. And you, Sora, you really are something else,” she complimented.

Sora threw his hand out to the side defiantly. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve fought far worse than you!” he declared.

Yoko chuckled. “Really? Then why are you here?” she taunted.

Sora opened his mouth to make a sharp retort, but he was unable to do so.

Yoko smirked. “Thought so.” She sighed. “Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. See you around.” The Reaper flapped her wings and flew off.

Neku scowled up at the Reaper in annoyance before he turned his attention to Sora, who had deflated from her remark. “You okay?” he asked.

Sora shook his head. “How did it even happen?” he mumbled.

Neku positioned himself so that he was facing Sora. “Sora, I don’t think that what happened to you was just an awful fluke. I think you were put into the Reapers’ Game intentionally,” he said.

Sora looked up to meet Neku’s eyes. “What do you mean?”

“When I was here the first time, it wasn’t because I was an unlucky kid who died unexpectedly. I was chosen by the Composer to be his proxy in a month-long game against the Conductor. He killed me in a back street and put me into the Reapers’ Game. He later became my Game Partner to keep tabs on me in my second week.”

“Wait… Game Partner? You mean…?” Sora wondered.

Neku nodded. “Yeah. The Composer is Joshua,” he confirmed.

Sora’s eyes widened. “And you say he’s your friend?” he asked in disbelief.

“It’s complicated. He thought that Shibuya was corrupted by everyone’s vices and had to be destroyed. The Conductor wanted to change his mind, and his idea to do that was to use ‘O-Pins’ to brainwash everyone. I stopped the Conductor’s plan, but Joshua revealed that he was going to destroy Shibuya. I refused to let him, so he challenged me to a duel, where to win I would have to shoot and kill him. But in spite of everything, I couldn’t bring myself to shoot him. He shot me and won the Game, but I guess he changed his mind, because he decided to spare Shibuya. He cleaned up the O-Pins and brought me, Shiki, Beat, and Rhyme back to life.”

“So you forgave him and consider him to be a friend?” Sora asked skeptically, horrified that someone would do such a thing.

Neku shrugged. “Not exactly. I can’t really forgive him for what he did. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive him. But, believe it or not, I’ve learned to trust him,” he clarified. “What he did, what he put me through, it was rough. But I came out better for it. And I think he did, too. So, yeah. I trust that he’ll make the right call in the end.”

Sora crossed his arms. “Uh, okay. So, what were you saying earlier about me being put in the Reapers’ Game intentionally?”

“I think Joshua killed you to get you involved in this.”

Sora stared at Neku in disbelief, having no idea how to respond. Neku could tell that he was not amused, and he could not blame him.

Sora elected to divert them from the uncomfortable conversation. “We need to get back to tracking the Taboo Noise,” he said, his irritation at the revelation seeping into his biting tone.

Neku nodded. “Let’s try scanning. Someone might have seen or heard something.”

He and Sora did so. They listened to several thought fragments, skipping over the irrelevant trains of thought, before they both heard a thought that piqued their interest.

_ It sucks that someone stole Akio’s Play Plus. I hear a bunch of other people were robbed up near Cadoi City today… _

Sora and Neku swapped knowing glances. “You think these thieves might be the same ones from yesterday?” Neku asked.

“We’ll see if they piled it all up,” Sora replied.

“The question is, are they related to the Noise?” Neku added.

Sora shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

They ran up to Cadoi City and searched the area. It was not long before they found a pile of junk much like the one that Riku and Beat had mentioned the day before. A crowd had formed around it, but a few police officers were attempting to move them away so that they could take stock of the items.

“Now, let’s find some Noise,” Sora said. He and Neku scanned, and immediately saw a few Taboo Noise sigils, which closed in on them. In a few minutes, they defeated all of the Noise. When the fights were over, they took a minute to catch their breath.

“That was a lot of them,” Neku noted. “I think it’s safe to say there was a link between them and the junk.”

“Yeah. You think whoever put it all here is still around?” Sora asked.

“What a zetta letdown! You canceled them out before the problem became interesting!” Sora and Neku looked around to find the person who spoke. Neku’s eyes widened as he recognized the voice. He gasped when he looked up and saw a man standing on top of the junk pile, glaring down at them. The man was tall compared to Sora, a few inches taller than Neku, and had a light tan, messy ash brown hair, and light brown eyes. He wore ripped gray jeans, a short-sleeved black coat with a high collar and four brass buttons on either side of the chest, black boots, a red bandanna, and a black hat with a short visor. A belt was slung through loops on his coat, but he had not bothered to actually secure it, so both ends hung limp at his sides. His hands and forearms were tattooed completely with black flame art, and a tattoo was partially visible on what was exposed of his chest.

“You,” Neku muttered in horror and disbelief.

The man, who appeared to be a couple of years older than the Players, jumped off of his sculpture. Sora and Neku jumped back to get out of his way as he landed where they had stood.

“I had this big showcase for you! But you had to factor out the equation!” the man ranted.

Sora was bewildered by the man’s mannerisms. “Who is this whackjob?” he asked.

“Sho Minamimoto,” Neku answered. “Reaper, former Game Master, and all-around pain-in-the-butt.”

Sora blinked as the information sank in. “Oh. I thought you said he was dead.”

Minamimoto laughed. “You can’t cancel me out that easily!” He raised an eyebrow when he set his eyes on Neku and smirked. “Well, this is a familiar variable. I was wondering why my numbers were all being crunched. It’s been a while.”

“What are you doing here?” Neku asked.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m showing off my magnificent art and deriving power to subtract out the undesirable variables!” Minamimoto boasted.

Sora sighed. “In Japanese, please?”

“Ha! Well, aren’t you so zetta slow? You may be an unforeseen variable, but you’re still a factoring hectopascal!”

“Um…?”

“If you can’t keep track, just ignore him,” Neku advised.

“My art isn’t to be ignored!” Minamimoto protested. “And I don’t appreciate you binomials and your derivatives sabotaging it!” He gestured to the police officers who were in the process of dismantling the pile of junk to take stock of the stolen items. “And cutting down on the wrong side of the equation. Newsflash! Taboo > Hectopascals!”

“So you are the one creating the Taboo Noise!” Sora accused, his and Neku’s suspicions confirmed. He took on a battle-ready stance. “Neku, let’s solve this problem right here and now.”

“Good idea,” Neku said, taking his own stance.

“You want to get crunched? Alright, then.” Minamimoto pulled a megaphone out of nowhere and started shouting into it. “Attention, yoctograms! (It’s x 2) die!” Sparks of black electricity crackled off of him and they were split into battle zones.

“Inverse Matrix!” the Reaper shouted, calling a pair of Grunge Wolves into existence. Not sure if Minamimoto was still a Taboo, but knowing that they would not be able to do real damage to the wolves without the Light Puck, Sora and Neku decided to directly engage Minamimoto, avoiding the wolves while waiting to worry about them when they had the Light Puck. Sora wrapped himself in a ring of electricity and threw himself at Minamimoto, but his opponent teleported away right before he could strike. “Zetta slow!” he taunted when he reappeared several feet away, next to a car. Sora used Psychokinesis to pull the car, hitting Minamimoto from behind and knocking him down. The Reaper quickly pushed himself back to his feet. “Factorial!” He extended his hand and fired a blast of energy. After flying a few feet, the blast exploded into eight bolts which flew around the area. Sora jumped over one of the wolves and rolled upon hitting the ground, letting one of the blasts hit the wolf, though another blast flew around and hit him.

As Neku was struggling to push a Grunge Wolf off of him, he felt the warmth of the Light Puck charge him up. He called down a bolt of lightning which struck the Noise in the back, stunning it enough for him to shove it off of him. Pushing himself to his feet, he torched the wolf with Pyrokinesis, then blasted the other one with energy bolts. He heard Minamimoto shout “Die, Radian!” and dashed out of the way, only receiving a glancing blow from the stream of energy blasts, and called down more lightning bolts to dispose of the first wolf. “So zetta slow!!” Minamimoto shouted, suddenly teleporting behind Neku just as the wolf was Erased and punching him in the back. Neku was sent flying across the street, crashing painfully. Getting back up, he saw the other wolf lunging toward him. He waited for it to get close enough, then swiped at it with Shockwave power, carving right through it and destroying it with a finishing blow that transferred the Light Puck back to Sora.

The wolf had charged and sent Sora flying an instant before its own destruction. Feeling the power of the Light Puck, Sora reached out and caught onto the post of a street light, spinning around it and then letting go to throw himself back into the fray. He called down lightning bolts to strike Minamimoto, though he dodged the first one and teleported to avoid the second. Sora ran in to slash at him, but Minamimoto teleported out of the way. “You’re out of your vector!” the Reaper taunted. Sora turned to strike him again, but Minamimoto kept warping out of his reach. Annoyed, he used Pyrokinesis to start a fire behind him, then moved in for another slash. Just as he predicted, Minamimoto warped back, only to appear in the middle of the flame. He yelped in pain as the fire roasted him.

“ _ You’re _ out of your vector, Pi-Face!” Sora spat. He then blasted the Taboo Reaper with a Nexus Ray.

The Light Puck then passed over to Neku. Minamimoto smirked when he noticed the power boost leave Sora. “Sine!” he yelled, blasting Sora with a powerful energy blast. “Cosine!” Sora jumped to avoid another blast, then spun in midair to dodge as the blast exploded into eight more bolts, some of which flew toward him. “Tangent!” Sora used Psychokinesis to pull a sewer cover to him and caught it, holding it in front of his chest to try and block the last blast that flew toward him. The blast hit the cover and exploded, denting the iron and sending Sora flying back into a wall.

He crashed, then dropped ten feet onto the sidewalk. In pain, he tried to push himself to his feet. “Ugh. I miss Reflect,” he complained.

Neku cursed as Minamimoto kept teleporting out of the way of his attacks and either attacking him from behind or firing energy blasts at him. The Grim Heaper was definitely still a Taboo; Neku’s attacks had little effect when he did not have the Light Puck, and he was far stronger than the other Reapers that he had faced. He remembered fighting Taboo Minamimoto the previous year. Despite their efforts, he and Beat had been soundly trounced by the mutated Reaper, and they were terrified at the prospect of having to fight him again. However, there seemed to be something different about his strength, as if it had a different vibe.

He decided to turn the tables on Minamimoto now that he had the Light Puck back. He fired bolts of energy at the Reaper, changing his aim when his enemy teleported away. When he heard “So zetta slow!!” he used his own teleportation Psyche to vanish just as Minamimoto appeared behind him and struck out where he stood. Reappearing behind him, he lashed out with Shockwave, sending the Reaper reeling. However, Minamimoto regained his footing and raised his fist in the air, a manic grin on his face. “INFINITY!!” he screamed. Neku gasped in shock and horror as blasts of energy shot out of the Reaper’s fist in every direction, swirling around in search of something to destroy. The balls of energy shimmered with dark energy and purple electricity. He tried to dodge the attacks, but he was struck and knocked down by four blasts.

After rolling across the asphalt, he groaned weakly.  _ I need a Cure Drink, _ he thought. But before he could use the Pin, Minamimoto materialized in front of him and kicked him in the gut.

“SOHCAHTOA,” the Reaper said proudly, tipping his hat as he smirked down at his beaten opponent. After a moment of contemplation, he clicked his tongue and returned the three of them to the UG.

Sora and Neku struggled to stand up, only managing to get up on one knee. They reached for their Cure Drink pins and used them to conjure an orange soda can each. Flicking the tabs to open them, they drank the sodas and felt their strength return, their bruises heal, and the pain fade.

“He’s… too strong…” Sora groaned.

Minamimoto cackled. “Well, that was a workout! Well, this is where our paths diverge.”

“What?” Neku asked.

“I’ll plug you into the final equation. But I’ll give you a few more days to admire my art before I crunch you all,” Minamimoto replied. “I hope you will enjoy my masterpiece!” He belted out another laugh, then leapt into the air, soaring over the skyline.

Sora and Neku stared after him, wondering how they would be able to defeat him in their next encounter. Neku spoke for the both of them. “We are so一”

* * *

“BWAAAAAAAAAH!” Beat yelled when he heard what had happened, reeling back on one foot and bracing himself against the force of the preceding statement, after the whole party had reconvened in 104. “How is that Pi Face still around? We saw him get crunched!”

“When Reapers are Erased, don’t they fade away like Noise and other Players do?” Shiki asked, seeing a clear explanation for their mistake.

Beat blinked for several seconds as he considered her point. “Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“How did none of the Reapers notice he wasn’t Erased?” Riku wondered.

“Maybe he used the ‘Taboo techniques’ to conceal himself while the Reapers were cleaning up the mess from last year,” Rhyme guessed.

“Well, if he’s as strong as you’re saying, he won’t be easy to beat,” Mickey said. “We’ll need a plan.”

“Let me know how it goes,” Eri said sadly. “I think I should sit this out.”

Everyone turned to face Eri, feeling concerned for her. “Eri, what’s wrong?” Shiki asked.

“I can’t do this. I’m… I’m a coward,” Eri said, a tear rolling down her cheek.

“Eri…” Shiki wanted to say something to comfort her friend, but she did not know what to say.

“If you had someone else as your Partner, you could do so much. But I’m just dragging you down. I keep dragging you down.”

“That’s not true,” Sora assured her. “You’re not a burden.”

“Eri, I don’t一”

“I can’t! I just… I’m sorry!” Eri turned and ran away, crying.

“Eri, wait!” Shiki called after her, but she kept running. She sighed in dismay, not sure what she should do.

Naminé, sympathizing with Eri’s insecurity, stepped forward, wondering if there was anything she could do. “I’ll go talk to her,” she said.

Shiki shook her head. “No. I should,” she argued.

“I think talking about it with you is what scares her,” Naminé countered. “I think it might be better if someone whom she isn’t as close with went.”

Shiki nodded, realizing that she was probably right. Naminé went off to find Eri. Aqua approached Shiki, curious about the exchange that had just occurred. “What’s going on?” the bluenette asked.

Shiki sighed. “When we stepped outside, we were attacked by Taboo Noise. Instead of standing and fighting like Sora and Neku did, Eri ran for a place to hide,” she recounted. “I think she’s terrified of the Taboo Noise, after one of them attacked us in the Realground and hurt her.”

“I can understand that,” Aqua said sincerely. “I’ll go talk to her, too.”

Naminé and Aqua found Eri sitting on a bench beside a rack of shirts, crying. Aqua grabbed a tissue and handed it to her. “What’s wrong?” Naminé asked.

Eri sniffed. “I can’t fight the Taboo monsters. I know I’m supposed to, but I just can’t do it,” she lamented. “We can’t fight them without a Light Puck, right? If we get attacked by those things, I’m just going to get her killed. I’m weak. I’m a coward.”

Aqua shook her head. “You’re not a coward. There’s nothing weak about being afraid, especially after what you’ve been through,” she consoled her. “I spent months, though to everyone else it was twelve years, in a hostile environment where powerful monsters hunted and tried to kill me. I think I’m on the way to recovering, but I still see them bearing down on me when I close my eyes. And the first time I saw something that reminded me of my experience一and it was really harmless, too一I had a breakdown. Eri, you have every reason to be afraid. You shouldn’t beat yourself up over it.”

“But she’s only in this because of me. All I ever do is hurt her.”

“What do you mean?” Aqua asked.

“For a long time, Shiki had wanted to be a fashion designer, coming up with clothes like I can,” Eri explained, tugging on her shirt sleeve to indicate that the garments she wore were her own design. She then silently cursed herself, that it would seem as though she was showing off. “One day, she was pouting about how she couldn’t come up with a good design. I tried to cheer her up, and I told her that she wasn’t meant to be a fashion designer.” Another tear rolled down her face as she remembered that fateful day. “I wanted to say that she was an amazing seamstress. I was trying to cheer her up and encourage her, but I only hurt her feelings. She ran away crying before I could explain what I meant. The next thing I hear, she’d died in a horrible accident.”

“So you blamed yourself, because you said the wrong thing and hurt her feelings?” Naminé guessed. Eri nodded. “Is that why you’re second-guessing whatever you say or do?” Eri looked up at her in surprise, wondering how she figured that out. “I’m not really used to this, but I’ve seen fourteen years of body language. I noticed you tense up when you showed us that you designed your own clothes, as if you were afraid we’d misinterpret what you were saying. You’re afraid you’ll say something wrong and hurt someone again.”

Eri nodded. “A lot of the time, I keep my mouth shut until I know for sure that I’m going to say what I’m trying to say. But sometimes I slip up, and I think I might have said something the wrong way, and that I might have offended someone. I can’t even bring myself to tell Shiki how I really feel.”

Naminé put her hand on Eri’s shoulder sympathetically. “I know your anxiety,” she said. “For just about my whole life, I’ve been afraid that if I used my powers, I would only ever hurt people. Even when I used them to fix damage that I had done, I had to be careful that I didn’t make things worse. Even then, events beyond my control ensured that there would still be tragedy. After all the pain I caused, I didn’t think anyone would want me around.” She glanced back over to Sora, Riku, and her other friends. “But I was wrong. Our friends still care about us, Eri. They wouldn’t want us to let our fears shackle us.”

Aqua nodded. “She’s right. If you’re always afraid of what you might say, you’ll never be able to let your friends know how you feel.” She remembered a similar event in which she misspoke and said something hurtful, when she accused Terra of putting himself too close to the darkness. Though she had doubted the claim that Terra had willingly stolen a heart, she had still been concerned that he would be in danger from his inner darkness. However, she had overstepped, let him realize that she had been sent by Master Eraqus to watch over him, and inadvertently made him believe that they did not trust him, driving him away. At the same time, she had nearly lost Ventus’ faith as well. She wondered if things would have turned out differently if she had not accidentally pushed her friends away. She shook her head. The past is the past. She could not let it drag her down.

“You made a mistake. You should learn from it, rather than just let it weigh you down,” she advised.

Eri sniffed, and turned to Aqua and Naminé, a soft smile forming on her face. “Thanks. I guess you’re right.”

Meanwhile, the main group had continued to discuss the Taboo Noise situation.

“Okay, so Pi Face is still around, but we can’t beat him,” Shiki recapped. “What should we do now?”

“Maybe we should let the Reapers know what we’ve found,” Rhyme suggested.

“What?! No way we sharing excel with those guys!” Beat protested.

Riku crossed his arms and stared at Beat in bewilderment.  _ Is this guy really that short on “excel”? _ he wondered. Most of the others were similarly confused by his malapropism, save for Goofy, who did not notice.

“But with Pi Face Erasing Players and Reapers alike, we’re on the same side. ‘The enemy of our enemy is our friend’,” Rhyme argued.

“She’s right,” Sora agreed. He took his phone out as he had an idea. “Hey, we’ve been getting mission texts from the GM, right? You think we can text him back?”

Neku and Shiki’s eyes widened as they realized that it was a very good idea. “Worth a try,” Neku said.

Sora opened up the mission message and began typing: “Sho Minamimoto is behind the Taboo Noise attacks.” He hit SEND and smiled when the message appeared to go through. “Hope that worked,” he said.

“Now that we all know what we’re up against, we can work together to come up with a strategy,” Mickey declared.

“But before we try to fight him, we still need to find that Taboo Refinery Sigil, and figure out how he got them to breach into the RG,” Shiki added.

“Good point. We should probably go back out and search for clues,” Neku suggested.

“Okay. We’ll see you when you get back,” Riku said.

“Unless the Reapers knock you out before you do so. In which case, see you tomorrow,” Donald added.

Sora nodded. “Okay.”

* * *

When Sora and Neku stepped outside, night had already fallen. However, the streets were illuminated by streetlights, residence windows, traffic signals, and the 104 Jumbotron. They traveled west, looking around and scanning for anything out of place. After fighting a set of Taboo Noise in A-East, they stopped to decide where to search next. Their discussion came to a halt when they heard a voice coming from a nearby alley. “Hand over your money, and no one gets hurt.” Turning to the source of the voice, they ran into the alley and saw a man pointing a gun at a terrified couple.

“Hey!” Sora shouted. He groaned, mentally cursing himself for forgetting that people in the Realground could not see or hear him. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

“I don’t know,” Neku admitted. “I’ve never had to do something like this before.”

Sora circled the mugger, noticing that he had his finger on the trigger, and his hand was twitching. The slightest surprise could cause him to shoot. He tried to think of a way to stop such an incident. Should he Imprint the man, put a thought into his head telling him to drop the weapon? No, that might confuse him and cause him to panic. Was there a way to keep the hammer from falling if he pulled the trigger?

Sora’s eyes widened as he came up with an idea. He remembered how he threw the trash bin at the frog Noise on the first day, and he recalled Neku telling him about Reaper Creeper. He could try to hold the hammer in place, but it seemed like a delicate operation that could backfire if he did it wrong.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman pull her wallet out of her purse, but her shaking hand caused her to fumble and drop it. He realized that this would cause the mugger to shoot by mistake and knew he had to do something fast. Realizing that he did not have the time to be delicate, he instinctively shoved his hand straight through the gun just as the mugger flinched and pulled the trigger.

The gun clicked, but did not fire. The mugger and his would-be victims looked at the gun in confusion. The mugger wondered how it could have jammed, and as he turned it away from the couple to examine it, they took the time to turn and run. Sora and Neku let out a breath that they had not realized they were holding in. Sora’s relief turned to anger and he roughly grabbed the gun and ripped it out of the mugger’s hand, leaving the man surprised as the gun floated in midair in front of him. Before he could make a move for it, Sora swung it, striking him across the face with the butt of the pistol hard enough to knock him out instantly. The mugger fell to the ground with a thud while Sora held the cracked gun in his hand

Neku stepped up to Sora. “Not bad,” he commended. However, Sora did not pay attention. He was entranced by the shape of the gun, particularly the front. Neku noticed Sora’s focus on the weapon. “Uh, are you alright?” he asked.

“Y-yeah,” Sora replied. “It’s just that… I think I’ve seen this before.” He had a flashback to his last living memory, as he spun around and saw, for a split second, a similar shape. Or, perhaps, it was the same shape. “Neku, I think this was the last thing I saw before I woke up in the Reapers’ Game.”

“I’ve seen a gun model like that too. Far too many times,” Neku remarked.

The moment in the back alley played back in his mind over and over, and Sora quickly put together what must have happened, figuring out how he must have died. “Neku, I think I was shot.”

Neku nodded, figuring as such. He took a closer examination of the gun. “Yep. That’s definitely the same kind of gun that Joshua had,” he muttered.

“The same kind he had when he shot you, you mean?” Sora surmised.

Neku nodded. “Exactly.”

Sora dropped the gun next to the mugger in disgust, and he and Neku walked away.


	125. Chapter 124: Refinery

“The Reapers have weird timing for our sleep cycles,” Sora remarked after waking up on the morning of the fifth day. He and Neku were in a new location this time, though he vaguely recognized some of the buildings.

“It’s better than when Konishi just knocked me and Beat out to bump us back a day just when we were getting somewhere,” Neku replied as he did stretches. “Looks like we’re at Shibu-Q Heads today.”

“Wait, I know this place,” Sora mumbled. He turned around and stared down the path he had gone five days ago.

Their phones beeped and Neku pulled his out. “Mission alert,” he said.

“This way,” Sora said, beckoning for Neku to follow him as he ran up the street.

“Wait! We have a mission,” Neku protested.

“It’s not far.” Sora kept running. Neku sighed and followed him. He wondered if the next district would be blocked off if it were not related to the mission, but they did not run into a barrier. After a minute of running, they entered a back alley, which both Sora and Neku recognized. They slowed their pace as they walked around the alley, taking in the scenery.

“This is the place,” Sora said. “This… This is where I died.”

Neku nodded. “Udagawa Back Street. It used to be my favorite spot in the city. Away from the crowds, back when I avoided them. And up there is CAT’s biggest mural. Now this place just gives me chills.” He walked up to the CAT mural and tapped his foot on the ground. “I was standing right here when I died.”

Sora positioned himself at the bottom of the stairs. “I think I was standing right here when I died.” He glanced around, looking for anything that would indicate what had happened, but there was nothing to be found. “No body, no tape marking where I was found, not even a blood spatter. It’s as if nothing even happened.”

“You know that the tape outline only happens on TV, right?” Neku remarked.

“Either way, what happened to my body?” Sora asked.

“I can explain.” The teens turned to the source of the voice, which was a slightly high-pitched lilt. They saw a slender boy standing twenty feet away from Sora. He had neck-length pale blond hair and grey eyes. He wore a light blue short-sleeved button-down shirt, black slacks, and white shoes with black soles and laces. Sora and Neku immediately recognized him. Sora glared at the stranger, identifying him as the boy who was watching him in Molco and who he followed afterward. “Oh. My apologies. My name is J一”

Faster than the teen, named Yoshiya Kiryu and generally called Joshua, could process, Sora’s half-gloved fist appeared right in front of him, and he suddenly felt an explosive pain in his face and his back, at the same time that he heard a noise that sounded like brick and concrete being smashed apart. When his vision cleared and he coughed on the dust that billowed around him, he noticed that Sora was now thirty feet away from him, rubbing his knuckles and fiddling with the joint of his thumb. Groaning from the pain, he pushed himself out of the wall crater and took a few steps forward, brushing the dust off of his shirt. “I suppose I deserved that,” he admitted, his voice sounding off-pitch due to a broken nose. He took his phone out and pressed a few buttons. A flash of light enveloped him and he was suddenly good as new, the dust on his person gone, his nose repaired, and his hair in pristine condition.

Neku ran to join them, hopping up and sliding down the center railing on his feet before landing next to Sora. “Sora, this is Joshua. Joshua, I presume you’re already familiar with Sora,” he greeted.

Joshua waved. “Hello, Neku. It is good to see you.” He turned back to Sora. “I suppose I have quite a bit of explaining to do.” He cleared his throat. “Last week, I felt a dark aura, and I theorized that it was the same twisted power that gave rise to the Taboo Noise last year. When I realized that they were attacking the Realground as well as the Underground, I knew that Reapers and Players would not be enough to stop the threat to Shibuya.”

“So now you want to save Shibuya?” Sora remarked.

Joshua snickered. “I’ll admit, I still have my doubts. When I look down on the people, I still see their rage, their hate, their misery, envy, fear, and self-deprecation. I have trouble hearing a beautiful symphony from the crowds, only a cacophony of selfish wants.”

“But Joshua, there’s more to the world than just the darkness. There’s so much light,” Sora argued. “There’s joy, love, friendship, courage, empathy, compassion…” He suddenly felt bad for him. Joshua’s focus on the negative was nothing like Maleficent’s wickedness; rather, his misanthropy reminded him of Xemnas, who had appeared to believe that having a heart only meant pain and anger (although he now questioned how much of that attitude was genuine).

“You’re probably right,” Joshua replied. “Maybe  _ I’m _ the noise. But when I look down on Shibuya and see its overwhelming ills, I remember Neku and his friends, and what he’s shown me, and I try to see things from his point of view. Now, I figure that if people like Neku can appreciate Shibuya, then they might have a better idea than I do. So, yeah. I’m on the ‘Save Shibuya’ team this time around.” There was a pause as he attempted to get back on track. “Now, where was I?”

“You were saying that Players and Reapers wouldn’t be enough to stop the Grim Heaper,” Neku answered helpfully.

Joshua frowned. “I knew I should have made sure he was down for the count,” he mused. He waved it off, choosing to remain focused on the conversation. “I searched out, trying to find something that could turn the tide, and that’s when I realized you and your friends were a few hours’ flight away. To ensure you arrived, I altered your trajectory, used my limited reach beyond Shibuya to tilt your ship into the right direction. I thought the power you and your friends possessed would be what we needed to fight the threat on both fronts.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Sora remarked. He held his hand out as if to summon his Keyblade, but nothing happened. “I don’t have access to my Keyblade or my magic like this.”

Joshua shrugged, conceding the point. “I did consider the possibility that that would happen, though I certainly would have preferred that you kept them. Nevertheless, I thought it was necessary that you be here to connect your friends in the Realground to the situation in the Underground.”

“And that’s why you wanted me in the Reapers’ Game?” Neku guessed.

Joshua nodded. “I told Neku about the danger, but since I wasn’t entirely sure of the nature, I left out the details of my suspicions. I convinced him to let Mr. Hanekoma use his backdoor technique to let him manifest in the UG, and it seems he did the same thing with Shiki and Eri. I also told him that I was going to bring you in and to make a Pact with you.”

Sora blinked in shock and turned to Neku. “You knew about it?” he asked.

Neku sighed. “He just said he was going to recruit you, but I was afraid that ‘this’ was what he meant,” he admitted. “I actually thoughtーand hopedーthat he was just going to ask for your help and let you into the UG the same way I came.” He turned to Joshua. “Why didn’t you just do that, anyway?”

Joshua shook his head. “It isn’t that simple. The backdoor only works for someone who’s already been on the other side and back again. We’re lucky Mr. H even had that at his disposal,” he explained. “It was really close with Eri, and it only worked because she was wounded by a Taboo Noise and was at death’s door. So, you see, the only way to bring you in, Sora, was to kill you.”

“An apology would be nice, considering you murdered me for an errand,” Sora said coldly. “And you ripped Kairi out of existence, too.”

Joshua waved his hand as if to brush it off. “I assure you, your life will be restored after this is over. Which is also why I removed your body from the scene. I didn’t want any nasty police reports to shock and demoralize your friends when this was never going to be a permanent status. As for your friend, Kairi, her disappearance was only due to the Game’s rule regarding the Entry Fee. She will be returned when you are restored as well.”

Sora sighed, reluctant to accept that everything was just as Joshua said, but he found no reason to argue further. He could only go along with him. Also, despite his feelings about Joshua and his actions, he did want to help Neku and everyone in Shibuya, and he believed that Joshua’s stated motives were genuine. “So, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

Joshua snickered mischievously, which did not improve Sora’s personal opinion of him. “Well, you and your friends seem to have figured out one part of it. Your magic and your Keyblades’ light can destroy the Taboo Noise in the Realground. The other part is why I chose you specifically. I believe that your own strong heart will have the power to turn the tide against the power that Minamimoto has gathered.” He put his hand to his chin as he contemplated certain details. “But first, of course, we’ll need to strip him of his power base and prevent further lives from being taken. To do that, we need to locate the Taboo Refinery Sigil and destroy it. Atukaze and Takagi instructed the Reapers to do their search, but we could use your eyes, too.”

Sora crossed his arms. “Okay. Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“Well, first, I think you have a mission to complete,” Joshua advised.

Sora and Neku checked their phones and read the text message. “Expunge the negativity at Tipsy Tose Hall. You have 120 minutes. Fail and face Erasure. -The Reapers,” Sora read. He checked the timer on his hand. “Sixteen minutes down. Where’s Tipsy Tose Hall?”

“It’s not far. I’ll show you,” Neku answered. He began to lead Sora along the way.

Joshua smiled as he watched them go. “Good luck, Neku, Sora.”

Neku turned to look back at him, but Joshua was gone. He turned back and ran to his destination, with Sora following close behind.

* * *

“Um, I’m not too sure about this anymore,” Naminé said nervously.

“Just relax. You’ll do great,” Rhyme assured her, helping her to remain balanced on Beat’s skateboard.

When the group had met up first thing in the morning, Beat and Rhyme had decided to do something fun with their new friends. When Naminé had expressed a curiosity regarding Beat’s skateboard, he offered to teach her how to ride it. Rhyme lent her helmet and kneepads to the newbie and the siblings proceeded to show her the ropes. But when it came time for her to try it out herself, she became nervous and fearful. Fortunately, Beat, Rhyme, Riku, Mickey, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy were quick to show their support.

“Don’t worry. If you want to stop, just put your foot down,” Riku told her. “If that doesn’t work, then I’ll catch you.”

Naminé smiled, glad that her friends had her back. She took a deep breath, then pushed off. Standing with both feet on the board as it rolled down the street, she realized that she enjoyed it. She turned to see that Riku and Goofy were walking alongside her, ready to help her if she faltered. Feeling confident, she gave herself another push, skating down the street faster. She let out a laugh as she went, but she soon put her foot down and stopped herself as she saw someone in her path, too engrossed in texting to notice her. The teen finally looked up and noticed her when her foot bumped against the skateboard, and she promptly apologized and went on her way.

Riku and Goofy, followed by Beat, Rhyme, Aqua, Mickey, and Donald, caught up with her. “What’d you think?” Beat asked.

Naminé laughed. “That was fun!” she replied.

Beat let out a whoop. “Alright! Now, how about I show you how to turn on this and weave around.”

Before he could take his skateboard back to demonstrate, however, the group heard a set of screams from further down the street. All of the nearby pedestrians turned to see what the commotion was, and they then turned and ran in the opposite direction. Beat grabbed Rhyme’s hand so that she would not get swept up in the mob, and Riku did the same with Naminé. As people fled, they began to make out the source of the disturbance, which of course was a rhinoceros Taboo Noise.

Mickey jumped above the crowd, and Goofy vaulted Donald into the air, and they fired their spells at the monster. After grumbling for a moment about not being able to fight the Noise, Beat started to help guide the civilians to safety in an orderly manner, along with Rhyme and Goofy.

When there was nobody between them and the Noise, Riku let go of Naminé and told her to take cover while he summoned his Keyblade and charged at the creature. He slashed at its head, but his Keyblade bounced off as if it had hit the armor of a Large Body. In response, the rhino jabbed its horn at him. He shifted and barely avoided being impaled, and the horn went under his armpit. However, this was enough for the monster, who swung its horn up, carrying Riku and tossing him into the air. Aqua jumped up and caught him. When they landed, he clutched his shoulder, groaning in pain, so she cast Cure on him. Unfortunately, the rhino seemed ready to attack again. It lowered its head to point its horn directly at them and pawed the ground.

Naminé gasped and instinctively reached her hand out as the rhino began to charge. “No!” she yelled. Just then, a circle of yellow light appeared below the Noise, and a series of glowing yellow chains shot up and wrapped around its legs, body, and neck. The chains grew tighter until the rhino was completely immobilized. Everyone stared in utter shock at the bound creature. Naminé felt a surge of energy flow through her, and she realized that the magic was her own doing.

Remembering that such spells did not last for a long time, she snapped out of her trance. “Can someone do something before the spell wears off?” she asked.

Riku blinked. “Oh, right. Thanks.” Picking his Keyblade back up, he ran around behind the rhino and began to slash at it. Aqua, Mickey, and Donald soon joined him in fighting the monster until it dissolved into television static. When it was Erased, the chains faded away, as they no longer had something to bind.

The party regrouped around Naminé, who was still staring at her hand in wonder. “Way to go, Naminé,” Riku commended. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“Y-Yeah. Neither did I,” Naminé replied.

“I recognize that spell,” Aqua said. “I’ve even used it a few times. It’s called ‘Bind’. Though, I don’t remember there being any chains.”

“Maybe the chains are just her thing,” Donald guessed. “I’ve seen the aura of some spells form into shapes depending on the caster’s heart, and some weapon attacks create shapes with their own auras.”

Beat scratched the back of his neck and glanced upward, expressing his confusion. “Uh, look, man. I don’t get what any of that means,” he admitted.

“I think it’s like how certain Pins work for different people,” Rhyme explained. “Like how my Psych worked by charging forward and knocking everything down and yours worked like you were playing Poker.”

Beat smiled and nodded. “Oh. I get it… I think.”

“Anyway, we should probably get back to looking for that Taboo Refinery Sigil,” Mickey suggested. “If it’s spewing out Noise on this plane, we might be able to see it.”

“How should we go about doing that?” Goofy asked.

“We can ask around. We can show people Naminé’s drawing and see if anyone has seen it,” Aqua said.

“Good idea,” Naminé commended. Riku took the paper out of his pocket and began to unfold it.

“Well, let’s get searching,” Riku said.

* * *

Sora and Neku scanned the area of Tipsy Tose Hall, a district lined with stores that sold toys and games, as well as an arcade, and saw that it was filled with Noise. “Well, this is definitely the site of the mission,” Sora noted.

Neku nodded. “Yeah. But why would they assign it?” he wondered. “Usually, the missions relate to something that’s happening in the RG. Like the power outage at A-East, both times. And one time, Shiki and I had to help two girls settle a misunderstanding and fix their friendship so we could stop the Negative Noise. These are all Chump Noise, and it doesn’t look like anything special is going on here.”

Sora shrugged. “Let’s just clear the mission and figure it out as we go.”

They began fighting through the Noise. They noticed that there were other Players fighting the Noise along with them. After every few fights, a few Taboo Noise sigils appeared out of nowhere, forcing them to destroy them before they got too far. They also saw that the Noise count was increasing among the Chump variants over time. Searching around for the cause, they saw one figure with a small spark over their chest, rather than a glowing figure whose mind could be read. They deactivated the scan and recognized the figure as Yoko Imaga. Deducing that she was conjuring more Noise to try to weaken and Erase some Players, Sora decided to stop her and used Psychokinesis to open the door of a car that was next to her, slamming it into her and knocking her down. Neku then tipped a trash bin over, spilling trash all over her.

Livid, Yoko climbed out of the mess and flew over to them. “What’s your problem?!” she shouted.

Neku crossed his arms and stared at her in a way that visibly noted her hypocrisy. “We just don’t want to put up with any more trouble than we have to. What about you? Aren’t you Reapers supposed to be looking for the Refinery Sigil?” he retorted.

Yoko scoffed. “I am looking. Takagi thinks it’s somewhere in this area. I was tasked with measuring the Noise flow rate around here.” She smirked. “This is just my way of going about it.”

“You’re targeting teenagers! How are you treating that like it’s a joke?” Sora asked, aghast.

Yoko shrugged. “It’s my job as a Reaper. Might as well have fun doing it,” she replied in a blasé tone.

“But you chose to be a Reaper,” Neku countered. “You could have come back to life like my friends and I did. Why’d you choose an existence like this?”

Yoko’s expression turned sober, and she let out a sigh. “There wasn’t really much to welcome me back to the land of the living. Folks had their issues. It wasn’t even limited to not accepting me as I was, gender identity and all. They just weren’t the best there were. When I saw them during my week in the Game, they either hadn’t noticed or hardly cared that I was even gone. Then my Game Partner could hardly look at me like I was a person.”

“Gender identi…? Oh,” Sora mumbled, realizing what Neku had already guessed about the Reaper.

“I figured I’d like it better with the Reapers,” Yoko continued. She groaned. “Whatever. I need to get back to my post. You guys, do your mission and whatever you can to stop the Taboo Noise. Takagi said you two were off-limits anyway.” With that, she flapped her wings and propelled herself back to where she had been standing, albeit a bit further back so that she did not stand among the trash.

Neku turned to face Sora. “We should get back to what we were doing, too,” he said.

Sora nodded. He tilted his head to the side when something caught his eye, and he squinted to make out two figures on a bench outside of a store called  _ Stride _ . “Hey, there’s Shiki and Eri,” he said, pointing in their direction.

Neku turned to see them. “I wonder how Eri’s holding up since yesterday,” he mused.

“Let’s go talk to them,” Sora suggested. Neku nodded in agreement, and they walked over to the girls. Eri still appeared to be down on herself, and it appeared that Shiki had been trying to comfort her but was unsure what to say now. “Hey. You doing alright?” Sora asked.

Eri sighed. “I just don’t know what to do,” she lamented. “I’m too scared to fight those monsters, and I’m scared that I’m only going to get someone killed because I’m too much of a coward to help out.”

“Hey, you’re not a coward,” Sora assured her. “I can definitely understand being afraid of the Taboo Noise. Heck, Neku’s faced them and worse before, but when we first saw them the other day, he was terrified. And, really, I was scared, too. I’ve seen a lot of different monsters, but there was something new and creepy about the Noise. And the Taboo Noise? Those red eyes are something else.”

“Sora!” Neku whined, embarrassed that Sora had mentioned how scared he was.

Sora blinked and glanced at Neku, realizing his misstep. He chuckled nervously. “Uh, sorry.” Shiki giggled.

“You don’t seem afraid when you face them,” Eri said.

Sora shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to fighting monsters like that. Almost to the point where it’s just another part of my routine. Wow. That really sounds like it sucks now that I say it out loud. Anyway, well, people face their fears differently. It’s not always as easy as I make it look.”

“Then how should I face my fears?” Eri asked. “How can I stand up to those things and stop holding Shiki back?”

Sora thought about how to respond for a moment and then shrugged. “That’s going to have to be up to you,” he replied. He gave her a reassuring smile and put his hand over his heart. “But I believe in you. You might not see it yet, but you’re strong. You’re as strong as you’ll need to be. You just need to find something to draw out that strength.”

Eri sniffed. “Okay. I’ll do my best. Thanks,” she said.

“Not bad,” Neku commended. “But I think we could do with something to lift her spirits.”

Sora nodded. “You have a point.”

Shiki looked around until she glanced into the window of  _ Stride _ , where she saw two preteens playing a tabletop game. She smiled and turned back to her friends. “I have an idea,” she said. She gestured to the boys in the store.

Eri smiled. “That sounds like fun.”

“What is it?” Sora asked.

Neku smirked. “Tin Pin Slammer. It’s a really popular game,” he explained. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

The four teens entered the store and approached the table where the boys were playing. Sora saw a shelf labeled “Tin Pin Slammer”. Above it was a television screen that played a commercial for the game. It showed four pins, not unlike the ones that the Players wore, smashing against each other, with cartoonish visual effects exaggerating each hit, and performing such tricks as jumping up to smash the other pins, growing spikes to counter the aerial strikes, and conjuring hammers to spin around and hit each other. At the end of the fifteen second commercial, when three of the pins had fallen into a bottomless pit, a flashing logo for the game appeared.

The actual game appeared to be somewhat less dramatic. The boys attached their pins to top-like parts and loaded them onto rocket-shaped mechanisms that they had mounted on their hands. They shot the tops onto the table, which had been set up with obstacles and barriers like an arena and maneuvered around so that there were holes opened up. The tops knocked against each other. When one of them began to falter, one of the boys pressed a button on his gauntlet, and the top gained a momentary speed burst and so was able to keep going. The match continued until the top that had been launched from the red gauntlet knocked the other top into one of the holes and onto the floor.

“Woo! Tin Pin Slammer!” the victor cheered. He was an energetic eleven-year-old with almond-brown eyes and spiky brown hair. He wore a plain white t-shirt, a sleeveless orange jacket with purple trim and a raised collar, blue jeans, a very loosely-worn brown belt, fingerless gloves that each had a rectangle taken out of the back, and a red bandanna that was wrapped around his forehead with its free ends trailing behind. There was a band-aid on his left cheek. He wore his red Tin Pin launcher on his right wrist. “That was a good game, Yammer!”

“Heh,” the other boy, Yammer, chuckled, mildly disappointed at his loss but behaving like a good sport to his best friend nonetheless. “Right back at you, Shooter.” Yammer had brown eyes and shaggy brown hair. He wore a cream-colored t-shirt, a yellow fishing vest, green cargo pants, and blue gloves that mirrored Shooter’s black pair. He wore his blue Tin Pin launcher on his left wrist.

Shooter glanced past Yammer and saw Neku, Shiki, Eri, and Sora enter the store. “Attention! New challengers approaching!” he shouted, cupping his hand over his mouth as he pretended that he was speaking into a microphone. He and Yammer waved to the teens as they approached. “Yo! Neku! Good to see ya!” he greeted in his normal, unmuffled tone of voice (as in shouting at the top of his lungs).

Shiki and Eri winced and plugged their ears. Sora, who was used to much louder noises, was not bothered but still found it jarring. Neku seemed completely unaffected. He leaned over for an aside with Shiki. “This is why I wear headphones,” he remarked.

“Hey. You here to play some Tin Pin?” Yammer asked.

Shiki nodded. “Yep. Ready to slam!”

“Hey, I don’t think we’ve met,” Shooter said, noticing Sora. “I’m Shuto Dan, but you can call me Shooter!”

“I’m Itaru Yokoyamada, but most everyone calls me Yammer,” Yammer greeted.

“I’m Sora. So, I take it you really like this game,” Sora surmised, making small talk.

“You know it! But you better watch out if you want to challenge me. I’m known as the slickest Slammurai (dun dun DAAAH!) in town!” Shooter boasted.

“Wow. Sounds like you’re pretty good. Hey, do you think you could teach me how to play?” Sora asked.

“Yeah! I’d love to! A friend of Neku’s is a friend of mine, you know?” He took a deep breath, leaving Neku to wonder if that was the first one he actually took since the conversation began. “Okay, bro: Tin Pin’s a battle between souls!”

“Souls?” Sora parroted, confused.

Neku sighed. “Here we go,” he mumbled, remembering his abstract and unclear explanation from their first meeting.

“Yeah, bro! It’s like your fiery passion slams into the other guy’s, like WHAM!”

There was an awkward pause as Sora tried to process all of the information that he could gather from the explanation (which was just about nothing). “Huh?”

“What? You still need help?” Shooter asked in disbelief.

“Alright if I take it from here, Shooter?” Yammer stepped up and loaded his top into his gauntlet. He cleared his throat. “The point of the game is to launch your spinner onto the table and try to knock your opponent’s spinner off. You also clip your pins onto the spinners, for that extra unique flair. If the spinner starts to slow down and looks like it’s about to come to a stop, you press this buttonー” he thumbed at a button on the gauntlet “ーand the spinner will get a quick boost and keep going, or you can do it to add a little power to your clash and hit the other spinner harder. In most games and tournaments, you’re allowed four spinners and pins, and it’s game over when all of your spinners fall off of the arena. In tournaments, you’re allowed three quick saves: by which I mean, you can dip your hand in just as your spinner is falling off the table and help it back on to keep going. You can only do it three times, so you’d better make it count.”

Sora nodded, making sense of that explanation. “Oh. I think I get it now.”

Yammer smiled. “I’ll let you go against me for the first match.”

“And I’ll let you borrow my spinners,” Shooter added. He picked up one of his tops and removed his pin from it. “But you’ll have to use your own pins. You gotta fight with your own soul. You hear me, bro?”

Sora grinned. “No problem.” Taking the empty spinners to the table, he unclipped four of his own pins and attached them to the spinners. Shooter took his launcher off of his hand and handed it to Sora, who put it on. Following Yammer’s example, he loaded one of the spinners onto the launcher and pointed it toward the table. Making note of the toy’s weight and studying the obstacles that had been set up around the arena, he adjusted the angle at which he held his arm. Yammer noticed this and became nervous. Realizing this, Sora moved his wrist around some more, making it look as though he had an unsteady hand, in an attempt to make Yammer feel better. He considered that he probably should not overachieve the first time around.

“You can do it, Sora!” Shiki cheered.

“Okay, Slammers…” Shooter began, cupping his hand over his mouth again. “Slam on!”

Sora and Yammer pressed the buttons that spun the tops and launched them onto the table. They watched the spinners roll around the table, knocking into each other and bouncing off of the blocks. Eventually, Sora’s spinner knocked Yammer’s spinner off of the table. Yammer congratulated Sora for the first point, and Sora offered some words of encouragement, noticing the boy’s disappointment. Sora then reloaded his first top while Yammer loaded a new one. In the second round, Sora’s spinner knocked Yammer’s off. In the third round, Yammer’s spinner knocked Sora’s off. Sora congratulated him and Yammer smiled proudly. Sora noticed that he seemed a little too excited for a single round, and began to determine a lack of self-confidence. In the next round, Sora’s spinner pushed Yammer’s over the edge, but Yammer dove in for a save and pushed it back onto the table. When it began to slow down, Yammer pressed the button and gave the spinner a boost. After his spinner bounced off of a few of the blocks, Sora gave it a boost for a counterattack, knocking Yammer’s spinner off.

“Okay. Final pin, Yammer,” Shooter reminded his friend.

“I know. I know,” Yammer replied. He and Sora launched their spinners, and ultimately, Sora’s spinner overcame Yammer’s, winning the match.

Shiki, Eri, and Shooter cheered, congratulating Sora, who pumped his fist in the air in triumph. Neku, meanwhile, simply clapped for him. Noticing that Yammer was forcing a sportsmanlike smile, Sora stepped around the table and shook his hand. “That was a good game,” he said. “Thanks for teaching me.”

Yammer chuckled. “No problem.”

Sora turned to the others, a grin on his face. “Who’s next?”

* * *

Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri bought their own spinners, each with a different mass and shape for unique stats, and spent the next half hour playing against each other, Shooter, and Yammer. They swapped opponents after each match, and they all had some wins and some losses (even Yammer won a match against Shiki). They ended the session with two three-on-three matches side-by-side with Sora, Neku and Eri clashing spinners and Shooter, Yammer, and Shiki in a  _ mêlée à trois _ . Everyone had fun, and Eri and Yammer forgot about their own insecurities.

“Thanks!” Sora said. “This was really fun!”

“No problem, bro!” Shooter replied.

“Thank you,” Eri said, having finally cheered up.

Neku checked the timer on his hand, which indicated that the party had twenty minutes left to complete the mission. “Hey, we should get going. See you around.”

“See you!” Yammer replied cheerfully. As the teens stepped out of Stride, their pins reattached and their spinners packed in their pockets (Sora was glad that his magic clothes still had bottomless pockets even when he was no longer connected to his spells, while Eri held both her and Shiki’s spinners in her pouch), the sixth-graders began another Tin Pin match.

“Okay. Let’s finish this.” Neku scanned the area and saw that there were still some of Noise in the area, including the Taboo variety. Much to his dismay, he realized that there were not as many Players in the area as there were before. He ceased the scan and turned to Shiki and Eri. “You up for this, Eri? Sora and I will take care of the Taboo so you don’t have to face them.”

Eri nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She still did not think that she had the courage to challenge the Taboo Noise, but she was confident enough to take on the standard variety.

It was not long before they defeated the last of the Noise. They checked their timers and watched them disappear, indicating that the mission was complete.

“I wonder why they assigned this mission anyway,” Shiki mused.

“Joshua was playing coy when he told us to do the mission instead of just telling us what we could do to help,” Sora remarked.

Shiki gasped. “You saw Joshua?!” she asked.

Sora flicked his wrist, recalling the beginning of the encounter. “Yeah, we did.” He and Neku recounted their meeting with the Composer. The girls laughed when Sora mentioned punching him, then gasped in shock when he explained that it was Joshua who killed him in the first place.

“So, you think there might have been a reason we had to do this?” Eri wondered.

“Probably. That Reaper, Yoko, said that he was told to monitor the Noise flow rate around here,” Sora said.

“She,” Neku corrected him.

“Huh? Oh, right. She said,” Sora amended, realizing his mistake.

“She also said that the GM thought the Refinery Sigil was somewhere around here,” Neku recalled.

Sora crossed his arms, deep in thought. He scanned the area and noticed that the Taboo Noise count was rising again. Exiting the scan, he turned back to his friends. “The Taboo Noise keep showing up,” he reported.

Neku nodded. “I did notice that they kept appearing while we were fighting the rest of the Noise. It wasn’t like this anywhere else.”

Shiki gasped as she thought of something. “Where did you see the Taboo sigils?” she asked.

Sora scanned again and looked for the site of the greatest concentration of dark sigils. He quickly exited the scan before the Noise could approach him and pointed in the direction. “Over there.”

At the same time, Eri noticed a group of people approaching the district from the southeast. She announced the arrival to her friends, and they turned to see Riku, Aqua, Naminé, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Beat, and Rhyme. Naminé and Donald appeared to be in the lead. Naminé stopped and held her hand up, as if testing the air, while Donald held one of his staves like a dowsing rod.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Neku asked.

“Hey, that’s the wand Donald used when we were tracking the Nobodies with the cursed gold,” Sora mused.

“The who with the what now?” Shiki asked, bewildered by the statement.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sora waved the question off. “What I’m saying is that it looks like they’re looking for something.” He studied the staff closely as Donald waved it in different directions and saw a red glow pass along the shaft and head as it went in a certain direction.

“Do you feel anything, Naminé?” Riku asked.

The blonde nodded. “The negativity is stronger here. I think there are a lot of Taboo Noise here, but not in this plane. And I’m detecting something more concentrated over there.” She began to walk in the direction of the cloud of Taboo sigils that Sora had detected, with the others following.

“There’s one in this plane!” Aqua warned as a Grunge Wolf lunged at the party. Just as it was about to attack, Riku summoned his Keyblade and teleported between it and Naminé, slashing it across the face and sending it tumbling to the side. Aqua cast Thunder on it and blasted it with Wish Shot. Goofy blocked its next attack with his shield, but was knocked down. Mickey hit it with an upper slash, then blasted it with Blizzard when its stomach was exposed. It attempted to slash at him, but Beat picked Goofy’s shield up and hit the wolf in the face with it. While it stunned it for a few seconds, it merely angered it. However, it was distracted from the others, allowing Riku and Aqua to stab it with their Keyblades, destroying it.

“Is everyone alright?” Riku asked. Beat and Rhyme helped Goofy to his feet and Beat returned the shield to him. Everyone nodded, letting him know that no one was harmed.

“It came from that way,” Donald said, pointing in the same direction that his staff was aimed. Naminé nodded in confirmation. They led the party to a gap between two buildings. The Players followed close behind, though they were not aware of their presence. The party slowly stepped into the gap, holding whatever weapons they had at the ready in case another Noise were to burst out. Sora and Neku were also prepared to fight any Noise that tried to ambush them and the girls. They walked through the alley until they came upon a large graffiti mural near the back of the buildings.

The mural almost perfectly resembled the sigil that Neku had photographed the year before. There were only two key differences. One difference was that a completely different sigil had been worked into the design, resembling the Reaper symbol over an X. The other difference was that it was glowing red and black, pulsating with power. Donald’s staff hummed viciously in its proximity, and Naminé had a headache from standing near it. A trail of blood ran from one of her nostrils. Noticing this, Rhyme led her away from the sigil to recover and advised her to pinch her nose and lean her head forward. All the while, everyone else simply stared in awe and horror.

“Whoa, man…” Beat said, otherwise at a loss for words.

“I guess we found the source of the Taboo Noise,” Riku surmised.

“Gosh, this thing’s giving me chills just standing in front of it,” Mickey said with a shiver.

“Hang on. What’s that shape mixed up in there?” Aqua wondered.

“That looks like the symbol they put on shops so people in the UG can go in and interact with living people,” Beat explained.

“Wak! So you mean it fuses the Realground and the Underground planes together?” Donald asked, beginning to understand what was going on.

Beat crossed his arms and thought hard, trying to understand the statement. “Uh, I guess so.”

Neku sighed in mild annoyance. “I’m sorry. He’s one of my best friends, but he can be pretty dumb,” he said aloud.

“Honestly, I’m trying to keep track of everything, too,” Sora admitted, coming to Beat’s defense. “This world’s rules are almost as complicated as everything else I’ve been dealing with.”

Neku shrugged. “I’ll give you that,” he conceded.

Aqua put her hand to her chin, deep in thought. “If this sigil creates the Taboo Noise, and the symbol links the two planes together in a way that they are essentially one and the same, then this must be how the Noise have been able to appear both in the Underground and the Realground,” she surmised.

“BWAAAAAAAAAH!” Beat yelled as it finally clicked for him. “That’s how Pi Face is doing all this, yo!”

“We need to tell Sora and the others what we found,” Naminé declared, unaware that their friends were already on-site.

_ And we’ll pass it on to Joshua and the Reapers, _ Neku mused. He took a picture of the scene, setting the time so that it took a photo from ten minutes before, without the crowd that had gathered, and sent it along with a message of its location to Takagi.

“So, I guess we just leave it to the Reapers to somehow destroy it,” Shiki said.

Sora nodded. “I guess so. I don’t think there’s anything we can do now.”

“Do you think we can seal this?” Mickey asked, posing the question to his group.

“Great idea, Mickey. It’s worth a try,” Riku replied. He took a step back and pointed his Keyblade at the sigil. However, though the tip glowed as it tried to use its magic, nothing happened. He lowered his key and shook his head. “No luck.”

“I figured that would’ve been too easy,” Donald grumbled.

Riku shrugged. “Oh, well. I guess that’s all we can do right now. Let’s meet up with the others and see what we can do next.”

Neku nodded. “Yeah. Let’s meet up with them,” he agreed.

While the exchange was going on, Eri had heard footsteps coming from behind them. Nervously, she turned around in hopes of seeing whoever was there. Without thinking, she began walking to the front of the buildings that flanked the alley. As she stepped out onto the sidewalk, she heard the sound of footsteps become clearer, and now heard a hint of a scraping sound.

Shiki turned around and gasped as she saw what Eri was doing. “Eri, wait!” she called, running after her.

“Be careful!” Sora and Neku warned when they turned around and saw Shiki and Eri heading out into the street.

When Shiki caught up to Eri, they turned and froze at the sight of a Trance Rhino, which immediately ran toward them. They screamed, alerting Sora and Neku to the danger. The boys ran as fast as they could in an attempt to help, but the Noise caught up to the girls, and black electricity wrapped around them as they froze in place, as if time had stopped within the field.

“This is bad! This is really bad!” Neku panicked, worried for the girls. “Eri’s still terrified of them, and if she can’t keep the Light Puck going…” He could not bear to finish the thought.

“They’ll be fine,” Sora assured him.

“What?” Neku asked. “How do you know?”

Sora shook his head and put his hand over his heart. “I don’t know. I just believe in them.”

* * *

Shiki found herself staring down a Taboo rhino, a pair of wolves, and four frogs. After contemplating what Eri would be feeling when faced against the Taboo Noise, she decided to focus on surviving. She dropped her Mr. Mew doll to the ground and let him attack one of the wolves while she dodged attacks from the rest of the Noise. She ran around and jumped over monsters and obstacles with gymnastic feats while Mr. Mew clawed at the monsters, not doing any damage but working to build power for the Light Puck. Seeing the rhino charging toward her, she opened the door of a car that was behind her and stepped out of the way, letting the rhino run its head through the doorway and stick its horn into the roof as it stopped and regained its bearings. While it struggled to free itself, she slapped a leaping frog aside and jumped over a wolf.

She felt the warmth of the Light Puck materialize and pass onto the other zone.  _ Come on, Eri. You can do this, _ she prayed.

* * *

Eri spent the entire first minute of the “fight” running away and trying to hide from the Noise behind whatever objects she could find. A horrible scene played back in her mind the moment she saw the rhino. The dark visage was burned in her memory, the murderous glow of the red eyes burning into her soul. She could still hear her own scream from when she and Shiki had seen it and made a run for it. As they fled, she had stumbled against a car, then made the mistake of looking back at the monster as she recovered. The rhino had slashed its massive horn, shearing through the car’s hood and engine and slicing her stomach. Shiki had pulled her back just in time, or it would have completely gored her or broken her in half. Shiki managed to stall it by knocking down a garbage can in front of it as it charged, causing it to trip over it, and Mr. Hanekoma appeared to guide them to safety while holding the monster back.

It was the most horrifying experience of her life, and right now she was face-to-face with monsters with the same evil eyes, including a beast that looked just like the one that had nearly killed her. At that moment, she could not make a proper judgment call. All she could think to do was get out of there. However, the monsters made sure to block off every direction in which she tried to flee. Realizing that there was no ducking out, she decided that she would have to focus and fight back. However, constantly running away to avoid being gored did not help her relax. She turned her attention to the frogs, which were the least terrifying of the Taboo. She used Imagination Spark to shape a hammer, then swung it at the frogs. As soon as she felt the warmth of the Light Puck, she realized that her attacks were starting to do real damage to the frogs. Her confidence building, she swatted and smashed the frogs, successfully Erasing two. However, she saw the Trance Rhino rearing out of the corner of her eye and panicked, throwing the hammer at it. The hammer exploded into sparks when it made contact with the invulnerable horn. The Light Puck passed back to Shiki, and Eri resumed her fearful flight.

* * *

Shiki smiled as she watched two of the frogs fade away into television static, realizing that Eri was becoming courageous, at least enough to start fighting the weak ones.  _ Baby steps, _ she thought.  _ You got this, Eri. _

She felt the warmth of the Light Puck, so she sent Mr. Mew to attack the wolves. Recalling the incident with the Trance Rhino in the RG, she considered having her toy attack the beast from behind while she distracted it, but she did not want to have to draw its attention while dodging the wolves, so she chose to deal with the canines while running from all of the Noise. Since the Noise were focused solely on her, and Mr. Mew acted autonomously for the most part in battle, the wolves were easily cut down. When the frogs jumped toward her, she slapped them into the path of Mr. Mew’s claws, so that they were quickly destroyed as well. It was only after both wolves were slain that the Light Puck shifted back to Eri.

_ It’s all you now, Eri! You can do it! _ As she finished that hopeful thought, she somersaulted to avoid the rhino’s horn.

* * *

Eri simply gulped in fear as the Puck returned to her. She had felt that she had the strength to fight against the frogs, and hoped that she would get to at least build up the courage to fight one wolf, but her strength left her when she realized that she would be left to face the Trance Rhino directly. Rather than fight it, she ran to find a place to hide. She summoned a ball of sparks and threw it at the rhino, but its horn blocked the attack. She ran away, and the rhino began to stampede after her. Seeing that she was heading for a wall, she jumped aside at the last second and let it embed itself in the wall. She ran to hide behind a car while it thrashed about, trying to pull itself free, as she was too scared to think to take advantage of its vulnerability. She crouched and hid herself as much as she could, not wanting the monster to find her.

_ I’m sorry, Shiki. I can’t do this, _ she thought in despair. She took her phone out and opened it, staring at the picture that she had saved as her background, a selfie that she and Shiki had taken together. To their dismay, a glare on the camera had caused Shiki’s eyes to be obscured. Eri had wanted to delete it and try again, but Shiki said it was perfect. It was months before she considered that it might have had something to do with how Shiki felt inferior to her.

She would sometimes imagine different eyes filling the blank space, depending on how she was feeling at the time. During the month after Shiki’s death, she would see sad eyes welled with tears, fueled by and reinforcing her shame and self-hatred for hurting her feelings so badly. When she looked at Shiki’s face, she expected to see eyes that conveyed disappointment. However, she saw something different.

The eyes that filled the empty space seemed warm and assuring. When she saw the imaginary eyes, she saw the eyes of someone who trusted her, who had the utmost faith in her. She was confused, wondering why she was seeing this image. It was then that she heard a voice in her head.  _ They’ll be fine… I believe in them… _

She recognized the voice as Sora’s, although she did not recall ever hearing him say those sentences. However, it did cause her to remember what else he had told her.  _ You’re not a burden… You’re not a coward… I believe in you. You might not see it yet, but you’re strong. You’re as strong as you need to be… _

Lastly, she heard Shiki’s voice.  _ It’s all you now, Eri! You can do this! _ She did not know where the voice had come from, how it had suddenly appeared in her head. Unless she had spoken out through her heart…

Eri’s focus moved from Shiki’s face in the photo to her own. Her winking expression was cheerful and full of confidence and energy. On the day that they had taken the picture, she felt as though, as long as she and Shiki were side-by-side, nothing could stand in their way. She realized that that was exactly what they were, even now. Even though they were in separate zones, they were still tied together, and the Light Puck was proof that they gave each other strength. She peeked out from behind the car at the rhino, which had almost pulled itself free. The monster still frightened her, but she willed herself to remain strong.

Shiki, Sora, Neku, Beat, Rhyme, Naminé, Aqua, they all believed in her. And Shiki was depending on her right then. She could not let any of them down.

She slowly stood up and stepped out of her hiding spot. Walking at a slow but unwavering pace, still feeling the warmth of the Light Puck give her energy, she approached the monster. Keeping in mind that the horn was invulnerable, she considered what she could use to fight the rhino. Her Psych could conjure up whatever she imagined; she could use any kind of weapon or tool to destroy anything that stood in her way. She finally realized that she really did have the power to overcome her demons.

Her thoughts of weapons and destruction gave her an idea. She pictured the desired shape in her mind, then waved her hand in a circle, creating the same shape out of sparks. Once the circle had fully materialized, she stopped moving her hand, then pulled it back, taking a few steps back so that the shape extruded into a long cylinder. She made a fist at the bottom of the cylinder at the halfway point, then lowered it to create a bar which she could wrap her hand around, and then stuck her index finger out to create the shape of a trigger and guard. Gripping the handle and trigger with one hand, holding the front end on the other hand, and resting the back end on her shoulder, she aimed her new spark-generated rocket launcher at the rhino, which had finally pulled itself free. As the construct was nearly weightless and would not have a fierce recoil, she was safe as she pulled the trigger, launching a fiery blast at the rhino’s rear flank. The rocket exploded on contact with enough force to send it sliding away and make it lose its footing. Eri cheered in triumph, letting the rocket launcher dissolve.

After a moment, the rhino stood back up and turned to face her, its red eyes flaring with rage.  _ Okay, I need to get behind it to do real damage, _ she thought.  _ Let’s see… how do I do that? I know! I need speed. What can I use for that? _ She looked down at her feet and smiled. She jumped into the air and willed a pair of spark-generated roller skates to appear on her feet. Once she had secured her balance, she decided to create a weapon to attack the rhino while she skated around it. She held her hands in front of her face, then moved them apart, her left hand faster than her right, then she gripped her right hand around the handle of the spark shortsword that she had created. She watched the rhino paw the ground and took a deep breath. It charged, but she swiftly maneuvered to the side, slicing its flank with her sword, then turned around and slashed at its rear end while it stopped itself.

The rhino suddenly spun and slapped her with the side of its horn, knocking her to the ground and causing the sword and skates to disperse. As she picked herself up, she saw the rhino move in to stab at her. Thinking quickly, she locked her fingers together and pulled them apart, forming the sparks into strands. She sidestepped the Noise’s attack and lashed her length of sparks at its face like a whip. She hopped and created a trampoline under her feet, on which she bounced a few times. She lashed her whip under the horn, then jumped off of the trampoline to land on the rhino’s back, catching the flying end of the whip in her free hand. She pulled up with all of her strength, pulling the horn up by a few degrees and causing the rhino obvious discomfort. It bucked and stampeded, trying to get rid of her, but with her new reinsーas well as a belt that she conjured to secure her in placeーshe stayed on. The rhino only succeeded in crashing into a car, which exploded under its chin due to stray sparks flying into the engine. With the monster stunned, Eri conjured a powerful hand drill and began boring into its back, causing it to trumpet in agony. It regained its bearings and spun around quickly, dislodging Eri, who had let her belt vanish so that she could use the drill, and dropping her to the ground.

Eri groaned as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. She gasped as the rhino reared back to stomp, but she quickly scooted herself back and stood up, only being made to stumble from the shockwave when the rhino brought its weight down.

She felt that she still had the Light Puck, and saw that the rhino seemed weak, which meant she could finish the Taboo Noise off if she worked fast. The rhino charged toward her, but she raised a spark shield up to block it, and she laughed as it tripped over itself as the shield held up against the assault completely. Dropping the shield, she conjured a long dagger, ran up to the rhino’s head, and sliced its throat with the spark weapon. The final damage had been dealt, and the rhino faded into oblivion. Eri smiled confidently as she watched the monster dissolve.

She pumped her fist into the air and popped her foot up. “That’s an ‘F’ for ‘Fabulous’!” she cheered, adopting the catchphrase of one of her favorite celebrities into her victory quote.

There was a flash of light, and Shiki and Eri were back in the UG. Sora and Neku watched the Trance Rhino and surrounding lightning disappear. The girls caught their breath and looked around. Realizing that they had won the fight, they hugged each other and squealed in delight.

“I… I did it!” Eri said, still amazed that she had overcome the Taboo Noise.

“I knew you could do it!” Shiki congratulated her friend.

Neku breathed a sigh of relief, while Sora laughed. “Way to go! How do you feel?” Sora asked.

Eri chuckled. “It’s a rush,” she replied. “You were right. I did have the strength inside me. Thank you.”

Sora nodded. “No problem.”

“I’m glad to see you’re making out alright.” The Players turned around to see Takagi approaching, carrying a paper bag filled with cups of ramen and cutlery. He set the bag down and held a cup out to the Players. “Ramen?” he offered.

* * *

Apparently, one of the perks of being a high-ranking Reaper was the use of Psychs and other special abilities outside of battle zones, as he demonstrated by preparing and cooking the Cup Noodles by hand. In a few minutes, everyone had started eating their ramen lunch.

“What did you mean by what you said earlier? Shouldn’t you be gunning for our Erasure?” Neku asked.

Takagi shrugged. “It’s not that simple. The way I see it, the Reapers’ Game is for the benefit of the Players. It’s your fight for a second chance, and you grow as people while doing so. It’s the Reapers’ job to challenge you and force you to grow. We see who can make it and who doesn’t,” he explained.

“I guess that makes sense,” Sora said.

“Yeah. I can’t imagine that so many people would sign up for a life of slaughtering people,” Shiki mused.

“I think the ‘Erase Players to survive’ rule was put in to enforce the Reapers to challenge the Players to overcome their vices and grow. Otherwise, I guess they’d probably hold their hands through the missions,” Takagi said. “Some of the Harriers take their jobs with a little too much vigor, like Uzuki and Yoko, but they’re not all bad people. Heck, 777 barely even involved himself in hunting Players, doing the bare minimum to survive, and he spent a lot of weeks off, and even most of his time on, practicing with his band.”

“When Beat was a Reaper, he never actually Erased anyone,” Neku recalled. “The only ones he actually attacked were me and Joshua, but he always left instead of finishing us off.”

Takagi nodded. “Not all Reapers like that part of the job. When I was a Support, I dreaded a promotion, because killing Players didn’t sit right with me at all. Ultimately, I worked hard and dodged promotions until I was offered an Officer position. Now, I get to do the part of the job that I was passionate about. And it really feels good to oversee this, helping them find the strength to work together and grow.”

“You don’t have a problem with them seeing you as their enemy?” Sora asked.

Takagi snickered. “Every journey needs a road of trials and a final boss. My problem is, according to the Conductor, that I’m acting  _ too _ friendly to the Players. Of course, I think he agrees with me; he just likes to keep things running like a well-oiled machine.”

Neku shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what an ideal GM was like. Other than you, I never met one who wasn’t a nutcase or a sadist,” he remarked.

Takagi laughed. “Yeah. Konishi was scary,” he agreed. The conversation died down after that point, and the group continued eating their ramen. “Thanks for finding the Refinery Sigil,” he finally said.

Shiki smiled. “No problem,” she replied. “So, what are you going to do now?”

“I passed the word on to the Conductor, and he went to tell the Composer and the Producer. My guess is they’re going to start working on Erasing that thing. That should stop more Taboo Noise from appearing and cut Minamimoto off from his power supply,” Takagi explained. “As for the Reapers, based on the Plane-blender Sigil mixed into the Refinery symbols, we think that Minamimoto has a Reaper helping him. The Officers are starting an investigation to figure out who it is. In the meantime, we’re going to put out an Emergency Call to get all hands, Support Reapers included, on deck.”

“So, what should we do during that time?” Neku asked.

“Sit tight. We’ll let you and the other Players know when we’ve figured everything out and come up with a plan of attack. It might be a good idea to hone your skills. Fight some Noise, and maybe buy some pins to get new Psychs. And be sure to map things out with your friends.”

After a minute, everyone had finished their ramen. “Well, that’s all the time I have for today,” Takagi said, collecting the empty noodle cups. “Take care, and good luck.” He gave the Players a bow, and they returned the gesture. A pair of Reaper wings sprouted from his back, and he shot into the air, flying off to meet with the Reapers and prepare for battle. In the meantime, Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri went off to do as he suggested.


	126. Chapter 125: Crunching Numbers

As they had arranged the previous night, Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri met up with Riku, Naminé, Mickey, Aqua, Donald, Goofy, Beat, and Rhyme in 104 as soon as they woke up. Having done all they could the previous night to prepare to fight Minamimoto, they waited for the day’s mission. They were only in the department store for ten minutes before the Players received a text message. They took their phones out and read the message, Neku reading it aloud.

“Mission - Assist in ending Taboo Noise crisis. Meet in West Exit Station Underpass in 30 minutes. *Bring your friends.* Time limit redundant. - The Reapers,” he quoted. He snapped his phone shut and pocketed it. “This is it.”

“Sure looks like it,” Eri agreed, a nervous tone to her voice. Sora understood her worry. She had just gained the confidence and courage to fight Taboo Noise, but their opponent for the day was far more powerful than the corrupt Noise. He was also apprehensive about fighting Minamimoto again so soon after their previous disastrous encounter. However, he knew that they had to stop him soon or he would cause immeasurable death and destruction. He had no idea if the power of Psychs would be able to overpower him, so he hoped that Riku and the others would be able to turn the tide.

“Let’s go,” Sora said decisively.

“I’m guessing they want us to come too,” Riku surmised. “The message did say ‘Bring your friends.’”

Neku nodded. “Joshua brought us here because he wanted all hands on deck. As silly as it sounds, we really need the power of all our friends to finish this.”

Donald and Goofy looked at each other in confusion. Mickey tilted his head to show his bemusement. “What’s so silly about that?” Aqua asked.

After an awkward silence, during which Sora smirked in amusement, Neku shook his head to brush the issue off. “Let’s move,” he said.

* * *

Trains rattled on the tracks above the Players and their friends as they entered the underground tunnel. Warning signs and cones were set up to deter regular people from entering, although a Plane-blender sigil that had been freshly-painted on the wall proved that a gathering was indeed planned beyond the blockade. As they made their way through the underpass, Neku explained that at the end of the tunnel was the Shibuya River, which marked the end of the Shibuya shared between the Realground and the Underground and preceded the Reapers’ base of operations.

Once they were far enough from mortal notice, they came upon a crowd of Reapers. Many wore the standard hoodie uniform that denoted their position as Support Reapers. Others were dressed more casually, and they showed off the black tattoo wings that were the primary identifier of being a Reaperーthe Harriers. Among this group, the Players, as well as Beat and Rhyme, recognized Uzuki Yashiro, Koki Kariya, and Yoko Imaga. At the far back, there were men and women in business suits. Sora and Neku guessed that they were the Officers. In the center of that group, facing out toward the rest of the crowd, three figures stood out. One was Osamu Takagi. Another was a massive man in a business suit who Neku guessed was the current Conductor. Behind him stood a human-like figure that appeared to be formed out of clouds and white light. He stood taller than Takagi, but not nearly as tall as the Conductor, and had an ethereal glow about him, although there was something familiar about him.

“Is that supposed to be the Composer?” Goofy asked his friends in a whisper.

“Is that actually Joshua?” Shiki asked in disbelief.

“No way, man,” Beat denied. “Joshua’s a skinny little prissy kid. That can’t be him.”

Rhyme gulped and held her brother’s arm tightly. She recognized the figure from when she had her soul extracted from the Noise Pin that she had been bound to and inserted into her reconstructed body. “Um, Beat? I think that is him.”

“Game Masters turn into Noise when they unleash their true power,” Neku recalled. “Maybe that’s what the Composer looks like when he’s out of his mortal form.”

“That’s somewhere between really cool and really freaky,” Eri commented. Shiki and Naminé nodded in agreement.

Neku noticed Mr. Hanekoma standing off to the left. The barista waved to them, then nodded in the direction of the Reaper Officers, indicating that the party should pay attention as they were about to begin.

Looking around, they noticed that a number of Players had joined the conference as well, although there were not nearly as many as there had been at the statue of Hachiko on the first day; there seemed to be only a dozen in total. The party took a moment to mourn the loss of the others.

At the end of the tunnel, Conductor Atukaze cleared his throat. However, this did not seem to get everyone’s attention, as some of the Players and Reapers were still engaged in private conversation. In response, BJ offered his megaphone, which Atukaze took. “Attention!” he shouted into the megaphone. Once everyone turned their focus onto him, he awkwardly handed it back to the musician. Nobody noticed Joshua smirk in amusement, his expression clouded by his otherworldly glow.

Atukaze cleared his throat again. “As I am sure most of you know, both the Underground and the Realground have been plagued by the Taboo Noise, monsters whose very nature existence has been forbidden, as they attack Players and Reapers indiscriminately and unrestrained. Their seed should never have been brought down to Earth.” He shot a glare at Hanekoma from across the room. The barista gulped and shifted his gaze nervously. Riku’s eyes widened in shock. How powerful could the Conductor be for him to intimidate the man of mystery who had defied the previous Conductor and the Composer?

“The man responsible for this capital crime is a rogue Reaper named Sho Minamimoto,” Atukaze continued. “For a year, we believed he had been Erased, but it seems that he has returned and become more dangerous than ever before. Nevertheless, the threat he poses will end today. Game Master Takagi, tell them what is first on the agenda.”

“Yes, sir. Yesterday, we were able to locate the Refinery Sigil that Minamimoto has been using to spawn the Taboo Noise, and we discovered that he managed to mix a Plane-Blender sigil into it so that they would exit on both planes,” Takagi reported.

“What?!” Uzuki gasped. “How could he do that?”

“We’ve determined that he had to have had help. As I am sure the Reapers all know, Support Reapers are assigned to apply and maintain Plane-Blender sigils,” Takagi continued. “Minamimoto never carried out that task, so he wouldn’t have been able to do it on his own. The Officers ran an investigation, and we found a suspect.” He paused to allow a meaningful silence as the Reapers looked at each other, suspicious and paranoid. Takagi turned and pointed dramatically at one of the Support Reapers, a girl who wore a Gothic Lolita dress under her uniform red sweatshirt. She appeared to be around the same age as Sora and Neku, perhaps younger. All eyes fell on the Reaper, who glared at Takagi and Atukaze with pure hatred.

Kariya chuckled, taking a lick of his lollipop. “Well, what do you know? I knew you weren’t big on taking orders, but I didn’t think you’d take having to do chores this bad,” he quipped.

“I’m not going to be your errand girl anymore, freak!” the rogue Reaper spat. “And when you’re gone, this town will be our playground!”

“Kariya, Yashiro, restrain Miss Gaki,” Atukaze ordered.

“With pleasure!” Uzuki hissed. She and Kariya ran to grab Gaki by the arms. However, before they could reach her, Gaki clapped her hands together, causing a large Taboo Noise sigil to become visible, having apparently hovered above her with no one the wiser. Darkness sprouted from the sigil, taking the shape of a black dragon Noise. It landed with a massive shockwave, knocking several Reapers and Players down, and swatted Uzuki and Kariya aside. The Death Metal Drake turned and prepared to charge at the Harriers, but two red beams shot at the center of the dragon, causing it to explode into red light and television static. All eyes turned to the source of the lasers, where an unflinching Atukaze’s eyes glowed red before the light faded away. Hushed gossip filled the air, with Players and Reapers alike musing about his Psych, how he destroyed the Taboo Noise in one hit, and how he did it without the Light Puck.

In the meantime, Gaki regained her composure and raised her arms to prepare an attack. Noticing this, Naminé thrust her arm out toward her, shouting “Hold it!” Glowing chains shot out of the ground and bound Gaki by the wrists, then her ankles, and then some more wrapped themselves around her abdomen and elbows. The chains then pulled themselves tight, bringing the young Reaper to her knees. She struggled, but the Bind spell held her fast.

Takagi, Atukaze, and Joshua marched up to Gaki, and Takagi knelt down to her level. “You know, I really wish it didn’t have to come to this,” he lamented. Gaki simply gave him the stink-eye. He sighed. “Oh, well. Let’s make this easy on you. Tell us where Minamimoto is, and we won’t make this painful for you.” Uzuki let out a sigh of disappointment.

Gaki gritted her teeth. “He’s where he always is when he’s not building those junk heaps. He’s up at the top of Pork City, watching the carnage he’s sown,” she said.

“Tch. Should have figured,” Hanekoma remarked.

“No one knew anyone was up there? Seriously?” Neku asked.

“It is far too chaotic in nature. Reapers detest to enter the building,” Atukaze explained.

“Sounds like Pi-Face is right at home there,” Rhyme mused.

“Great. We have a target. We have a destination. Now, what do we do about our little traitor?” Kariya asked.

“She’s responsible for many lives and souls lost. I say we Erase her,” Yoko suggested.

Joshua giggled. “As much as I admire your gusto, Yoko, I have a better idea.” He opened his hand and produced a blank pin. “I’m thinking we should turn her into a Pin, and let her spend the next decade as a tool used by whatever Players get ahold of her. What do you think?”

Gaki seethed with rage. “You’ll be sorry. When Minamimoto defeats you and strips you of your existence, you will beg for mercy,” she hissed.

Joshua smirked. “Well, then I guess you won’t be getting any leg room anytime soon,” he joked. “But it’ll give you plenty of time to think about what you’ve done. Good night.” With that, he shoved the pin into Gaki’s chest. The Reaper’s body constricted and shrank in on itself. Shiki and Eri yelped in fright at the sight. Naminé gagged. The Bind spell dissipated as Gaki deflated and folded up, shrinking away until only the pin remained, clattering to the floor. It now possessed a design, resembling a black Reaper wing on a purple background.

Hanekoma picked the pin up and slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll hold onto this one,” he said. “Now, let’s get back to business.”

Takagi gave him a thumbs-up. “Well, thanks to our Player and living friends一” he gestured to Sora, Neku, and the party “一the Taboo Refinery sigil has been found at Tipsy Tose Hall. In order to eliminate the influx of Taboo Noise, the sigil must be destroyed.”

“I will lead that task,” Joshua announced.

“I’m with you on that,” Hanekoma said. “Naminé, you want to help out?”

Naminé was taken by surprise at the request. “Uh, sure, if I can,” she replied nervously.

Hanekoma smiled. “Oh, I’m sure you can,” he said cryptically. Atukaze raised an eyebrow, suspicious of what he was referring to.

“I’ll come, too,” Donald added. “I know a lot about magic circles and symbols. I might be able to help.”

“Rhyme and I will back 'em up, yo!” Beat offered.

Hanekoma laughed. “The more, the merrier!”

Takagi nodded. “Alright. That group will keep more Taboo Noise from coming in, but we need people to clear out the Noise that are still around, particularly in the RG.”

“We’ll handle it,” Mickey declared. Riku, Aqua and Goofy nodded in agreement.

“Okay. With that taken care of, we’ll need the majority of manpower to climb Pork City and fight Minamimoto. If anyone isn’t comfortable with engaging in that fight, you can hit the streets and eliminate the Taboo Noise that are running around in the UG,” Takagi advised. “If you’d rather do that, I’d suggest you head on out.”

A majority of the Players and Support Reapers went back through the tunnel and out to the city streets. Joshua and Hanekoma led Naminé, Donald, Beat, and Rhyme out as well. Riku, Mickey, Aqua, and Goofy then left to scout out Taboo Noise in the Realground. The only ones left were Sora, Neku, Shiki, Eri, Takagi, Atukaze, Uzuki, Kariya, Yoko, and a few Harrier Reapers that Sora and Neku did not know.

“Great. Now, before we leave, let me tell you about Pork City. It’s in the southwest corner of Shibuya. Each floor is dominated by a different brand, to the point where no other pins can be used on those floors. The top floor, which fuels the Gatito brand, but since the Player Pins are Gatito, they ensure you can use any pin,” Takagi explained.

Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri checked their pins. “It’s a good thing we have a variety,” Sora noted.

“Eri and I can only use one pin each,” Shiki lamented.

“When I was there last year, I only needed to fight on two floors,” Neku said. “If we can’t get to the floors we can all work with, Sora and I will just fight the Noise by ourselves.”

“Well, don’t leave us out, twerps,” Uzuki said curtly. “We’re coming, too. We have beef with Pi-Face just like you.”

Sora grinned. “Appreciate the help,” he said.

Uzuki blinked in confusion, having expected some more vitriol from the teen, then gave a stubborn “hmph” in response.

“I was able to remotely access the elevator controls, and I was able to program it to only make two stops before taking you to the top floor: floor numbers three and seven,” Atukaze explained. “Those will require pins from the ‘Jupiter of the Monkey’ and ‘Pegaso’ brands.”

Sora and Neku checked their pins, then nodded. “We’re good,” Sora said.

“J of the M is my strong suit,” Neku added.

“Our pins are Pegaso,” Shiki chimed in. Eri beamed, eager to help now that she had found the strength to.

“Excellent. Now that we’re all set一” Takagi began before he was interrupted.

“Wait a second. Only two Players can fight Noise at a time,” Neku recalled. “How do we all fight the Grim Heaper?”

Takagi chuckled at the nickname, while Atukaze simply stared in a stoic fashion. “Don’t worry. We planned for that. I’ll tell you in the elevator,” Takagi replied. “Now, who’s ready to end this?”

The Players and Reapers raised their hands enthusiastically.

Atukaze nodded. “I wish you luck in your mission,” he said.

Shiki looked at the Conductor in surprise. “You’re not helping us?” she asked.

Atukaze shook his head. “Alas, I must ensure that our headquarters are secured. But I have the utmost faith in you.” Seeing that everything was taken care of, he turned to leave, but he stopped after a few steps and glanced back over his shoulder. “This is an unprecedented occurrence, Reapers and Players working together. These are strange times, indeed.” With that said, he left, vanishing into the shadows as he made his way to the Shibuya River.

The Players and remaining Reapers turned back to face each other. “Alright, let’s go!” Sora cheered.

* * *

Fortunately, the group did not have to face any Taboo Noise on the way up the Pork City building. Sora, Neku, Uzuki, Kariya, and a pair of Reapers that the Players were not acquainted with cleared the first wave. Noise interference prevented them from using the elevator immediately, so they had to use Mus Rattus pins to empty the hallway. The same batch cleared the way on the third floor. Shiki and Eri joined in for the seventh floor. Eri experimented with the power of her Psych, conjuring a butterfly net to grab bat Noise and a scythe to sweep away Popguin Noise. With the interference cleared, the group entered the elevator and punched in the now-unlocked button for the thirteenth floor.

“So, what’s the battle plan?” Shiki asked, directing her query toward Takagi.

Takagi pulled out his phone and set a timer for two minutes. “Players, take out your Player Pins. Reapers, spread your wings. Oh, and Sora, take out the Harmonizer Pin as well,” he ordered. They did as commanded. Takagi also spread his Reaper wings. “This is something the Composer and Producer taught me this morning. I’m linking us up so that when two of you start the fight, and the rest of us scan, we can see the battle take place. Also, this timer is so that, after two minutes, another pair will be able to tag in and take over the fight while the last pair gets to restore their energy and healing pin uses. We’ll cycle through until we wear him down.” He punched a few buttons on his phone and smiled when he heard a *ping*. “And, ready.”

“That’s a really good plan,” Sora said, impressed. “And making him suddenly fight people with different skill levels and fighting styles will throw him off his game.”

“Ha! You know you can’t be a Game Master if you can’t execute a good game plan,” Kariya remarked.

“Didn’t Pi-Face play hooky for almost the whole week when he was in charge?” Neku asked snidely.

Takagi shrugged. “I was just a Support back then. I don’t know what was going on in Kitaniji’s head back then,” he admitted. “Speaking of which, is there anything about Minamimoto’s battle strategy that you’d like to share with the class?”

Neku nodded. “He likes to teleport around and dodge your attacks, so if you try to close the distance, you’ll just get tired and annoyed. He also summons Taboo Noise to make things tougher on you. We still need to pass the Light Puck back and forth to actually fight them,” he said, summarizing his experience from his previous fights.

“Can we all use the Light Puck?” Sora asked, making note of the Reapers.

Takagi nodded, and he gave Yoko a knowing look. “Yep. I made sure we all made a Pact with one another so we could fight against the Taboo Noise.”

“Smart,” Eri commended.

“He also shoots powerful energy orbs. Sometimes, he’ll fire them in every direction. He’ll also turn into a lion-like Noise form on occasion, at which point he’ll use more physical attacks,” Neku continued. “Stay on your toes, and don’t get distracted by his ramblings.”

“Maybe a stronger team should tag in when he enters Cantus mode,” Kariya suggested.

“If the two minutes aren’t up yet and you aren’t prepared for the onslaught, run for dear life,” Uzuki added, her tone surprisingly sympathetic. Neku and Shiki decided not to draw attention to the fact.

“Anyone else need any pointers?” Takagi asked. Everyone shook their heads, though some had to think for a moment before determining they were as ready as they were going to be. The elevator dinged and the screen showed that they were on the thirteenth floor. “Alright, then. Is everyone ready?” Everyone nodded. “Neku, Sora, you take the first shift.”

“Got it,” Sora replied. The elevator door began to open.

Neku put on some music, setting the song on a loop, which blasted through his headphones loud enough for everyone else to hear.  _ Grab the key, let’s go out and have some fun. Have you ever seen such a perfect day. What's in your mind? Let's do it one by one. Have you ever thought such a day would come? _

“That sounds like it would be really bad for your ears,” one of the Reapers warned. Shiki and Eri nodded in agreement.

The group stepped out of the elevator and proceeded to the office where Neku had faced Minamimoto previously.

* * *

“Impressive work, Gaki,” Hanekoma muttered. “Fusing two sigils together to create a portal on two planes. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He, Joshua, Naminé, and Donald were in Tipsy Tose Hall, examining the Taboo Noise Refinery Sigil.

“Can we destroy it?” Donald asked.

Hanekoma nodded. “Yeah. But it’s more complicated than usual. Usually, when we need to Erase a sigil, we have to find the frequency of the sheet that its energy flows through, and then burn away the notes that anchor it. But the sheets that play through these sigils are on two different frequencies, and they wrap around each other, making it hard to track from start to finish, and some notes overlap.”

“Which means, if we tried to destroy the notes on one sheet, the other sheet would provide interference,” Joshua deduced. After the group had set out, he had retaken his human appearance. “However, if two of us could determine the frequencies, and a powerful mage were to make the auras of the activated signals visible, we could break down each note on both simultaneously.”

Hanekoma chuckled. “We could do that, but I’d rather not use too much angelic energy,” he argued. “As a matter of fact, I think we can do this another way.”

“Good idea. We wouldn’t want to draw their attention too much,” Joshua agreed.

“Wait, what?” Donald asked, picking up on certain curious phrases. However, the Composer and Producer ignored him.

“If I’m right, we can do this easily, as long as we play our cards right.” Hanekoma turned to Naminé and beckoned her forward.

“Me?” Naminé asked, pointing to herself. Hanekoma nodded. “What can I do?”

“You still have that card I gave you?” Hanekoma asked, knowing the answer but phrasing as such anyway. Naminé nodded and summoned it from her pocket dimension. “I saw that it already unlocked your latent magic ability, when you chained Gaki up.”

“That’s what that was?” Naminé muttered in surprise. “So, what can I do with this?”

Hanekoma smirked. “I told you that you should be able to tap into the world’s energies with it. Just reach out like you reached out to bend the layout of that castle of yours, and tell this bad boy’s energy flow to show itself,” he instructed.

Naminé nodded. “Okay. I’ll give it a go.” She held the card out and allowed it to float in front of her hand. She closed her eyes as she concentrated on the energies surrounding the Refinery Sigil. She heard a rhythm, a blend of two different melodies, different in tone and frequency but in the same time signature and tempo. In her mind’s eye, she saw many different symbols floating around. She quickly recognized the symbols as mathematical signs and calculus symbols. She noticed that some of them were formed into equations.  _ They did say that Minamimoto was a math nut. But I think I see a few mistakes. _ She opened her eyes and saw that the math symbols had become visible, along with a series of musical notes and sheet music staves that floated in front of the sigil. She noticed that two different sheets of music notes wrapped over each other, the source of the two melodies. The notes took the appearance of swirling orbs of energy, anchoring the magic to the sigil and holding it together like links to a chain. The equations floated around and through the sheets, and Naminé realized that they were part of the spell. “I think I found some weak links,” she announced. She pointed out the mistakes in the calculations.

The others looked at her, impressed and bewildered. “Aren’t you high school-age?” Hanekoma asked.

“Physically, anyway. Technically, if you count being my own entity as my whole lifespan, I’m almost two. But I was taught a lot by Ansem the Wise during the year I helped him put Sora and the others’ memories back together,” Naminé clarified.

“You learned mathematics up to high-level calculus in a year while putting our memories back together?” Donald asked in utter disbelief.

“I did have some idle months when the transfer process was stalled,” she replied, as if that made it easier to believe. “And yet Sora doesn’t know how to operate a computer,” she joked.

“So, you said those errors were weak links,” Joshua said, returning the conversation to the important topic. “Do you think addressing the anomaly can disable the sigil?”

“Hmm… Well, it doesn’t seem to be coming apart on its own, so the math might just be there to strengthen the protective charms. But maybe if we break it down by countering it with the correct calculations, we can disable or at least weaken the interference,” Naminé surmised.

Hanekoma laughed. “Well, then by all means, blind 'em with science, and fail 'em in calculus,” he encouraged.

Naminé nodded. “Okay. Give me some time to sort it out.” She studied the calculations, muttering to herself as she determined the correct solution at each step. As she pondered the equation, symbols and numbers materialized in the air, writing themselves out as she recited each calculation and erasing themselves as she stopped to correct her own small errors, such as the correct placement of a decimal. Joshua, Hanekoma, and Donald watched in awe as each step of the problem wrote itself out of thin air, hovering in front of Minamimoto’s calculations. When she finished, Naminé read over the formulas to check her work, then pushed the floating symbols into Minamimoto’s equations. The rogue Reaper’s calculations shattered, and the sigil’s notes shuddered, visibly affected by the mathematical protection wards’ destruction.

“Okay. Now, each of you take one song, and destroy the notes as they go along,” Donald instructed. He swapped his staff out for another one that was the size of a conductor’s baton. “Follow my lead, and keep time.” He conducted in 3/4 time as Joshua and Hanekoma began to break down the sigil’s notes.

* * *

As they stepped into the penthouse office, Sora registered an anomaly that covered the whole building. “Hey, shouldn’t there be people in here?” he asked. “You know, in the RG?”

“There are,” Takagi replied. “That’s what Mr. Atukaze meant when he said that this building is too chaotic for us. The field is on the upper edge of the UG, so far up that other energies bleed over into this building, and the Realground is almost completely invisible. It’s even higher than Reaper HQ, which doesn’t even share a physical space with the RG.”

“Well, the Grim Heaper loves to look down on everyone, so he should be right at home on the highest point in the UG,” Neku remarked.

“SOHCAHTOA!” The group looked up and saw Minamimoto lying on top of a ceiling-mounted light. He grinned down at them, then rolled off, twisting himself in midair so that he landed on one knee. He stood up and clapped slowly. “Congratulations, hectopascals. I see you found my partial derivative. But I’m afraid your remaining time is equal to zero!”

“It’s over, Pi-Face!” Sora shouted. He entered his confrontational stance. Neku, Shiki and Eri took on their own poses. Kariya extended his left hand, with two fingers raised in a “bring it” manner. Uzuki pulled out a gun and pointed it at Minamimoto, drawing looks of shock from Shiki and Eri.

Minamimoto laughed. “You are so zetta slow! You think you can take me on? By killing Players, Reapers, and living people with the Taboo Noise, I’ve gathered enough soul, imagination, and hearts to fuel my own strength. By now, I should be strong enough to Crunch the Composer! Before me, you’re just garbage! CRUNCH! I’ll add you to the heap!”

“We’ll see about that!” Sora shot back defiantly.

Minamimoto chuckled. “Well, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. Well, let’s see how insufficient you yoctograms一”

He was not permitted to finish his sentence as Sora and Neku rushed him. Neku jumped and delivered a punch to the side of his head while Sora propelled himself into a sliding dash at his legs. There was a flash of light, and they found themselves in two versions of the office without anyone else present.

Sora conjured chains that stretched across the room, created flames that covered certain spots on the floor, and then fired energy beams at Minamimoto. His plan was to restrict his movements and eliminate locations for him to teleport. The Taboo Reaper took a few hits before he found an opening and teleported himself to a free space. He shot a blast at Sora, but the teen jumped above it, grabbing onto the light fixture above him. He then brought his hand up, causing an icicle to sprout below Minamimoto. He dropped back down and fired more energy blasts. When Minamimoto teleported again, he predicted where he would reappear and called a bolt of lightning to strike him. With this strike, he felt the power of the Light Puck generate and pass over to Neku.

Neku handled the fight differently; he called lightning down on Minamimoto, but he teleported away. He attempted to hit Neku from behind, but Neku teleported behind him and attacked with Shockwave-charged punches. Minamimoto gained his bearings and teleported away. Neku shot a bolt of energy at him, then teleported at the exact moment that Minamimoto teleported. When the Reaper reappeared, he looked around in confusion, as Neku was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, Neku stood crouched on the light fixture, biding his time. He then felt the glow of the Light Puck and knew that it would soon be time to deal some damage.

“Come on, hectopascal! Fine. You want it? Here. INFIN一”

Neku pushed himself off and dropped to Minamimoto’s level. The Reaper was unable to finish his Area-of-Effect spell as he was suddenly hit with a dropkick to the face from Neku. As Minamimoto tried to regain his bearings, Neku hit him with a bolt of lightning, then rushed him and dealt several powerful Shockwave-charged punches and kicks. Minamimoto teleported away and blasted him with an energy bolt. “Inverse Matrix!” he then shouted, summoning a pair of Taboo wolves. Neku kicked one away when it lunged at him and raised an icicle to impale the other wolf. He conjured flames to burn the wolves while simultaneously dodging Minamimoto’s attacks, although a few still grazed him.

The Light Puck passed back to Sora, who threw a chair to deflect an energy blast, using Psychokinesis to propel it at Minamimoto even after it shattered from the blast. He used fire and lightning to harm the wolves, although his divided focus allowed some of his enemies’ attacks to hit him. Both wolves charged up dark energy, preparing to rush him at top speed simultaneously. Seeing this, he focused all of his attacks on Minamimoto. At the last second before the wolves would hit him, he teleported away, letting them crash into each other. He reappeared right behind Minamimoto and delivered a roundhouse kick. “So zetta slow!” he taunted before blasting Minamimoto with a Nexus Ray.

“Time,” Takagi said as the timer hit zero. In the UG, the rest of the group watched the fight in both zones by scanning the area. Shiki, Uzuki, and Kariya were amazed by Sora and Neku’s skill, particularly how much Neku had grown since he was in the Reapers’ Game last year. “Who’s up?”

Shiki and Eri stepped forward. Shiki contemplated how she would avoid and counter Minimimoto’s attacks while Eri imagined what she would create in the fight. “We will,” Shiki declared. They reached out in the scan and connected to Minamimoto and his Taboo lackeys. There was a flash of light as the girls took the boys’ places, much to Minamimoto’s evident confusion.

Uzuki flapped her wings, which flashed with a white glow. Sora and Neku suddenly felt refreshed and at full health, as if they had not taken any damage in the fight.

“Thanks,” Sora said.

“Don’t get used to it,” Uzuki remarked, though she still flashed him a teasing smirk.

In the battle zone, Eri found herself in possession of the Light Puck. She opened her part of the fight by creating a submachine gun out of sparks. She leveled it at Minamimoto and fired several shots at him in quick succession. Not expecting the different attack pattern, and being completely unfamiliar with the Psych on display, he could only feebly brace himself against the hail of pyrotechnic gunfire.

A wolf tackled Eri to the ground, causing the gun to dissolve and granting Minamimoto relief from the attack. Eri suffered a brief panic as she saw the crimson-eyed dark wolf bearing down on her and preparing to bite her face off. However, she quickly composed herself and, forming a knuckle duster out of sparks, punched it in the jaw three times, knocking it away. She pushed herself to her feet and conjured a shield to block the other wolf.

The Light Puck passed to Shiki. Her strategy was to appear to physically attack the wolves herself so that Minamimoto did not realize that her actual means of attacking was Mr. Mew. When the wolves were destroyed, she charged straight at Minamimoto, who teleported out of the way of her kick. Mr. Mew, beneath his notice, made his way toward his new position and scratched at him from behind.

“How did you do that?” Minamimoto asked, too perplexed to even work in a math pun. Shiki jumped at him again, forcing him to teleport away and then fire a few blasts her way. As she did not need to worry about counterattacking, she dodged each blast while letting Mr. Mew close in and attack.

Gritting his teeth, Minamimoto stretched his hand out in Shiki’s direction. “Die, Radian!” he shouted. Shiki gasped and, thinking quickly, tipped a table over and ducked behind it, letting the following blasts hit the table. Mr. Mew then slashed at Minamimoto’s legs and then jumped up to slash upward at his back. He spun around and blasted the stuffed toy, knocking it into a window. Leaning forward to examine the toy more closely, he chuckled. “So-HCAHTOA, this is your Psych, huh? A little plush pig?”

The Light Puck moved to Eri, somehow carrying sound from Shiki’s zone. When she heard the remark in her mind, she seethed with rage. “It’s a cat!” she corrected. A pair of shortswords formed in her hands, and she threw herself at her enemy, swinging the swords at him. Following the pattern of anime characters, she slashed and stabbed, wildly and without finesse but effectively, at Minamimoto, connecting some strikes while the Reaper tried to evade them. He shot a few blasts at her, but she cut them out of the air, causing them to dissipate.

He teleported away from her next attack, then started laughing. Eri turned to face him and saw dark smoke and black tattoos bleeding off of him. His eyes glowed red and a mane of black hair grew all around his head. His fingers extended into claws and his skin turned black. His legs dissolved until they appeared to be formed out of floating tattoos. Eri gasped as Minamimoto took the form of a humanoid lion Taboo Noise.

“Leo Cantus,” Takagi identified as the rest of the group watched the transformation unfold.

“How much time do they have?” Neku asked, worried for Eri.

Takagi checked his phone. “Twenty-five seconds.”

“We’ll jump in as soon as we can,” Sora said. He looked at the Harmonizer Pin and saw that small marks were running around the surface of the pin. Takagi nodded, understanding.

Eri conjured a dome barrier around herself, adding two extra layers to be safe. Leo Cantus charged at her at breakneck speed, slashing at the shield over and over. She felt immense strain from trying to maintain the barrier. She had to find some way to fight back, but she was sorely tempted to wrap herself up in a shell figuratively as well as literally. Maybe she could hold out until it wore himself out. She wiped her lip only to see blood on her finger, causing her to wonder if she would be able to hold out that long.

“Five… four… three…” As Takagi counted down, Sora and Neku reached out in the scan, planning to jump into the fray the moment that time was up. “Two… one… Go!”

There was a flash of light, and Shiki and Eri dropped to the floor in Sora and Neku’s place. Kariya spread his wings and healed them. In the battle zones, Neku resumed his battle strategy against Minamimoto, while Sora dropped on Leo Cantus from above, blasting it with a Nexus Wave. He jumped back as it regained its balance and realized what had happened. It rushed at him and struck out at him, but he rolled, ran, and ducked to avoid each blow, knowing that even a single punch would hit like a truck. He was glad that he had taken that side of the fight, as he was capable of withstanding more force than Neku, and he was faster than him as well. He teleported out of the way of a wide swipe and followed up by blasting Leo Cantus with energy bolts and raising icicles.

He felt a great power emanate from the Harmonizer Pin, and he took a look at it. Unlike the last two times, the symbol that had materialized on the white pin resembled his own crown pendant as well as two stars, one orange and the other purple. Realizing that this was a stronger Fusion, he slapped his hand over the pin to activate it.

A phantom copy of his Keyblade appeared in his hand. The zones blended together, and he could see Neku and Minamimoto’s normal form along with Leo Cantus. Sora and Neku were on opposite sides of the room while the split versions of Minamimoto were in the center. Sora’s vision sharpened, like that of a hawk. He could see each particle on his enemies: every joint, every visible vein, Leo Cantus’ retinas. He could make out all of the most sensitive points on both copies of the Taboo Reaper. He remembered a technique that he had seen Aqua use on occasion, a technique that he had used a few times before, but had not refined beyond a single form. He raised his Keyblade, gripping its handle with both hands, and pointed it toward both of Minamimoto’s forms. He saw Neku stretch his arm out in a similar manner, and he understood that he had the same idea.

Sora gathered all of the energy built into the fusion into the tip of his phantom Keyblade, then divided it into powerful particles. His mind’s eye locked onto each point on his enemies. He felt himself lift off of the ground. He willed the energy particles to swirl around the tip of the Keyblade. Finally, he sent a burst of energy through the Keyblade, releasing all of the particles forward. The particles took the shape of small fireballs that trailed through the air, swirling around as they spread out at first before homing in on the targets. At the same time, Neku shot fireballs, energy bolts, and sparks of lighting from his hand in rapid succession. When the shots from Sora’s Shotlock met their marks, Sora charged another one up and fired, with the same results. Minamimoto and his Noise form were visibly injured from the barrage of energy attacks. Leo Cantus held up better than his more human-like counterpart, but it shuddered by the time Sora’s second volley hit it, and had all but collapsed by the time Sora laid his fifth round upon him. After the sixth round, Leo Cantus reverted back to Sho Minamimoto. Sora unleashed a final round, then dropped to the ground. Neku ceased his assault and caught his breath. They had both spent all of their energy from the Fusion.

Sora grinned as he remembered the occasions when he had used the Shotlock, which he had called “Ragnarok”. He wondered why he had not used it much at all in the last year. Perhaps he should use it and similar Shotlocks more often.

The zones divided back up, and both Sora and Neku stood facing their own version of Sho Minamimoto. Minamimoto pushed himself to his feet and caught his breath. “Is that all you’ve got? I’ll derive you to zero! Inverse Matrix!” However, nothing happened after that invocation. He stretched his arms out to either side and tried to summon his Taboo Noise again. “Inverse Matrix!” Still nothing happened.

Sora smiled as he realized that Minamimoto did not have any more Taboo Noise to summon. “They did it!” he said triumphantly.

The Taboo Reaper scowled as he figured out that his Refinery Sigil was no more. “Well, I guess I shouldn’t count you as yoctograms after all. You fractals hit the pi on the square of the smallest radius.”

Sora tilted his head, confused by the analogy that his foe was trying to make.

“Uh, are you trying to say we hit a bullseye?” Neku guessed.

In the UG, Kariya shrugged. “Best I can tell.”

Minamimoto chuckled. “By my calculations, to do that, you would have had down there, hmm… 5+3x+8x^2+12x^3+... oh, hahahaha… 2x^5! Some Old Horses Can Always Hear Their Owners Anywhere. The Composer is down there, out in the open, as is the Producer.” He let out a maniacal laugh and clapped his hands together in both zones. There was a flash of white light, and he, Sora and Neku were back in the Pork City office with the others.

“What just happened?” Sora asked when he realized that he was not in the battle zone.

“Did he just bounce?” Neku asked in disbelief.

“You can’t have a Pi Day Party without the teacher. I’ll show the Composer just what true power looks like, and it’ll be a blast. I’ll Crunch you later!” With that, Minamimoto’s form shimmered and he vanished in the blink of an eye.

“Where did he go?” Uzuki asked, shocked and enraged that their quarry had fled.

“He must’ve shifted into the Realground, out of our sight. And no one here’s powerful enough to make the shift and go after him,” Takagi surmised. He dialed a number into his phone. “Atukaze, it’s me. Minamimoto is going after the Composer.” He hung up and put his phone away. “We need to move.”

They took the elevator back down, determining that Minamimoto would have jumped down the stairwell. As they waited for the elevator to reach the ground floor, Neku recalled the outcome of his first battle with Minamimoto.

“There’s one other trick the Grim Heaper has up his sleeve. He called it the ‘Level  _ i _ Flare’,” he explained. “He casts it by reciting pi. I think over a hundred digits, or something. It was supposed to be strong enough to destroy me and Joshua, and probably destroyed Pi-Face’s original form, too.”

“Tch. I’ve heard of that. It’s an ultimate ‘last stand’ kind of attack,” Takagi said. “You recite the first one-hundred and fifty digits of pi, and the ensuing explosion destroys everything in the blast area, on every plane up to the angels’ domain. I think the blast radius is inversely proportional to the time it takes to cast it.”

“That’s insane! Who could know that much of pi off the top of his head?” Sora blurted. “I could only tell you six!” He blinked as he processed the finer details of what Takagi had said. “Wait, up to the where?”

“Pi-Face does, and he’ll probably tell it to you in a minute or less,” Kariya remarked, ignoring the last question. “I also heard that you can’t interrupt someone mid-cast, unless he falters on his own. Otherwise, you will be destroyed.”

“Then we can’t let him even start,” Neku resolved.

Shiki nodded. “We’ll Erase him before he gets the chance.”

* * *

“Uh-huh. Okay. Thanks.” Joshua closed his phone and pocketed it. “We’ve got incoming. Sho Minamimoto is heading this way.”

Hanekoma nodded, acknowledging the warning. He turned and saw Riku, Aqua, Mickey, Goofy, Beat, and Rhyme approaching.

“We couldn’t find any more Taboo Noise. How’s it coming?” Riku asked.

Donald smiled proudly. “The sigil has been neutralized,” he announced.

“Alright, yo!” Beat cheered.

“We couldn’t have done it without Naminé,” Hanekoma said.

Riku flashed the blonde girl a smile. “Way to go,” he commended.

Naminé blushed. “Thank you,” she replied.

“Don’t relax yet. Minamimoto will be here any second,” Joshua warned.

“Well, you can just drop a soda machine on him like last time, right?” Beat suggested.

Joshua shook his head. “I’m afraid that won’t work this time. He’s grown much stronger, and he seems to believe that he can take me on directly. Be ready for a tough fight.”

At that moment, Minamimoto dropped from the sky, creating a small crater in the asphalt. He stood up and glared at Joshua with a psychotic grin. “Hello, Joshua! Come, and get derived!” he shouted. “This time, I’m eradicating you and your polynomial fractals from my spatial coordinates! Drown in the sea of imaginary numbers!”

Riku looked at Naminé in confusion. “You get any of that?” he asked.

Naminé shrugged. “I think so. He’s basically saying he’s going to destroy us.”

“Well, at least he’s spicing it up,” Mickey remarked.

Joshua snickered. “Well, this should be interesting.” He began to hover off of the ground, a white aura glowing from his body. An ethereal form manifested, overlapping his body.

Minamimoto shot several bolts of energy at Joshua, but the Composer launched his own volley of white blasts to counter and consume them. Joshua attacked with the same blasts, but Minamimoto teleported after getting hit with the first two shots, then materialized next to Joshua and punched him in the side, sending him flying several feet. “Zetta slow!” he taunted.

Riku warped behind Minamimoto and struck him with his Keyblade, then blasted him with a volley of Dark Fire spells. Minamimoto spun around and slugged him, launching him across the street. Goofy ran over and caught him before he could crash into a wall. Aqua and Donald launched Fire and Blizzard spells at Minamimoto, who teleported away and retaliated with some more energy bolts. Mickey jumped at him and kicked off of him, deflecting the bolts he fired at him. He landed on a car, only for the car to vanish under his feet and drop him to the ground. Minamimoto shot another bolt, but Mickey leapt over it as the bolt made a pothole-sized crater in the asphalt. Mickey spun on a pitch, striking with his Keyblade. Minamimoto teleported away, and the two blasted each other with spells. The Reaper cackled as Mickey was sent flying, but he was stunned as a car dropped onto his head and crumpled around him, the car being the same one that Mickey had landed on before it was teleported away.

Minamimoto roared with rage as he released an aura blast that caused the car to explode, inadvertently igniting his hat and jacket. Noticing this, he quickly patted his apparel until the flames were out. He turned to see Joshua smirking.

“I’m impressed. You really have grown stronger than before,” Joshua commented.

Minamimoto chuckled. “Come, and see just how great my power[^] is.”

Joshua fired a Nexus Ray, launching Minamimoto back. The Reaper recovered quickly and threw a string of bolts at the Composer, knocking him back with great force with each blow. Joshua clapped his hands, causing pillars of white energy to shoot up from the street. Minamimoto teleported to avoid the first few, but he was promptly shot about with the rest. Joshua waved his hand, and a vending machine fell from the sky, but Minamimoto shot two bolts upward, causing it to explode without harming him.

“Infinity!” Minamimoto shouted, launching a string of bolts at Joshua, which sent him flying further down the street. Minamimoto ran after him.

At that point, Sora, Neku, Shiki, Eri, Takagi, Uzuki, Kariya, Yoko, and the other Reapers caught up with the scene. “Did he just…?” one of the Reapers began to ask.

“Do you think we can pull him back into our loop?” Eri asked.

“We’d have to pull him out of the Realground, so he might be able to prepare for it,” Takagi said. “Best case scenario, he might divide himself so he’ll still have a part of him in the RG.”

“If he’s dividing his power, that means he won’t be as strong in either plane,” Sora noted. “Can we split him further than that?”

“If we all pull him in at the same time, we might be able to,” Takagi replied.

“We’ll have to catch up with them first,” Neku said, noticing that their friends in the Realground were chasing after Minamimoto and Joshua.

“Tch. That’s not good. Reaper activity in a populated RG sector. This will really screw with the order,” Takagi lamented.

“Let’s just Erase the freak and deal with the politics later,” Uzuki snarled, her eyes glowing white with frustration.

“Seconded,” Yoko added, balling her fists.

“Then let’s go,” Sora said. He and the others sprinted after the party. The other Players and Reapers watched him in amazement as he completely left them in the dust.

* * *

The crowd in the Scramble Crossing scattered as Joshua and Minamimoto came flying into the street. Civilians called the police as the fight resumed. The Keybearers and Goofy protected the people from stray blasts. Beat shouted for everyone to clear the area, and those who paid attention followed his lead. Those who did not hear him or were too shocked by the incident or engrossed in their phones were made to head on their way by the Players and Reapers Imprinting the thought to flee into their minds.

Aqua used a Shotlock and fired electric beams at Minamimoto. Donald brought out a set of fireworks, and Riku ignited them with Dark Fire. The ensuing explosions blasted Minamimoto (and Joshua in the collateral) with a mix of fireworks magic and dark energy. Joshua slugged Minamimoto off of him, but the Taboo Reaper flew back and blasted him with a set of energy bolts.

The Players and Reapers paired up around Scramble Crossing. “Are we ready?” Takagi asked. Everyone on the plane nodded. “Okay. Then let’s一”

“Hold it,” Hanekoma interrupted, shifting into the UG plane and approaching Sora. “Give me the Harmonizer Pin,” he requested.

Sora unclipped the blank pin and handed it to the Producer. “What are you going to do with it?” he asked.

Hanekoma smirked. He leaned down to whisper his plan into Sora’s ear. Sora was surprised, but he then smiled and nodded, agreeing with the idea.

“What’s going on?” Neku asked. Sora explained the plan to him. “Okay… So, no Fusions?”

“Not yet, anyway. Let’s divide his strength and conquer him!”

Takagi counted to three, then the Players and Reapers all Scanned and pulled Minamimoto into their battle zones.

Minamimoto was taken by complete surprise to find himself split up in such a manner and facing each of them. “What is this? This division?” he asked angrily, each version of him saying the same thing on all planes save for the Realground, where he was simply confused. “Inverse Matrix! How did you do this?”

Kariya smirked. “Sit down and listen to the lecture, student. QED,” he teased.

Each of the Taboo Reaper’s foes briefly appeared as phantoms beside their individual partners: Sora with Neku, Shiki with Eri, Uzuki with Kariya, Takagi with Yoko, and the other Reapers in their separate pairs. They all gave each other a nod, then faded back into their zones, ready to fight.

Sora and Neku barraged Minamimoto with their diverse range of Psychs. Shiki dodged his attacks while allowing Mr. Mew to attack, taking advantage of the fact that his target of attack is completely different from what is attacking him. Eri used swords, a shield, a whip, and even yo-yos conjured out of sparks to punish Minamimoto, who could not easily counter a foe who could imagine whatever she might need to react to his patterns. Uzuki fired her gun at him, shooting pink flower-shaped bullets. The rounds that hit exploded into fragments, which fused back together to hit him again. Kariya fired energy blasts into the air, then threw shurikens at Minamimoto, forcing the Taboo Reaper to focus on the immediate threat and try to avoid them while working in some counterattacks. When the energy blasts fell back down and hit the ground, they exploded, often catching Minamimoto in the blast. Angered, Minamimot teleported right behind Kariya to attack him directly, but Kariya raised an electric barrier a second before he reappeared, zapping him and causing him to fall backward. Yoko blasted Minamimoto with electric bolts, flying at him with tremendous speed, while yelling in frustration as her foe teleported out of the way of many of her attacks. Takagi phased through the rogue Reaper’s energy attacks by shifting in the frequency of the energy, then dashed toward his foe several times and struck, leaving glowing afterimages behind, which then dashed toward Minamimoto and attacked in a similar manner. Despite the fact that Minamimoto was divided between over a dozen enemies, they still worked as though they were only in pairs. Whatever damage that one pair suffered did not affect the others, and the Light Puck was still passed between Players and Reapers across their individual pacts, so that half of them still attacked with the boost of a Light Puck.

In the Realground, Joshua, the Keybearers, Donald, Goofy, and Naminé noticed that Minamimoto’s attacks were not as strong as they had been only a few minutes ago. He was still strong, but he was no longer able to back Joshua into a corner, so the Composer was able to relax and lower himself to a level that he was comfortable with on the mortal plane.

Mickey tag-teamed with Riku and Aqua, using his agility and magic to avoid Minamimoto’s attacks and strike swiftly. Riku blocked attacks with Dark Shield, attacked with brute force, and blasted his foe with Dark Fire. Aqua fired powerful magic at the Reaper while helping her friends recover when they were thrown back, and closed the distance to strike and cover the others. Donald fired his own spells and healed when necessary. Goofy threw his shield to knock Minamimoto about, and also provided Potions and Ethers when injuries were sustained and magic ran low. Using his cell phone as a channeling device, Joshua conjured cars, bikes, and soda machines to fall onto Minamimoto from above, and also shot energy blasts at him when doing the former actions had too much of a risk of hitting his allies. Hanekoma stood on the street corner, shielding Naminé, Beat, and Rhyme from any stray blasts, while Naminé and Rhyme held Beat back to restrain him from charging into the fight, much to his chagrin.

Minamimoto suffered great damage in all of the zones, but he had absorbed so much energy that the cumulative assault did not bring him down. In a few zones, he transformed into Leo Cantus, and the vast increase in raw strength forced his opponents in those zones onto the defensive. However, some of them were still able to deal damage to him while boosted with the Light Puck, and he changed back eventually, allowing them to retake the offensive.

Police officers arrived on the scene in the Realground, but stayed back due to not having a clue as to how to defuse the situation. One cop reported on the situation into his radio. He seemed to recognize the fiend, yammering something about a “psychotic teenager who was supposed to have died years ago”. As there was not much they could do at the moment about the sword fight and magic, they instead turned their efforts to erecting a barrier and making sure that the civilians were out of harm’s way.

Eventually, Minamimoto grew frustrated with the situation. “Enough! This is my show! First, Outer, Inner, Last!” he shouted in all of the zones. There was a flash of light in the battle zones, and the Players and Reapers dropped back into the UG. Minamimoto fused back together in the Realground, panting heavily. “INFINITY!” He unleashed energy blasts that fired in every direction, blasting his RG opponents several feet away.

“Uh-oh,” Shiki said. Things did not look good.

However, Sora and Neku were not deterred. Sora scanned into the psychic plane and reached out to Joshua.

_ You okay? _ Sora asked from his mind.

_ Ugh. Never thought I’d say this, but I haven’t faced someone this strong since I became the Composer, _ Joshua admitted.  _ I’m not sure if I can beat him. _

_ Not alone, you can’t, _ Sora assured him.

_ You already tried that, from what I could tell. I don’t think he’ll let you try again. _

_ That’s not what I mean. And that was actually the warm-up. _

_ What’s your plan? _

_ Check your jeans. _

Joshua looked down and saw that the Harmonizer Pin was clipped to his jeans.

_ How… _

__ _ Mr. H. You need to do a Fusion with all of us. _

__ _ Why didn’t you try that? _

__ _ I couldn’t. As strong as I am, I don’t have that kind of power in this world. But you’re the Composer. If anyone can do it, it’s you. _

__ _ There’s just one problem. I’m not you. I don’t have the power to sync with others like you do. I’m… I’m not strong enough. _

__ _ Neku trusts you. Shiki and Beat trust you. Mr. H trusts you. And I know you trust them. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have asked for their help. You just have to trust yourself. _

__ _ How… _

__ _ Say it with me: “My friends are my power.” _

“My friends… are my power,” Joshua muttered.

_ Louder. My friends are my power. _

“My friends are my power,” Joshua repeated. “My friends are my power.”

Minamimoto laughed mockingly. “Friends? Your ‘friendship’ is garbage! CRUNCH! I’ll add it to the heap!” He charged up a powerful energy orb.

Joshua glared at the Taboo Reaper. A design formed on the Harmonizer Pin, taking the shape of several stars and crowns of different colors. “My friends… are… my… power!” The Harmonizer Pin began to glow. He slapped the pin, activating its power.

Sora, Neku, Shiki, Eri, Uzuki, Kariya, Takagi, Yoko, and the Reapers appeared in the same plane as Joshua, Minamimoto, Riku, Mickey, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy. The surrounding area faded into swirling multicolored lights. Seven glowing phantom Keyblades materialized, floating around Sora. A large white X appeared in front of Neku and glowed as he stretched his hand out toward it. Mr. Mew grew to gigantic size, with Shiki and Eri sitting on top. Sparks formed into giant guns that appeared in front of Mr. Mew’s “paws”, aimed at Minamimoto. Uzuki and Kariya appeared on opposite sides of Minamimoto, with purple lightning crackling around their bodies. Glowing phantoms of Takagi and Yoko floated around the area, a field of crackling electricity between them. Flames, ice crystals, and smoke swirled around the other Reapers. Riku hovered above the ground, shrouded in dark energy. Mickey and Aqua prepared powerful Shotlocks. Donald conjured a massive number of fireworks. Goofy spun around incredibly fast, his shield held outstretched. Joshua glowed with an ethereal white aura. A large spherical shape formed out of the same white energy high above Minamimoto.

“Let’s finish this!” Joshua shouted, his voice reverberating.

“All-out attack!” Shiki added.

Five of the Keyblades flew into the air and homed in on Minamimoto, while Sora charged in and whaled on him with the other two. Neku fired a massive beam of energy through the X, which did no harm to his allies. The giant Mr. Mew shot several spark-formed bullets and missiles at the villain and fired a few powerful eye beams. Uzuki and Kariya blasted him with purple lightning that flew back and forth between them. Takagi and Yoko’s phantoms flew at Minamimoto, stunning him in the electric field which burst with powerful flares when the phantoms collided with him. The other Reapers blasted him with powerful fire, ice and wind Psychs. Riku dashed at Minamimoto several times, leaving waves of darkness in his trail and teleporting to a new spot after each pass to continue the assault before he appeared above and dropped down to strike him and leave a powerful shockwave. Mickey and Aqua fired their Shotlocks of Pearl spells and rainbow-colored energy, respectively, then released several more volleys. Donald ignited and released his fireworks, which exploded on contact. Goofy blew by Minamimoto, strafing him with spinning blows from his shield, then slid back and struck again. When that barrage was done, Joshua pointed to the shape above everyone. The ball of energy solidified to resemble a small moon.

“What was it you wrote on your trash heap before, Sho? ‘Any tree can drop an apple; I’ll drop the freaking moon’?” Joshua said in a teasing tone. “Well, Grim Heaper, meet the ‘freaking moon’.” With that, as his allies got clear, he willed the moon to drop onto Minamimoto. The Taboo Reaper blasted it apart when it hit, but Joshua directed the pieces to fly back down and bludgeon him with massive force. Everyone cast Psychs and spells to enchant the moon rocks and add to the assault.

When the explosions died down, the energy faded, and the moon rocks vanished back into nothing, everyone was back in the Realground Scramble Crossing, which had not actually been affected by the Fusion attack. The crowd of civilians stared in awe, mouths agape, while the more experienced Beat, Rhyme, Naminé, and even Hanekoma were similarly amazed. Minamimoto laid prone on the ground.

“Is it over?” Riku asked.

Joshua shook his head. “If he didn’t fade away, it isn’t,” he replied.

Sure enough, Minamimoto pushed himself to one knee, then, with considerable effort, stood all the way back up. “The limit approaches zero,” he muttered, “but I still exist. I won’t let you win, you factoring hectopascals!”

“I don’t think that’s mathematically possible,” Naminé remarked.

Minamimoto heard her and was taken aback by the comment. He gritted his teeth, unable to think of a proper comeback. Instead, he began to shout “Die, Raー”

He was interrupted as a car flew spinning at him, sending him flying. All eyes turned to the source of the attack. Conductor Atukaze calmly approached the party, his red eyes fixed on the fiend.

“Mr. Atukaze? I thought you said you were making sure HQ was secure,” Hanekoma said, surprised to see the imposing man.

“I have determined that there is no threat to our headquarters,” Atukaze explained. “I also saw that the situation down here has become increasingly chaotic and demands my attention.” He illustrated his point by panning his gaze over the crowd of mortals that had gathered to witness the battle.

A police officer attempted to arrest Minamimoto, but he was blasted aside. Minamimoto picked himself back up and began to run toward his enemies, grinning wickedly. “I’ve been expecting you, Atukaze! I expected that my power boost would let me finish off the Composer, but your power’s on another phase shift.”

“What’s he talking about?” Uzuki whispered to Kariya.

“Mr. Atukaze was transferred from another ward years ago. He’s saying that the power that ties to the rules of this ward isn’t congruent with Atukaze’s,” Kariya explained.

“I didn’t think I could take you on directly even with my Taboo power and the souls, hearts and imagination that I absorbed. But there’s one thing that will certainly wipe you from existence,” Minamimoto continued.

“Your destructive games cease now, Minamimoto,” Atukaze said. He fired a pair of red beams from his eyes, but Minamimoto dodged to the side, letting the immensely powerful beams pass him harmlessly (well, not harmless for the uphill section of road that the beams ultimately collided with).

“No, Fibonacci, your days are over. As is your whole curriculum. Meet your ends by the Level  _ i _ Flare!”

“No!” Neku shouted in panic. However, there was nothing he could do to stop Minamimoto from beginning the invocation, and no one on the Realground could interrupt him in time.

“3.141592653589793238…” Minamimoto began.

“We need to get out of here,” Uzuki said, not even trying to conceal her terror.

“What is he doing?” Riku asked. He raised his Keyblade, but Hanekoma grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“If we interrupt him, it’ll just blow us all to dust anyway,” Hanekoma warned.

“Well, what can we do?” Rhyme asked.

“It ain’t like we can just shut his eye or something,” Beat said, worried, also not grasping the mathematical concepts.

Naminé blinked as she had an idea.  _ Shut it down… Can I do that? _ She summoned her card and held it out, focusing on Minamimoto. Mathematical equations appeared around him, and she saw that the invocation required an input of pi with a float of 150 digits, an input of less than that exact number would cause a devastating explosion, that the function of the blast radius was inversely proportional to  _ t _ , and that the output of  _ i _ affected everything in range by applying to a new function where it impacted anything with a “level” that was evenly divisible by the new input. She realized with horror that, technically, if a “level” integer was applied, everything was evenly divisible by the  _ i _ number. She realized that the Flare spell had to be stopped, fast, and so she began to devise a new set of equations in hopes of thwarting the attack.

“...46264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230…” Minamimoto continued.

Naminé worked fervently to create and apply the functions to the spell. Her priority was canceling out the second function so that it would not harm anyone.

“...781640628620899862803482534211…”

Next, she planned to leave a surprise for Minamimoto. The most difficult and time-consuming aspect was in devising a symbol that would represent his entire being.

“...706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172…”

Naminé cast her spell and applied the functions.

“...5359408128!” Minamimoto cackled, but stopped as he quickly realized that nothing was happening. Naminé giggled proudly, drawing his attention. She twirled the card in her hand, and her functions appeared laying over the functions of his own spell. He carefully read the functions, wanting to figure out how his spell had been thwarted. He saw that the function with an output of  _ i _ , labeled as f(x), was redefined to apply to a new variable,  _ n _ , rather than  _ y _ . The new variable was put into a new function, h(n), which raised  _ n _ to a power of 4, then to a power of 0 (Naminé figured that it would be the same if she just raised it to 0, but she did not want to take any chances), then subtracted by 1, thereby leaving an output of h(n) equal to 0, which was then defined as  _ y _ and plugged into Minamimoto’s second function, g(y), rendering the flare completely ineffective. Naminé’s second function, m(x), was a fraction, where the denominator read “x - 𝝅” and the numerator consisted of a crude drawing of Sho Minamimoto. The second function took him a few seconds to process, before he realized that the input was 𝝅, and the equation was essentially dividing him by zero.

He felt a knot form in his gut, and he began to shake violently as the mathematical anomaly in the spell affected his physical being. He let out a scream in anger and agony as every cell in his body became a cosmic error. After several seconds, he simply faded away, not even disintegrating into television static like Noise or other Reapers did; to resolve the paradox that he had been redefined as, the universe simply erased him from existence. There was an implosion as air filled the vacuum that he left behind, then an energy explosion as the souls, hearts, and imagination that he had absorbed were released into the aether.

Everything went silent, the crowd of mortals having no idea what had just happened, and everyone else either exhausted, in awe at the Taboo Reaper’s total obliteration, or a mix of the above. The Keybearers, Players, Reapers, and other fighters caught their breaths.

“Is it over?” Yoko asked.

“I think it is,” Takagi replied.

“Was that you, Naminé?” Riku asked. Naminé nodded. Riku smiled. “Good going.” Beat ruffled her hair, and Rhyme tapped her on the arm to show her congratulations. Sora grinned and beamed at Naminé, proud of her. Mickey, Aqua, Donald, and Goofy also went over to cheer for her.

“Ugh. I don’t know about you, but I’m beat,” Uzuki said.

Kariya nodded in agreement. “I think this calls for a well-deserved lunch,” he suggested. Uzuki nodded, thinking that was the best idea she had heard all day.

“Hang on. Let’s wait for the Conductor to give us our leave,” Takagi said. “Something tells me we still have things to do.” He approached Joshua, Atukaze, and Hanekoma. The latter three registered his presence, and so shifted themselves so that they appeared in both the UG and the RG.

“Well, crisis averted,” Hanekoma proclaimed.

Atukaze nodded. “Yes. And I am grateful to all who have been able to assist us.” He gave a bow to the Players and the world travelers.

“But now comes my least favorite part: the clean-up,” Joshua remarked.

Atukaze nodded. “Indeed.” He looked over at the crowd that was still staring at them. “Your abilities will certainly come in handy with erasing this incident and the Taboo attacks from their minds. However, this still left a footprint in the news and social media, and we cannot permit the general public, especially those outside of Shibuya, to know about the world of the Reapers’ Game. I will need to instruct the Officers to commence with erasure of sensitive records.”

Takagi stretched his arms upward. “Well, I guess I’d better help with that.” He turned to Yoko. “After we’re done with this, you want to get ramen?” he asked.

Yoko smiled. “I’d like that,” she replied. Uzuki and Kariya gave each other surprised and fascinated looks.

Atukaze turned to address the rest of the party on both planes. “All others are dismissed,” he announced.

The Reapers went their own way. Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri grouped up and watched their friends chat in the RG. Eri suggested going to get lunch, so Sora Imprinted an idea into Donald and Goofy’s minds to join them at Ramen Don. Before they left, Neku looked back at the spot where Minamimoto had been destroyed and smirked.

“So zetta slow,” he whispered mockingly.

* * *

Over lunch, they laughed and talked about the special powers they used in the fight with Minamimoto. At the same time, everyone gave Naminé another congratulatory cheer for dealing the final blow that saved the day.

“So, what now?” Aqua asked.

Sora shrugged. “Well, Joshua said that he’d bring us back to life after we saved Shibuya, so I guess we’ll be coming back soon,” he answered. As if on cue, he felt a buzz in his pocket and heard music play. He took his phone out and answered the call. “Hello?”

“Hey. This is Takagi. Thanks for the help today,” the Game Master greeted.

“No problem,” Sora replied. “So, is that it? You can bring me back to life and return Kairi too?”

“Yeah. It’s just that, well… hey, can you put me on speaker phone?”

“On what?”

“Hit the button that looks like a megaphone, and take it away from your ear so your friends can listen in,” Takagi instructed.

Sora did so. “Okay.”

“Right. Well, you see, Atukaze wants us to keep at least some semblance of order, and this is still the Reapers’ Game. And the other Players should still be given the chance to accumulate some points. You’ll be resurrected, as promised, but he said that we should keep you in until this week’s Game is over. So, there’s one more day, and one more challenge. One more fun thing before we say good-bye.”

“What is it?” Riku asked.

“The final boss,” Shiki said.

“The GM’s last test,” Neku added.

“Yep. You get to face me in combat,” Takagi confirmed.


	127. Chapter 126: Second Chance

Sora and Neku woke up in Scramble Crossing. The usual crowd passed through the intersection as usual, as if there had not been a devastating battle for the fate of the city only the day before. Evidently, the Reaper Officers had been able to clear away all memory and evidence of the crisis.

“Day seven. Almost over,” Neku mused.

“Hey, I just realized something. You’ve been in the UG all week. What is your family thinking?” Sora asked.

“Oh, I told my parents that I was working on a project with CAT and I’d be staying in Shibuya with a friend all week,” Neku explained. “Which is technically true.”

“You don’t live in Shibuya?”

“I live in Setagaya. It’s to the southwest.”

“Do the Reapers run the afterlife over there, too?”

“Yeah. I’ve been told that they do things a bit differently over there; they follow their own set of rules. Mr. H wouldn’t tell me anything else, since he said that they would rather not have me know how they operate.”

“Makes sense.” They each heard a beep and checked their phones in response. “Here’s the mission.”

“Yep. ‘The Game Master awaits you at the freeway. You have 600 minutes. Fail and face erasure. -The Reapers,’” Neku read. He and Sora felt a sting on their hands, and they checked to confirm that they indeed had ten hours to complete the mission.  _ Huh. That’s where my first “final exam” was, against Higashizawa. Is that just the basic spot for it? Like the first mission always being to get to 104 with your new Partner? I wouldn’t know. Things went pretty off the rails in my second and third weeks, _ he mused.

“Where’s the freeway?” Sora asked.

“It’s just beyond the station underpass,” Neku replied. “It was actually where we met the Reapers yesterday.”

“Okay. So, I guess we’re heading there.”

“Yup.” With the matter settled, they began to make their way to the location of the final test.

_ Don’t worry, Kairi. I’ll see you soon. I promise, _ Sora thought.

* * *

As they passed the statue of Hachiko, Neku thought of something. “You know, Sora, I’ve been thinking. Maybe Joshua didn’t just bring you here for the extra muscle,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Sora asked.

“Maybe he wanted to see if you were really as pure as he’d heard,” Neku suggested. “He’s still trying to see the bright side of the people of Shibuya, the good in their hearts. Maybe he wanted to see your optimism and altruism for himself, see how truly good-natured you were. Maybe he wanted you to help him see that it really is a wonderful world.”

Sora considered Neku’s words. “Huh. If that’s true, then I’m glad that I could help,” he said, smiling. After a pause, he dropped his grin and crossed his arms crudely. “But I still don’t like him.”

“Oh, I can’t imagine you would,” Neku replied.

“He shot me in the head!”

“That’s not really something that even you can forgive.”

“Murder isn’t something that can just be forgiven, never mind the intentions.”

They started laughing. After a few minutes, their laughter died down, and they decided to keep moving.

* * *

“Why do you think Coffee Man called us, yo?” Beat asked when he and Rhyme caught up with Aqua, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Mr. Hanekoma had contacted them, asking them to head over to WildKat; he had contacted Beat and Rhyme by cell phone while he sent a Reaper to pass the message on to the world travelers.

“I don’t know. He asked Naminé to head over last night. Said he had a ‘special project’ for her, so she and Riku are over there,” Aqua said.

“He said that he had something to show us. Maybe it has to do what he needed Naminé’s help with,” Rhyme guessed.

“I’m excited to see what they were doing,” Goofy said.

The group entered Cat Street and approached the coffee shop. Riku leaned against the side of the building, and he smiled and waved when he saw them.

“Hiya! What have you and Naminé been doing?” Mickey asked as the group caught up to Riku.

“Mr. Hanekoma wanted to work with Naminé on some graffiti art,” Riku explained. “They’ve been at it for most of the night.” He led them inside, where they found Naminé at a booth, asleep. She was wearing a smock, boots, and gloves, all recolored with spray paint. Riku smiled at the sight, thinking that she looked sweet, at peace.

“Looks like she had a busy night,” Aqua said. She, Riku, Donald, and Goofy sat down with her. Beat and Rhyme went to order coffee, while Mickey pulled a chair up to the booth and took a seat.

A few minutes later, Naminé began to stir. She yawned, stretching her arms upward. Blinking groggily, she noticed her friends gathered around her. “Morning,” she said. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long,” Donald answered. “Mr. Hanekoma called us over.”

“Did you sleep well?” Goofy asked. Naminé nodded.

“Would you like some coffee?” Riku asked.

“Sure. Café Latte, please.” Riku went up to the counter and ordered for her and himself. He returned with two cups of coffee.

The group drank and talked. A few minutes later, Hanekoma stepped out of his office and saw that everyone was present and that Naminé was awake. He walked over to them and waved hello. “Morning. Thanks for popping by,” he said. “We’ve got something to show you. You ready, Naminé?” Naminé nodded. “Okay. Before we go, anyone else want a drink?” Aqua ordered a caffè mocha while Mickey, Donald and Goofy declined. When Aqua had received her drink, the group stood up and followed Hanekoma outside. He led them outside, down the street, and up an alleyway. They stopped when they approached a wall that had been recently painted with graffiti. Splotches of paint were spattered on the asphalt.

Everyone stared in amazement at the artwork in front of them, aside from Hanekoma, Naminé, and Riku (though he still looked on appreciatively). The centerpiece of the work was a large white heart shape, with tips that curled inward toward the top. A yellow crown hovered above the heart and the white outline of a keyhole on a black background sat inside the heart. Nobody and Heartless symbols flanked the heart, positioned to appear as reflections to one another. Simple key shapes were placed around the mural as well. In the upper right corner, written with a paintbrush in kanji, was a slogan that said: “Follow your heart to find what you need”.

“Wow. Naminé, did you make this?” Aqua asked, astonished.

“Yes,” Naminé replied, smiling proudly.

“Gosh, this is amazing,” Mickey said.

“It’s real pretty,” Goofy agreed.

“Uh-huh,” Donald added.

Naminé giggled. “Thank you.”

Hanekoma smiled. “Riku and I lent her a hand, but this is all the work and inspiration of my new CAT apprentice,”

“CAT apprentice. Has a nice ring to it,” Rhyme said.

“This is awesome, yo!” Beat said, giving Naminé a pat on the back.

“That’s a nice quote. ‘Follow your heart to find what you need’. Where’d you get that?” Goofy asked.

“I learned it from Sora,” Naminé replied. “Maybe it’s a code I can follow going forward.”

The rest of the group continued to admire the painting, but Riku’s gaze was directed at Naminé. He smiled, happy as he read into the implications of her statement. It sounded as though she was open to spending more time as her own person, rather than simply sitting back inside Kairi’s heart.

* * *

Sora and Neku walked through the station underpass. They listened to Neku’s music to stave off boredom, Neku having disconnected his music player from his headphones so Sora could listen at normal volume. They walked through the tunnel, passing the site where they met with the Reapers, and into the freeway. As they went on, they started to hear a sound echo through the tunnel. After a few minutes, they came upon Takagi, who was bouncing a ball against the wall to pass the time. When he noticed them approaching, he dropped the ball and stood up, stretching his arms and legs.

“Hey. Thanks again for the help this week,” the Game Master said. “So, you ready for your last challenge?”

Neku plugged his headphone jack back into his music player. He and Sora took on battle-ready stances. “I’m kinda itching to have a pulse again. Let’s get this show on the road!” Sora replied.

Takagi clapped his hands together. “Okay. Let’s begin.”

Glowing symbols materialized and circled around them as the surrounding area faded into a white void. Black Reaper wings grew from his back. His ears rose up to the top of his head, extending into triangular shapes. His skin grew orange and black fur. His fingernails extended into claws, and his head reshaped to form a fox’s head. A black tail formed out of floating tattoos.

Takagi, in the form of Vulpeus Cantus, chuckled. A copy of the freeway appeared around him and the Players, and the Players noticed that they were in separate zones. The battle had begun.

Vulpeus Cantus ran at Sora and slashed at him. Sora dodged to the side and retaliated with Pyrokinesis, but he realized that the enemy he was targeting was actually a glowing afterimage, whereas the real Vulpeus Cantus had run off to the side after generating his double. Sora cast a bolt of lightning to strike his foe, but he shifted his energy and phased through it. Vulpeus Cantus threw himself at him and slugged him across the room, leaving an afterimage behind where he had stood. Sora recovered and fired energy bolts, only for the Noise Reaper to shift his energy and turn green, letting the bolts pass through him completely. Seeing that he was still green, Sora had an idea. He shot another energy bolt, then conjured flames around Vulpeus. Sure enough, the Noise Reaper was visibly hurt by the flames while the energy bolt still passed harmlessly through him.

“Not bad,” Takagi commended. “But try this!” He ran around, leaving three more afterimages. Then, he rushed at Sora with tremendous speed, and the afterimages threw themselves his way as well. Sora conjured a ring of electricity around himself, charged his fists and feet with the Shockwave Psych, and jumped around, dodging the afterimages while throwing himself at Vulpeus Cantus. Vulpeus shifted himself to a yellow frequency to protect himself from the electric ring, but fell victim to his Shockwave-charged punches. While Vulpeus shifted to a purple frequency the moment Sora stopped, the teen finished the assault by blasting him away with a Nexus Ray.

Neku caused chains to appear, dividing the space, knowing that they would limit Vulpeus’ range of movement, and if he shifted his energy to bypass them, he would leave himself vulnerable to all of his other attacks. Takagi seemed to determine that if he dedicated himself to trying to defend himself against his attacks, he would be a sitting duck and would not be able to attack. As such, he shifted into a gray frequency and attacked with his speed and his afterimages, putting more emphasis on dodging attacks rather than trying to shift to a frequency that passed through them. When he attacked Neku directly, the latter countered with Shockwave punches and kicks; when he ran away to set afterimages, Neku shot energy blasts, conjured fire, raised icicles, and brought down bolts of lightning. The super-fast Noise Reaper dodged some of the attacks, but he was hit with the rest.

The fight continued in that pattern for some time, but it finally came to a close when Vulpeus Cantus, suffering from beatings in both zones, stumbled and collapsed to the concrete. Sora and Neku stopped their assault, Neku even allowing his chains to dissipate.

“What are you doing?” Takagi asked. Despite speaking as casually as usual, it was clear that he had no more fight left in him. He was barely able to maintain his Noise form.

“Clock’s still ticking,” Neku said. “Do you yield?”

“Does this have to end like, you know?” Sora asked in his zone. “I’d prefer it didn’t.”

“Nah. Erasure isn’t the required ending. If the GM isn’t too proud to give in, and if the Players aren’t too proud to spare him, or if they just think to do so, then it counts as a mission won if the GM admits defeat,” Takagi explained.

“So? Ready to call it a day?”

Takagi chuckled. “I yield,” he said in both zones. There was a flash of light, and all three were back in the UG. Takagi had reverted to his humanoid form. He pushed himself to his feet and snapped his wings out. The timers on Sora and Neku’s hands vanished. “You put up a good fight.”

“You too,” Sora replied. He handed Takagi a Cure Drink, which he downed.

“This was the first time I really had to make full use of my energy-shifting Psych as a Reaper,” Takagi admitted. “Most Players can only use one Psych, and I think it’s not fair to just shift and pass through everything they do without any effort. But today, today was fun.”

“So, it’s all over? We can return to the Realground?” Sora asked.

“With your Entry Fee regained. You were already promised, Sora. And Neku, you, Shiki and Eri were never dead to begin with, so you’ll just return to your bodies and wake up. As for the other Players, that’ll be up to the Conductor.”

“He was the big guy with the laser eyes, right?” Neku checked.

“Yup. That’s him,” Takagi confirmed. “I’ll go back to the Pad and let him and Joshua know that the Game’s over. We need to tally up the points, so it will be a couple more hours before we call you up. Do what you wish in that time.” He bowed, then ran through the tunnel in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a glowing afterimage, which faded after a few seconds.

Sora crossed his hands behind his head. “Well, there’s a bit of time before we go back to the RG. You want to see what our friends are up to?” he asked.

“Sure,” Neku replied.

* * *

Within the hour, they had reunited with Shiki and Eri, who had decided to leave the fight to them and instead chose to go to the mall, as well as their living companions, and they had all gone to a Sunshine Shibukyu fast food restaurant for burgers, as well as a salad for Donald and minestrone for Mickey. Sora, Neku, Shiki, and Eri had seen Naminé’s mural and paid the proper commendations when they saw her. They ate, talked, and laughed. Since they no longer had to prioritize figuring out how to deal with the Taboo Noise crisis, they were happy to talk about normal things. The residents shared stories about life in Tokyo, in Shibuya as well as the other wards they live in, while the world travelers talked about the worlds they were from

After some time, the Players heard their phones beep. They checked them and saw the same text message: “Come to the Shibuya River beyond the freeway to reap your rewards. -The Reapers”.

Sora faced his friends and grinned. “Well, see you on the other side,” he said. He turned to focus directly on Naminé, undeterred by the fact that when he and Kairi returned, she would go back to resting in Kairi’s heart. “I’ll see you soon, too. Face to face, no backing out.”

Naminé giggled and nodded. “Okay. One day,” she replied.

“Hey. Don’t you have something else to say to her?” Riku interjected. Donald and Goofy looked at each other in confusion before they realized that he was referring to the promise to thank Naminé.

Sora thought about it, crossing his arms as he did so, before shaking his head. “Not yet. When we’re all here.” He waved good-bye, and, after paying for his share of the meal, left with Neku, Shiki, and Eri.

* * *

The four of them, soon joined by the other surviving Players, made their way through the tunnel system. They came upon a stream of sewer water, which Eri and another girl protested to crossing. Sora scooped Eri up and carried her across, while the other girl’s partner did the same. Everyone else crossed on their own with minimal complaints. Some people expressed disbelief that the passage existed in the city they were familiar with, but Neku explained that everything beyond the freeway only existed in the UG, and the space did not exist in the RG.

They proceeded onward until they saw a doorway. When they drew near, it opened on its own, and a bright white light shone through. They stepped through, and the light faded to reveal what appeared to be a barroom with a transparent floor under which an aquarium filled with fish was situated, two cream-colored sofas, a foosball table, a jukebox, and a dartboard. Takagi stood behind the bar pouring drinks while Uzuki and Kariya were playing foosball and Yoko was throwing darts. Two Support Reapers sat in front of the bar, drinking beer or soda. Atukaze stood off to the side, patiently awaiting the Players’ arrival.

“Welcome to Dead God’s Pad,” Atukaze greeted. Sora and Neku wondered how he could keep a straight face while saying the name of the Reapers’ domain; it was clear that Takagi could barely keep himself from cracking up. “I will convene with you all in pairs to discuss your final score.” Atukaze raised his hand, and the world shifted around him and the Players. Looking around, Sora and Neku saw that the other Reapers, as well as the other Players, were nowhere to be seen. Atukaze positioned himself so that he was directly facing them.

“I would once again like to extend my gratitude for your assistance in overcoming the Taboo Noise crisis,” the Conductor continued. “Sora, it is my understanding that your resurrection has been guaranteed by the Composer. And Neku Sakuraba, you did not enter the Underground by way of death in the first place. This warrants investigation, although I will let the breach in rules slide this time. Your soul will return to your dormant body and awaken shortly after. Sora, you will be restored fully to life, and you will awaken tomorrow morning in Scramble Crossing.”

“Can I at least get a sleeping bag?” Sora complained.

Atukaze let out a huff in amusement. “After today, our involvement will come to a close. Sora, your Entry Fee will be restored. I regret that your friend had to be dragged into the pit through this, but that is how the rules work here.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have any remaining questions to ask before I bring this meeting to a close?”

“Um… Oh! There was one thing that I was wondering, sir. Neku said that, before Players wake up in the Scramble on the first day, they are given an orientation. But I don’t remember it, and Neku had to explain everything to me. Do you know why that is?” Sora asked.

Atukaze considered the question, reflecting on when he had first seen the boy. “It is a peculiarity. You were indeed at the orientation, but it seemed as though you were spacing out. At the same time, when I was collecting your Entry Fee, it seemed… how should I put it… jumbled. As if the Noise could not decide what to select, or as if there were two identities with different values. Perhaps the identities were jumbled when you were killed and appeared in the Underground.”

Sora wondered what the cause could be, but he soon realized that he did have someone whose soul would have ridden with him. “Roxas,” he muttered. “My Nobody. Of course. When I died, he would have died as well. And he was stuck with me the whole week.”

Neku looked at him, confused. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“It’s best not to open that dam,” Atukaze advised.

“Roxas, I wonder what was taken from you?” Sora mused. After a moment of pensiveness, he shook the thought out of his head and faced the Conductor directly. “Okay. I’m ready to return to life.”

Atukaze nodded. “Very well. I wish you luck on your quest.” He offered him and Neku a bow, which they returned. Suddenly, everything went black, and the Players lost consciousness.

* * *

Awakened by the sound of disorganized, overlapping voices, Sora opened his eyes to see the feet of people walking around him. Pushing against the asphalt, he stood up. It was the morning of a new day in Shibuya, and he was once again in Scramble Crossing.

“Good morning,” one pedestrian cheerfully greeted. Sora realized that the people could see him, and were casually moving to avoid him as they went on their way.

_ I’m back, _ he thought.

“Hey, Sora!” a familiar female voice shouted. He turned in the direction of the voice and, beyond the dense crowd of passerby, caught glimpses of his friends standing on the sidewalk corner: Riku, Goofy, and a smiling redhead dressed in pink.

“Kairi!” he shouted in delight. He made to run to her, but found himself having to navigate through the crowd. “Oh, sorry. 'Scuse me.” After he had cleared the throng, he ran the last ten feet and pulled Kairi into a tight hug. Giggling, Kairi hugged him back.

“Good to have you back,” Riku said.

Sora looked around and saw that Riku, King Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Aqua were all there, along with Neku, Shiki, Eri, Beat, and Rhyme. As he had predicted, Naminé was nowhere to be seen, but that did not worry him; he knew that she was fine and content.

After a minute, Sora and Kairi released their embrace. “Riku and the others filled me in on what’s been going on, but I still don’t quite understand all of it,” Kairi said. “So, I was your ‘Entry Fee’?”

“The Entry Fee is the one thing most important to the Player,” Shiki explained.

Kairi giggled and looked up at Sora with a teasing smile. “So, I’m the thing most important to you?”

Sora laughed. “Was there ever any question?” He leaned forward, tilting her head up, and kissed her on the lips. She reciprocated, kissing him passionately. Their friends smiled, hearts warmed by the sight.

Their lips separated and the couple stepped apart. They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, smiling.

The moment was interrupted when Sora heard his phone ring. He took it out and, seeing that the call was from Hanekoma, picked up. “Hey, Mr. H.”

“Morning, Sora. Glad to have you back among the living,” Hanekoma greeted. “Listen, can you guys pop by WildKat? I’ve got a parting gift for you and your friends.”

“Sure,” Sora replied.

“Alright. Catch you then.” Hanekoma hung up.

* * *

The party went to WildKat, though they took a detour so that Kairi could see Naminé’s graffiti art, which she absolutely loved. When they entered the café, Hanekoma called them back into his office. Once inside, he opened a box on his desk, revealing six phones identical to Sora’s, with the only difference being in color.

“There you go. Now you can keep in contact with each other if you get separated, or if you want to talk to some of your friends on other worlds,” Hanekoma said. He explained the Lifestream Reception that he had built into the phone plans. “Sora can show you how to use them.”

Riku took the gray phone; Kairi took the pink phone; Mickey took the bright red phone; Donald took the light blue one; Goofy the green; and Aqua the deeper blue one. Sora showed them how to turn their phones on, call others, and check and send text messages. They checked their contacts and saw that they all had the contact information for their Shibuya friends, Leon and the gang, Zack, the Turks, and all of the relevant addresses on Destiny Islands and in Disney Town built in.

“How did you…?” Riku began to ask.

Hanekoma chuckled. “Trade secret,” he replied.

“Just like all of your other tricks,” Neku remarked.

“Thanks, Mr. H,” Kairi said.

“Oh. And I also want you to have this.” Hanekoma grabbed a coffee machine and dumped it in Sora’s hands. He then handed a container of coffee grounds to Goofy, who cautiously passed it off to Aqua.

“Uh, thanks?” Sora said, confused by the gesture.

“Take good care of it. And drink up. It’ll give you a good morning boost.”

“I’m actually allergic,” Goofy admitted.

“Okay. That’s fair,” Hanekoma said sheepishly. “Well, I guess that’s all I have for you. Take care, kiddos.”

“You’re leaving?” Shiki asked, disappointed to see that her new friends would be going away.

Sora nodded. “Yeah. We have to keep the worlds safe from our enemies and their plans.”

Kairi looked at Sora quizzically. “You told them?” she asked.

Sora turned to her and waved his hands defensively. “That was Mr. H! I mean, I actually tried to keep it on the down-low unless I needed to,” he explained. Donald beamed at him proudly.

“It was really nice spending time with you all,” Aqua told the Shibuya crew.

“Hey, wait a minute. Maybe we can stay here for a little bit longer,” Kairi suggested. “I never actually got to hang out with you guys.

Riku nodded. “Okay. I guess we can stick around a little bit longer.”

“Right. We’ll just drop this stuff off in our ship, then we’ll be back,” Sora affirmed.

* * *

The world travelers and the Shibuya gang spent the day strolling around, eating ramen, shopping, playing Tin Pin Slammer, and all in all having fun. Kairi got along quite well with Shiki, Eri, and Rhyme, and she found Beat to be a big softie despite his “tough guy” exterior, to the latter’s mild embarrassment and to the girls’ amusement. At the end of the day, they said their good-byes. Before he and his friends left, Sora said that if Neku and the gang needed help with something, or if they wanted to hang out or chat, to give them a call.

Back on the Gummi Ship, Mickey, Donald and Riku surveyed the world map and tracked the villains’ movements. After picking a direction and flying for a few hours, they decided to call it a night and head off to bed.

* * *

In the recreation of the White Room in her Dive to the Heart, Kairi taped a memory photograph depicting Naminé’s graffiti art to the wall. “This is a keeper,” she said.

“You have to thank Riku, too, for helping me put it up,” Naminé said. She held up a  _ Gatito _ -brand pin with one of CAT’s symbols for the design. “And look at this. Certified CAT Apprentice.”

Kairi smiled warmly. “You look like you had fun this week,” she noted. “Do you think you’d like to do it again sometime?”

Naminé tapped her crayon to her chin. “Hmm… I think so.” She continued drawing in her tablet, humming to the tune of a song she heard in Shibuya.

Kairi peeked over her shoulder to see what she was drawing. “Is that you… and Riku?” she asked. Naminé nodded, with a slightly cheerful “Mm-hmm.” Kairi picked up on the tone and beamed as she put two and two together. “OMG, Naminé, do you  _ like _ Riku?”

Naminé paused in her art as she was left at a loss for how to respond. Could that be the case? She considered her connection with Riku. He was always nice to her during the year she spent putting Sora’s memories back together. He never held what happened to his best friend against her, and he did not fault her when she ran into complications and the restoration process came to a halt. When he returned from a scouting mission, or after she received a stern and cold lecture from DiZ, he would visit her and ask how she was doing. He was a good listener, and he was also able to confide in her about his feelings and insecurities. He made her feel comfortable; whereas DiZ would often remind her how she was not meant to exist, Riku would make her feel like she had worth. And when she suddenly found herself with autonomy in Shibuya, having no idea how to handle herself in a group, Riku made sure she was comfortable and was able to adjust and engage with the others. While she had always felt that she had a connection with Sora, Kairi, and Roxas, she would probably consider Riku to be her best friend.

“Maybe,” she said simply.

Kairi wrapped her arms around her Nobody. “That’s great.”

Naminé, though momentarily taken by surprise by the hug, smiled, and continued drawing, thinking about the time she spent with Riku.

* * *

Sora tossed and turned in bed, something inside him roused and shaken. It was as if something was put into his head, or put back into his heart, and he was left disoriented, trying to process it. Or, rather, a part of his being, a heart within him, was disoriented, trying to process it. Suddenly, he woke up, catapulting to an upright position, and blurted out a single word, though it was in Roxas’ voice, as he was at the helm this time.

“ _ Xion! _ ”


	128. Chapter 127: Expand Your World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sort of epilogue to the events in Shibuya. I don't believe we'll be visiting this world again in this story. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think in a review.

Seven days later, in Shibuya…

Neku, Shiki, Beat, Rhyme, and Eri gathered at the statue of Hachiko. They spent a few minutes chatting before taking a stroll around Shibuya. High up, on the roof of the 104 building, Joshua sat, watching his friends hang out from afar. He smiled wistfully as they laughed at something funny Beat did. He was glad that, even after everything they had been through, everything that he had put them through, they were doing alright.

He heard the flap of wings and the soft sound of feet setting down gently on the roof behind him. He glanced back to glimpse his visitor. “Hello, Hiroto,” he greeted.

Atukaze nodded. “Yoshiya,” he returned. He retracted his Reaper wings back into his body. He stepped forward so that he was standing at the edge of the roof next to Joshua. “Checking up on your friends?”

Joshua nodded. “Perceptive as always, Conductor.”

“It appears as though someone is missing from the group,” Atukaze commented.

“What do you mean?” Joshua stared down at them, perplexed, but it slowly dawned on him that Atukaze was referring to him. “You know I can’t.”

“I have seen them. I have heard how Neku spoke of you to Sora. They still care about you. In spite of the sins with which you still weigh yourself down, they still think of you as a friend.”

Joshua paused, considering Atukaze’s words and accepting that they were true. “Even still, they’re better off without me,” he insisted.

“One could see it that way,” Atukaze shrugged. “But are you better off without them?” Joshua raised an eyebrow at that. Atukaze cleared his throat. “Forgive me if I am overstepping my bounds…”

Joshua let out a chuckle. “Don’t apologize for that,” he assured his second-in-command.

“No existence should be a lonely one,” the Conductor said plainly. “If you isolate yourself from those you care about, you miss out on the ultimate experience. And in our line of work, you would lose sight of what you work toward.”

“I can’t say I’m really fit for that.”

“Once upon a time, I might have seen your point. In the past, you had lost sight of the light in the hearts of the people of Shibuya. You projected your loneliness and insecurity onto the rest of the world, unable to see the good in people. You wanted to Erase Shibuya. But do you know what happened? You made friends. You met someone who had every reason to despise you for your attitude and actions, but didn’t. While he still has not come to forgive you, he could not bring himself to cut you down even if the alternative was the destruction of the city he loved, and he found reason to trust you. As such, you saw what you thought was missing in the city, and you changed your mind.

“Are you fit for it now, though? Personally, I believe you are. And it seems that your friends believe it, too. Neku appeared to believe that you were deserving of friendship. As did Sora. He believed that you could use that strength to power the Harmonizer Pin, and indeed you did. They see the untapped potential within your heart. All you need is to see it for yourself.

“You should spend time with your friends. Take some time off from work and unwind. Have some fun, and find that light you have been seeking.” Joshua turned away, evidently deep in thought. Atukaze cleared his throat. “Good day, Yoshiya.” He spread his wings and flew off.

Joshua contemplated Atukaze’s advice. He could always rely on him for guidance. Megumi Kitaniji had served at his right hand since he became Composer, and he had always viewed him as a good and wise friend. After he was Erased, Hiroto Atukaze was the only Reaper he thought would be worthy of filling his shoes. Indeed, he showed himself to be an excellent Conductor, both as a director of operations and as an advisor. He was professional and formal to a fault, but he always knew what needed to be said. He understood the importance of the Reapers’ Game, for Players and Reapers alike, as well as anyone, perhaps even more so than he did.

Perhaps Atukaze was right. Perhaps he should take the chance, give himself the chance. Or maybe he should not. Maybe it was better for everyone if he stayed out of mortal affairs.

He looked back down at Neku and his friends as they walked up Dogenzaka street and entered Ramen Don. He smiled softly.

Perhaps it was worth it to give it a try.

He flew down and entered the noodle restaurant. He scanned around to find Neku and the others, and saw them sitting together at a table. For a moment, he developed cold feet, and he almost gave up and retreated. However, when the teens saw him, they beamed and waved, inviting him over. He allowed himself a quiet chuckle of amusement before making his way over to them and sitting down. Beat initiated a conversation, and Joshua joined in with everyone.

* * *

A young man strolled down CAT Street, deliberately making his way toward WildKat. When he entered and approached the bar, he told the barista that he had an appointment with the manager. The barista informed Mr. Hanekoma, who invited the young man in.

“So, what brings you here?” Hanekoma asked as he prepared coffee for his guest. “You’re not too busy playing with toy robots in your ward?”

The young man had pale skin and light silver hair. He appeared to be in his early to mid-twenties. He was dressed in dark khakis, black fingerless gloves, and black boots. He wore sunglasses that obscured his eyes. He took the Styrofoam cup that Hanekoma handed to him and sipped. “Why did you give him the artifact?” he inquired. Despite the fact that he slouched in his chair in a relaxed manner, he took his business seriously when it was necessary.

“I had a feeling you’d pick up on that,” Hanekoma remarked.

“You told me that when your time passed, you would leave it to me to watch over, and you gave me the means to locate it in case you couldn’t hand it on to me in person,” the visitor recalled. “Then, last week, you handed it to that Keyblade wielder. Aren’t we supposed to make sure people from other worlds  _ don’t _ get their hands on it? Why did you give it to him?”

“First off, you should know that he is trying to keep all of them safe, and out of the hands of those who want to use them for nasty reasons,” Hanekoma explained.

“And it’s not safe here, under our power?” the young man argued. “You couldn’t just say it was secure and keep it that way, maybe giving him a clue to help him on his way?”

“I didn’t say that. Of course, I had to play a few tough tricks to keep the Angels from finding out it even exists, and an elaborate shell game so that whoever’s tracking them wouldn’t be able to realize it was here.”

“Then why give it up, even to someone like him?”

“Maybe keeping it safe isn’t enough. I’ve been getting this feeling that something is coming. And when it comes, the World will need to be ready.”

The young man laced his fingers together and looked Hanekoma in the eyes. “And as for Sora?”

Hanekoma nodded. “I believe that he’s the right person to get the World in a state where it is ready to handle what is to come,” he answered. “And to do that, he will need to use the power that the artifacts protect.”

The young man finished his coffee, then removed his sunglasses, allowing Hanekoma to properly meet his gaze and look into his mismatched eyes, a blue iris on the right eye and a red iris on the left. “Well, let’s hope you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, we will probably not be returning to Shibuya, and I have no intention of writing a sequel to this fic. But I will be peppering the story with teases for future events such as this one, as a way to say "the adventure continues" and to encourage you, my dear readers, to imagine what these teases could possibly indicate. In other words, go nuts.
> 
> Well, all caught up to the FanFiction.Net version of this story. From this point on, I won't be doing any more twice-a-week multi-chapter updates, and I will be updating this at the same time I update the FFN side of things (of course, since I haven't been getting comments on the last several chapters, I have no idea how many of you have been keeping up with my recent update schedule, so I don't know who that impacts). It probably won't be as frequent as I would like, but stay tuned for the story's continuation.


	129. Chapter 128: Ice in Summer

“SLAM ON!”

With Donald officiating, Riku, Kairi, and Aqua clashed in a three-man game of Tin Pin Slammer. The tops bounced off of the books and boxes that had been set up as walls and crashed against each other. Their friends cheered them on as the tops did battle. Sora was glad that he was allowed to keep the pins that he received during the Reapers’ Game, even though he would not be able to use the Psychs attached anymore. Donald, however, was fascinated by the powers that Sora had described and wanted to study the brand of magic that was built into them. Riku and Kairi agreed with Sora that they were neat souvenirs of the visit and they were cool-looking.

After a round of clashing, Aqua’s spinner fell off of the table, and Riku’s went soon after. Kairi cheered and pumped her fists into the air, celebrating her win.

“Nice one, Kairi!” Sora applauded. He gave her a high-five.

“Good game,” Riku commended.

Kairi nodded. “Yeah. You too,” she replied.

“We should do game nights more often,” Aqua suggested. “I need to find the game Terra, Ven and I used to play, ‘Command Board’.”

“That sounds like fun,” Kairi said.

“I’ve heard of that. I’ll see what I can find,” Mickey said.

“Well, that’s enough play for today. Let’s plot a course,” Donald asserted.

Everyone put the pins and spinners away and went up to the cockpit. Sora and Donald began to race each other to the pilot’s seat, but Riku warped into place, taking the seat. Grumbling about how it was “no fair”, they took the other main chairs, Sora as the co-pilot and Donald as the gunner, while Riku laid back with a cocky smirk.

Jiminy hopped up into the cupholder on the dashboard. “Well, then? What’s our heading?” he asked.

Sora brought the map of the worlds up for all to see. “Well, there’s an asteroid belt here,” he said, pointing at a speckled section of the map. “Agrabah is the nearest world in that direction. But there’s some strange activity on this side of the Misty Stream.” He pointed at a world that had not been labeled as having been charted, which was surrounded by red dots that indicated ships.

“I wonder what that’s about,” Riku mused. “Let’s check it out.” Everyone agreed and buckled themselves in. “Okay. Let’s plot a course.”

* * *

The world they found was distinguishable by a castle and village with blue roofs which sat on a fjord, as well as a snow-capped forest-covered mountain. If they squinted, they would see ships that waved different sails and banners were docked in the fjord.

“Any sign of the bogeys?” Mickey asked.

Sora checked the radar and compared it to what he saw out of the cockpit window. He shook his head. “Nothing. But it doesn’t look like they just dispersed.” He brought up an advanced scan of the world, which showed the localized time of day, the date positioning it in the middle of summer, and energy readings on a variety of frequencies. “Not a lot of hostile energy either, so they probably aren’t invaders, or Heartless ships.”

“Well, let’s disembark and look around,” Riku said. He brought the ship into a position to park and selected a point to beam down. The party stepped into the glowing circle and went down to the new world.

They walked through the village, noticing that the buildings were decorated as if there was some sort of big event going on. “Is there a festival?” Kairi asked, recalling the decorations around Corona’s thoroughfare.

“I’m not sure it’s quite like that,” Riku argued. He pointed ahead to a plaza where a crowd was gathered facing the castle’s front gates. “It looks like they’re waiting for something.”

As they approached the crowd, Donald warned Sora to watch what he says, lest he let on that he was not from around there. Sora wondered how he would inquire as to what was going on without making that point obvious. Kairi also noted that it was a moot point, as it would become apparent as soon as they summoned their Keyblades when Heartless appeared. When they reached the crowd, Sora shrugged, causing Donald to groan as he understood that Sora was going to ask in a straightforward manner anyway.

“Excuse me. What’s everyone waiting for?” Sora asked one of the townspeople.

However, the woman did not seem concerned with his ignorance, likely determining that he was merely from out of town. “We’re waiting for the new queen to come out and greet everyone,” she explained. “Her coronation was this afternoon, and right now she’s at the afterparty with the visiting dignitaries.”

“A coronation? Cool,” Sora exclaimed.

Just then, the doors opened up, and a young woman ran out, but she stopped in surprise when she saw the crowd. She had a tall and slender build, blue eyes, and platinum-blonde hair in a French braided crown twist bun, and she wore purple eyeshadow and magenta lipstick. She wore a long-sleeved black turtleneck blouse with red and teal crystal-shaped prints, a teal dress with a sweetheart bodice that had bronze trim and rosemaling on the skirt and bodice, a magenta cape, a gold tiara, and dark brown flats. A long satin, cyan-colored glove covered her right hand while the left one was bare.

Everyone in the crowd applauded when the woman appeared, making it easy to guess who she was. “Is that her?” Sora asked.

The woman in front of him nodded. “Yes. That is Queen Elsa, of Arendelle,” she replied.

“Is she alright?” Riku asked, noticing that Elsa’s face bore a fearful expression. Hearing footsteps, the queen glanced back in the direction she came and ran, trying to make her way through the crowd. She appeared as though she wanted to avoid everyone as best she could, though most people did not seem to notice, continuing to clap for her and bow when she drew near. One woman noticed her discomfort and asked if she was alright. Panicking, the queen stumbled back as far as she could go. When she leaned back and gripped the edge of the fountain behind her, icicles shot up around her left hand. Frost spread across the stone rapidly, and the water began to freeze. Realizing what she had done, she let go and turned around. She gaped in horror as the fountain froze completely, the water that shot up crystallizing and contorting into a wild shape.

The crowd fell silent, barring a few gasps, as they stared in shock as the ice spread at the queen’s touch. Sora and company were similarly taken by surprise. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming,” Sora remarked.

“Uh-uh,” Donald agreed, shaking his head.

“There she is!” an elderly man dressed in formal attire shouted as he and his two bodyguards came to the door. “Stop her!”

“Please, just stay away from me!” Elsa pleaded. “Stay away!” Suddenly, magic shot out of her hand and hit the steps leading up to the door, to the surprise of everyone, including her. The steps and doors frosted over and icicles sprouted up like spikes. The force of the magic blast caused the old man and his guards to lose their footing and fall backward.

“Monster… Monster!” The old man pointed at Elsa accusingly.

As Elsa looked at her hand, horrified at what she had just done, the people at the front of the crowd stepped back, with parents blocking their children protectively. Elsa ran through the crowd, everyone nearby making room for her to flee.

A young woman in a green dress, who appeared to be younger than the queen, appeared at the doors, shouting for Elsa. She scanned the crowd to locate her, then ran after her. A man in a white uniform followed after her, while the old man and his guards regained their bearings.

The world travelers watched Elsa make her way to a side exit. “She can use magic,” Kairi mused.

“What made her lose control?” Riku wondered.

“Could she control it? She seemed afraid of her own power,” Aqua added.

“Let’s see if we can catch up with her,” Sora suggested. They ran around the crowd and made their way to the door that Elsa had gone through, reaching it a moment after the younger woman and the man had gone through. They came out of a door on the outside of the village wall, where they saw Elsa running down a stairway to a rocky shore at the edge of the fjord.

“Elsa! Wait, please!” the younger woman called. Elsa turned to look back up at them nervously. She backed up slowly, then felt that something was different in the surface she was standing on. She looked down and saw that the water was freezing over around the area where she stood. Gingerly, she stepped onto the ice and saw a snowflake-shaped symbol glow where she stepped as the ice hardened. The group ran down the steps to catch up to her, but she started to run, the ice spreading with each step she took. Unbeknownst to her, her magic did not simply freeze the area that she would step on, but the ice spread out sideways.

“Elsa, stop!” the woman pleaded once more. She tried to pursue her across the ice, but slipped and fell to her knees.

“Anna!” the man called in concern, rushing to her side.

“Whoa,” Sora gasped as he watched Elsa run across the freezing water. “Have you seen anything like that, Donald?”

“Not by magic that’s used by mortals,” Donald said in disbelief.

“No…” the woman, Anna, whispered as she watched Elsa flee across the freezing water to the forest on the opposite shore.

“Look! The fjord!” Mickey gasped. Everyone looked around as they saw the water freezing completely, the ice magic expanding even after Elsa had stepped onto dry land. The ice spread around and under the ships in dock, locking them in place.

While everyone else simply stared in shock, Riku slowly walked down the stairs, making his way to the sheet of ice. “Riku, what are you doing?” Kairi asked when she saw this.

Riku turned back to face his friends, a step away from the frozen water. “That girl, Elsa... she looked so scared. She has this power, and she seemed terrified of it, of herself,” he said. “It seemed as if she thought the only thing she could do to keep everyone else safe was to run away.” He let out a sigh. He knew that feeling better than anyone. That was a lot like how he felt after he had let himself succumb to darkness. He now knew that that was not the way to go, but Elsa was lost in her own fear. “I need to go talk to her. Try to help her.”

“Well, you’re not going alone! I’m coming with you,” Donald insisted. He ran down to join him.

“I will, too,” Aqua said, joining them.

“We’ll stick around for a bit,” Mickey said. “Good luck.”

Riku, Donald and Aqua nodded in affirmation, then turned to march across the ice.

After they had left, Sora ran down to help Anna and her companion. “Hey, are you alright?” he asked.

“No,” Anna replied.

“Are you and the queen close?” Kairi asked, making note of Anna’s concern for Elsa.

“We were,” Anna said sadly. “Elsa is my sister.”

“Your sister?” Goofy parroted. “So, that would make you…”

Anna nodded. “Princess Anna of Arendelle,” she finished, introducing herself properly.

Anna shared many features with her sister, including the shape of her face and her blue eyes, although her hair was a strawberry blonde color rather than platinum blonde, and there was also a thin streak of white on the right side. She wore her hair in a bun and had some of it braided like a headband. She was dressed in a black sweetheart bodice with dark green off-shoulder straps, a greenish-gold trim, and rose, teal, blue, and purple prints, as well as a black satin-laced necklace with a bronze pendant, an olive drab pleated skirt with sashes that had multicolored designs, a cream petticoat with frilly knee-length pantalettes, white stockings, and a pair of black ballet shoes. Her hair was decorated with a green comb-shaped barrette with a couple satin ribbons and green chartreuse. She also wore dark pink lipstick. She held a satin glove in her hand, the counterpart to the one that Elsa wore.

Realizing that they were talking to the kingdom’s princess, the world travelers bowed respectfully. They proceeded to introduce themselves in turn.

“I am Prince Hans, of the Southern Isles,” the man beside Anna said, bowing respectfully. He was a well-built, handsome man with green eyes and auburn hair and sideburns. He was wearing a cream blazer with red and gold designs, a yellow shirt underneath, a red sash, black boots, white stockings, gold and red epaulets, and a cream ascot.

Kairi shivered and rubbed her arms to keep warm. “Did it just get colder?” she asked.

Goofy exhaled and saw that his breath had become visible. “Gawrsh, I can see my breath,” he remarked.

“Didn’t the radar say it was summer here?” Mickey asked.

“We should head back into the village and check in on everyone,” Hans suggested.

They went back up to the street, where the townspeople were still confused and shocked by the events that had transpired. Guards were breaking ice spikes and crushing them to prevent them from causing accidental harm to others. It had also started to snow, causing concern all around as it became apparent that the unstable ice magic had begun to affect the atmosphere and weather.

“Did you know?” Hans asked Anna, referring to her sister’s powers.

“No,” Anna answered.

“Look! It’s snowing! It’s snowing! The queen has cursed this land!” the old man panicked. He turned to his bodyguards. “She must be stopped! You must go after her.”

“Wait, no!” Anna protested, running up to the man.

The old man hid behind his bodyguards and glared accusingly at Anna. “You! Is there sorcery in you? Are you a monster, too?”

“No. No. I’m completely ordinary,” Anna replied.

“That’s right, she is,” Hans asserted, placing his hand on Anna’s shoulder supportively. He caught himself and noticed that his tone might have been untoward. “...In the best way,” he added, giving her a sweet smile.

“I think you need to calm down and back off,” Sora said, approaching the group and shooting a glare at the old man. The man prepared a sharp retort, but thought better of it.

“My sister’s not a monster,” Anna insisted.

“She tried to kill me!” the old man argued.

“You slipped on ice,” Hans retorted.

“ _ Her _ ice!”

“Can’t you see she was scared?” Sora argued. “I could tell that she didn’t want to hurt anyone. She lost control of her powers, and she didn’t know how to handle them in her stress. You didn’t seem like you were helping.”

The old man scoffed and adjusted his glasses. “To think I crossed the Misty Stream to attend a trade partner’s royal’s ascension only to be trapped in a mystic curse,” he grumbled.

Sora blinked, picking up on the mention of the space sector they had just passed through. “Wait, what was that?”

“Sora!” a familiar voice blurted from several feet away. He turned to locate the source of the voice when a brunette in a purple dress ran up and wrapped him in a bear hug.

Kairi and Mickey gasped as they recognized the girl. Sora pulled her off to get a look at her face, and he was just as shocked as them. “Rapunzel?”

The princess of Corona laughed. “It’s good to see you,” she said.

Sora chuckled nervously. “Uh, same. But what are you doing here?” he asked. “This isn’t anywhere near Corona.”

“Well, the same thing that the rest of us are doing here,” the old man said. “This kingdom has guests from many different kingdoms and nations spreading far and wide. I am the duke representing Weselton, Arendelle’s closest trading partner.”

Sora crossed his arms as he processed what he was being told, his confusion visible on his face. “You… crossed the sea between worlds?”

The Duke of Weselton nodded. “As we have done several times in our many years of international relations,” he added, as if it should have been obvious.

“M-Many years?” Sora parroted in bewilderment. “But I thought the worlds were supposed to be separate, and people weren’t supposed to know that there were other worlds beyond their own. ‘World Order’, Donald keeps telling me.”

“That would be true for the common gentry,” a man dressed in a Colonial British naval uniform interjected. “But governments and blue-blooded houses have known of the greater World for centuries, and have engaged in international relations with many of the other lands since we have been able.”

Sora and his companions were taken aback. People have been traveling between worlds long before them? If so, then what was the point of the secrecy that Donald always used to give him grief over?

Goofy leaned down to whisper into Mickey’s ear. “Did you know about this, your Majesty?” he asked.

Mickey shrugged. “My experience with external relations was mostly related to my responsibilities as a Keyblade Master,” he replied. “Though I guess that explains how Minnie and Scrooge understood it well enough.”

“Kingdoms and nations that make business in commerce cannot well trade or profit much if their reach is a world border that stops two meters from the edge of their dominion,” the British merchant added. “Were that so, the East India Trading Company would not exist.”

“East India Trading Company? I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere before,” Kairi mused.

“Oh, there you are, Rapunzel. I was wondering where you’d run off to.” The party turned to the new speaker and recognized him as Eugene Fitzherbert, accompanied by one of the Kingdom of Corona’s royal guards. He was dressed in more formal attire, donning a black suit with a purple vest marked with the sun-shaped sigil of Corona. Sora smiled, putting his confusion to one side as he was simply happy to see his friend. “Oh, hello there, Sora, Kairi, Mickey, Goofy. Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hey, Eugene,” Sora greeted.

“Hang on. The worlds had barriers separating them until a few years ago. How have you been able to sail the Lanes Between before that?” Kairi asked.

The trading company merchant smirked. “We have our means,” he said cryptically. “Although I’ll admit, we did enjoy the lack of barriers in the last few years, even while our business locations were being lost.”

“But how do you reinforce your ships against the darkness of the Lanes Between?” Mickey asked. “Especially for the crew members out in the open.”

“Really? I didn’t feel a thing,” Eugene remarked. “Then again, I don’t really understand what you’re talking about.”

“A-hyuck. I guess you could say the same thing about Captain Hook’s pirate ship,” Goofy said, recalling how the vessel sailed around the Gummi Ship to ambush and capture them. The trading company merchant frowned at the mention of pirates.

Rapunzel shivered and did an erratic jig. “Brrr… My feet are freezing!” she complained.

“Say, maybe we should find you some shoes,” Eugene suggested.

“And a cloak, too,” Hans added.

“It’s that blasted queen’s curse,” the Duke spat. “That monster and her wretched sorcery.”

Eugene was incensed at the Duke’s remarks against magic, as Rapunzel used to have powers and Sora and company had their magic, and they would by extension fall under his “wretched monsters” categorization. He stepped up close to the Duke and glared down at him. “Do you have something against magic, pal?”

The Duke gulped in reaction to his threatening tone, then quickly composed himself and cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he replied sternly. His bodyguards gently nudged Eugene to take a step back.

Eugene shrugged. “I’ll admit, I’m not sure what answer I was expecting.” The Corona guard rolled his eyes.

“Either way, the queen’s magic is freezing us in, and something must be done before it gets worse,” the trading company merchant said.

“Yes. Something must be done about the queen,” the Duke agreed.

“It was an accident. She was scared. She didn't mean it. She didn't mean any of this,” Anna insisted once again. While the others were talking, she had reflected on recent events and had reached a decision. She knew what she had to do. “Tonight was my fault. I pushed her, so I’m the one that needs to go after her.”

“What?” Hans gasped.

“Bring me my horse,” Anna hailed the royal handler.

“Anna, no! It’s too dangerous,” Hans pleaded, placing a hand on her shoulder to try to stop her.

“Elsa’s not dangerous,” Anna assured him. She continued on her way to where the royal handler and her horse were. “I’ll bring her back and I’ll make this right.”

“I’m coming with you,” Hans said, taking her hand.

“No, I need you here to take care of Arendelle.” The royal handler placed a cloak over her.

“On my honor,” Hans promised.

“We’ll come with you,” Sora volunteered. Kairi nodded in agreement.

Anna raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“We want to do what we can to help. And it might be dangerous to go out into this alone,” Sora replied.

“You can trust them,” Rapunzel assured her.

Anna considered the offer, then nodded. “Okay.” She mounted her horse. “I leave Prince Hans in charge,” she announced.

“Well, I’ll stay here and do what I can to help,” Mickey said.

Hans looked down at him and nodded. “I appreciate your assistance.” He looked back up at Anna. “Are you sure you can trust her?” he asked, his worry evident in his tone. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Anna smiled in a reassuring manner. “She’s my sister. She would never hurt me.” She snapped the reins, and her horse began to run through the streets.

“We’ll catch up later,” Eugene told Sora and company. “Good luck.”

Rapunzel gave Sora a parting hug, which Sora reciprocated, then Sora, Kairi and Goofy waved good-bye and ran off after Anna. “Hey, wait up!” Sora called after the princess as she rode her horse out through the front gates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's a wrench in the status quo of the lore itself. Please, let me know what you thought in a comment. I would like to see your opinions on what I did and how you think this will impact events going forward. But please, be civil about it.


	130. Chapter 129: Up the Icy Mountain

Riku, Donald and Aqua trudged up the North Mountain after Elsa. A snowstorm had developed over the land, and whatever portion of the mountain was not already covered in snow on its own was already nearly a foot deep. They shivered, even with Donald’s protective layer of feathers and Riku and Aqua having a tolerance to low temperatures due to the time they spent in the darkness. Aqua ended up having to pick Donald up when he started wading too deep in the snow.

“Her magic… I haven’t seen anything like it,” Donald remarked.

“If she was this afraid of losing control of her magic, it must have taken an incredible amount of willpower to keep it from breaking loose,” Riku mused.

“She isn’t leaving any footprints. I hope we don’t lose her,” Aqua said.

Donald pointed the staff he currently carried, which had a vegvisir mounted on the tip, using it to trace the source and center of the snowstorm. “Don’t worry. We’re not losing track,” he assured her.

They continued on for some time, following the same path that Elsa had gone. Soon, their monotonous march was interrupted, however, as Heartless resembling blue and black reindeer calves with antlers made of ice hopped down from a higher ledge to confront them. Aqua put Donald down, then summoned her Keyblade to prepare to do battle. Riku summoned his Keyblade as well. The Heartless, which Donald elected to call Winterhorns, jumped around, aiming to strike them with their hooves. Riku and Aqua dodged easily, but Donald was once again waist-deep in the snow, so he was forced to use Reflect to bounce them back. Some of the Winterhorns leapt up and flipped upside-down to drop icicles from their antlers, hitting their marks a couple times. To prevent them from doing that again, and to thwart one Winterhorn in its attempt to charge at Aqua with its antlers, the Keybearers and the wizard cast Fire spells to destroy the ice antlers. Once that was taken care of, the Heartless were defeated easily.

“The Heartless are here, too,” Riku noted. “We have to find Elsa. She might be in trouble.”

“Uh, I think she won’t be at much risk,” Donald remarked, gesturing around to remind him of the snowstorm that had been conjured by her vast power.

“Fair point, but if they’re preying on the darkness in her heart, they might still cause her torment,” Aqua argued.

“True,” Donald conceded. He raised his arms to allow Aqua to pick him back up, and they continued on their trek up the mountain.

_ This storm came about from Elsa’s fear, fear which drove her to an impulsive decision to flee, _ Riku thought.  _ I wonder what’s going through her mind now… _

* * *

Further up the mountain, Elsa walked on top of the snow, her powers subconsciously causing it to compact into a solid surface under her feet. She gave one more look back in the direction of Arendelle as she took the time to process what had just happened.

_ What did I just do? _ she asked herself.  _ I left it all behind. I left them all behind. And now what? Here I am, in the middle of nowhere. Today was supposed to be my coronation, and I would fulfill my duty to everyone. Well, now, here was a kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I’m the queen. _

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see. Be the good girl you always have to be,” she chastised herself. She had tried so hard to keep her powers under control for so long, not letting anyone find out about them. “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know.” She scoffed. “Well, now they know.”

She stared down at her hands, one gloved to cover up her powers and the other bare, snowflakes twinkling off of her fingers, and she had an epiphany.  _ I’m all alone up here. Everyone else is down in Arendelle, away from me. While I’m up here, they’re all safe from my magic. I don’t have to hide from them… I don’t have to bottle myself up… I can’t hurt anyone up here. Maybe, for the first time in practically forever, I can just… let it go… _

She tugged on the fingers of her gloves, hesitated for a moment, then ripped it off and threw it to the wind. She flicked her wrist, and snow dust formed into magic swirls and snowflake shapes over her hand. She waved her other hand and watched her magic take a simple but lovely form. She smiled in delight as she watched the beauty of her powers for the first time in years. The fun and joy jogged a memory from her childhood, when she and Anna played together, back when the latter was still aware of her powers.

_ Do you wanna build a snowman? _

With a swirl of her hand, she willed particles of snow to gather and take the form of a five-piece snowman. Sticks, twigs, and rocks were brought up from beneath the snow to accessorize the snowman with arms, hair, and buttons.

She sent larger flurries of magic dust into the air, let the snow fall around her, then waved her arms to let it simply drop to the ground. She threw flurries from side to side, watching the magic snow swirl up.

_ Let the storm rage on, _ she thought as she unclipped the brooch of her cape and let the wind blow it away.  _ The cold never bothered me anyway. _

* * *

“Do you hear something?” Riku asked. Donald cupped his hand over his ear as he and Aqua listened for the sounds that Riku had heard.

“Look!” Aqua pointed up above the snowy hill ahead of them, almost dropping Donald in the process. Elsa’s cape flew through the air on the mountain breeze, carrying it over their heads.

“This way!” Riku called, beckoning them to keep going.

* * *

Elsa came upon a ravine, but with a blast of magic, she created a set of stairs that hovered partially over the gap. She noticed that it was unrefined and messy, covered in clumps of snow, but when she took her first step on it, a portion of it smoothed out into a shiny icy surface. She ran up the stairs, spreading her arms out to the rails, and let the ice smooth out as the stairway expanded to cross over to the other side of the ravine.

As she made her way across, Riku, Aqua and Donald came up to where she had been. They gaped in awe as she created her ice bridge.

Elsa took a few steps further, then stomped her foot down, causing a giant snowflake shape to form out of the snow beneath her. She glanced around to assess the lay of the landscape, then began to really work her magic. The snowflake shape expanded into an icy floor, which was elevated on pillars all around. Pillars and spires rose up around the platform, stretching and shaping to form walls and archways. She sent magic snow dust up the pillars, which then caused a ceiling and roof to form at the top. An opulent crystal chandelier formed at the center of the ceiling.

As the ice castle continued to form around her, Elsa remembered that she was still supposed to be Arendelle’s queen. Was she really just throwing that all away?  _ No… I’m never going back. The past is in the past. _ She removed her tiara, regarded it for a moment, then defiantly threw it aside. She undid her bun, letting her hair fall into a French braid, then brushed her bangs up and over the top of her head. Lastly, she generated thousands of tiny ice crystals, which knit over her body into a crystal-blue off-the-shoulder dress with a right knee-high slit, a crystallized bodice, and translucent powder blue sleeves. The weaving of the ice crystals caused her coronation gown to fall apart at the seams, not that she noticed. She also kicked her shoes off and conjured a pair of kitten heels. A headband and snowflake-shaped incrustations formed in her hair, and a long, transparent, floor-sweeping cape with snowflake designs generated from the back of her bodice.

She marched out onto her new balcony, her hips swaying with each step, spreading her arms out in ecstasy, and watched the sun rise over the mountaintops. After basking in her freedom for a moment, she spun back around and reentered her castle, willing the balcony doors to close with a flick of her wrist.

* * *

Riku, Aqua and Donald stared in absolute awe, their jaws agape. They had never seen anything like it. Elsa had just created a castle made of ice out of nowhere.

“Now  _ that _ is ice magic,” Aqua said in disbelief. “The most I ever made was a giant snowflake crystal in my Diamond Dust finisher.”

“I haven’t even seen Master Yen Sid or Merlin do much more than that,” Donald commented. “And in my experience, Blizzard magic isn’t something that is used for construction purposes. I’ve never seen anyone or anything make something like that.”

“Well, let’s go in and talk to her,” Riku suggested.

Aqua and Donald nodded in agreement. Together, they climbed the stairs up to the towering front doors to the castle. Riku knocked, and the doors opened up of their own accord. They stepped inside, marveling at the smooth architecture and design. They ascended the stairs that wound around the back side of the entrance hall and climbed up to the second level of the castle. They saw Elsa march back in from the balcony and conjure a snow-cushioned sofa to lounge in.

“Nice pipes.” Elsa yelped in fright and instinctively shot an icy blast in the direction of the voice. Riku leaned back to avoid the spell, waved his arms around as he started to lose balance, then leaned against the wall for support. “Sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Elsa regarded the newcomers curiously. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Riku composed himself after his embarrassing first impression. “We, uh, we saw you fleeing from Arendelle, and we were worried about you,” he answered.

Elsa studied them, taking everything in about them. “Your clothes are unusual… You aren’t from Arendelle, are you?” she surmised. “Did you come for the coronation?”

Donald prepared to say yes, but Riku interjected, electing to admit how little they actually understood of the situation. “We actually just got here last night, right before you ran out.”

“Oh. I’m sorry if I frightened you with my magic,” Elsa said nervously.

Riku shook his head and smiled reassuringly. “You didn’t scare us. Magic… isn’t all that strange to us,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Elsa asked, confused.

“Follow me.” Riku walked over to the balcony, opening the doors to step through. “Watch this.” He summoned his Keyblade, much to Elsa’s amazement. He pointed out toward the sky and cast Fire, making sure that it was relatively weak and generated far enough away that it did not affect the castle’s ice structure. He turned back to face Elsa and saw her dumbfounded expression.

“You have magic too,”she said in disbelief.

“We all do,” Aqua confirmed. Donald nodded as well.

“Were you… born with it? Or cursed?”

Riku, Aqua and Donald looked at each other, confused. “Um… Neither, I think,” Riku replied.

“I don’t really know how to describe it,” Aqua admitted. “It’s just something we… learned to do.”

“You just… learned magic?”

“We awakened the potential in our hearts,” Donald added.

“Awakened the potential?” Elsa shook her head. “I was born with this magic. I’ve been able to create snow and ice ever since I was a child.”

“Have you always had trouble controlling it? Even when you were a little girl?” Aqua asked.

Elsa considered the question and reflected on her childhood. “Well, not always. When we were kids, my sister Anna and I used to play together. I made toys and sledding hills, and even made a snowman that we named Olaf.” She chuckled at the memory.

“So, what happened?” Riku asked.

Elsa let out a sigh. “There was an accident. I hit Anna in the head with my ice magic. It knocked her out and began to freeze her. Mother and Father came and brought us to see the trolls in the mountain. Their elder healed Anna, but was forced to take away her memories of my magic. He then warned me that I would need to learn to control my growing powers, and that fear of the danger they pose will be my enemy. So my parents closed the gates and kept me safe away from everyone, even Anna. I locked myself in my room and worked tirelessly to keep my magic under control.”

_ That all sounds awfully familiar, _ Riku mused, reflecting on not only his experiences but the events that Sora and Naminé had gone through in Castle Oblivion.

“It sounds more like it was the fear that made your magic something to fear,” Aqua surmised. “The slightest mistake can cause horrifying consequences and break your resolve.”

“Elsa, you shouldn’t have to live in fear of who you are, or what you can do,” Riku said empathetically. “Sure, your magic can cause pain if you let it, but it can also be amazing, and full of wonders.”

Aqua nodded in agreement. “He’s right. Just look at this palace. It’s amazing.” She looked Elsa’s dress up and down. “And did you make that dress with your magic? It’s beautiful.”

Elsa looked her dress over and smiled softly. “Thank you.” Donald glanced over to the side and chuckled as he saw the remains of the coronation dress.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Riku asked. “Are you planning to just… hide up here in the mountain? Forever?”

Elsa nodded sadly. “It’s for the best. As long as I’m up here, away from everyone, I won’t be able to hurt anyone.”

Aqua shook her head. “That can’t be the best solution,” she protested. “No one should have to spend their life in total solitude.”

Elsa shook her head. “But as long as I’m around, they’ll all be in danger from my magic. I may have just abandoned the throne, but it’s still my duty to keep them safe. Especially from me.”

“But what about you?” Riku asked. “What about your well-being? What about the people who will miss you? Don’t you think you’re hurting the people who care about you by running away like this?”

Before Elsa could respond, they heard Donald’s stomach growl. “Uh, maybe we should find something to eat,” the duck suggested.

Elsa’s face fell as she realized something that she had not considered when she fled into the mountains. Riku noticed her expression change and was quick to figure out what the issue was. “You didn’t think about how you’d be able to eat up here, did you?” he asked.

Elsa turned her gaze away out of embarrassment. “No, I guess I didn’t,” she admitted.

Riku shrugged. “Well, I’m sure we can figure something out,” he said in an easygoing manner, not wanting her to feel bothered by the issue. “You probably don’t know how to hunt, but do you know anything about the local wildlife and plant life?”

“I did study up on regional ecology texts,” Elsa replied.

Riku nodded. “Okay. We can work from that. I’m Riku, by the way.”

“I’m Aqua.”

“And I’m Donald Duck.”

Elsa nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

* * *

Through the morning, Anna rode her horse through the now-snow-covered woods, with Sora, Kairi, and Goofy walking alongside her. Anna was shouting for Elsa, hoping that she was nearby. “Elsa! Elsa! It’s me, Anna, your sister who didn’t mean to make you freeze the summer. I’m sorry! It’s all my fault!” She then took a moment to grumble to herself about the situation before trailing off to an exasperated sigh.

“It’s really pretty here,” Kairi said in an attempt to make small talk, looking around at the snow-covered landscape and trees.

“Yup. Sure is,” Goofy agreed.

A chilly breeze blew by, causing Sora, Kairi and Anna to shiver from the cold, while Goofy’s teeth chattered. “Cold! Cold!” Sora blurted. “Aw, man, it’s freezing!”

“A-hyuck! Guess you guys’re too used to the beach,” Goofy joked.

“Hello! Islander. Gimme a break,” Sora complained. Kairi nodded in agreement.

“Look at that!” Anna exclaimed, pointing at Sora. He looked down to see that something was happening to his clothes. The zipper of his jacket locked itself in place and pulled itself closed. The sleeves extended to his wrists. His pantlegs stretched down to his ankles. A fur lining grew on the inside of his hood. His gloves wrapped up around his fingers and bulked up. His sneakers transformed into snow boots while retaining their color scheme. His crown necklace transformed into a balaclava with a crown design print, then pulled up over his mouth and nose. His jacket and pants bulked up until they looked like a winter coat and snow pants.

“Ah… Much better,” Sora said in relief, his voice slightly muffled under the balaclava. He pulled his hood up over his head.

“Whaddya know? His clothes transformed themselves to suit the climate,” Goofy pointed out.

Kairi stomped her foot and pouted. “No fair! Why do you get a winter coat while I’m left to freeze?” she complained.

Sora shrugged. “I guess it’s because of my magic clothes.”

“Then I want magic clothes!” Kairi whined.

“How about this: next time we see Master Yen Sid, you can ask for some,” Sora suggested.

Goofy and Anna laughed at the exchange. Sora and Kairi, the latter in spite of the cold, found themselves laughing as well.

They continued on their way for several minutes. Realizing that there were no footprints to follow, they hoped that they were going the right way.

“So, you said that you and Elsa used to be close,” Kairi said, broaching the topic to Anna. “Did something happen?”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “When we were little, my sister and I were best friends. We played together all the time. But then, one day, for some reason, Elsa just shut me out. Thirteen years went by, and though I pleaded with her to come out and play, we barely ever saw each other. Then, three years ago, our parents died at sea. I tried to turn to Elsa so we could support each other, but she still kept herself locked in her room. She didn’t even come to the funeral. It was really lonely. The only people I had to talk to were the staff and Kjekk一” she stroked her horse’s mane to indicate that Kjekk was her steed “一and a lot of the time, I found myself talking to the pictures on the walls to keep myself from going crazy.” She chuckled halfheartedly, acknowledging that the last part was odd. “Then the coronation came around. I was so excited. I thought we would finally get the chance to talk. But then, last night, at the party, I blew it. I did something that made her mad. We got into an argument, and I lost my temper.” She held Elsa’s glove up and stared at it regretfully. “And then, well, that’s when she used her magic to push me away.”

“I’m so sorry. That must’ve been awful,” Kairi said sympathetically.

“Family shouldn’t be separated from each other,” Goofy lamented.

“I’m sure she knows how much you love her. And I think that’s why she hid, and ran, because she loves you too. It sounds like she was afraid she would hurt you with her magic,” Sora remarked. “That sounds a lot like Riku. Remember, Kairi? He was ashamed of the trouble he caused when he was aligned with the Heartless, and he thought the best thing to do to keep us safe from his own darkness was to stay away. Even after he got control of his darkness and helped us out, he kept his distance and didn’t want us to find him.”

“You’re right,” Kairi affirmed. “But that wasn’t the right way to go about it. He shouldn’t have had to leave us behind.”

Sora nodded and smiled. “You’re the one who talked him into coming back with us. After he saved you from Saïx, he wanted to leave again, but you convinced him to stick with us.” He turned to Anna. “Maybe you’ll be able to help Elsa the same way.”

Anna smiled. “Thanks.” She furrowed her brow as something he had said stuck in her mind. “But… what was that word you said before? ‘Heartless’? What is that?”

Sora prepared to answer, but as if on cue, a horde of the creatures materialized. There were four Winterhorns, six Blue Rhapsodies, a blue-and-white frost-covered Creeper Plant, and four Icy Cubes. Anna gasped and Kjekk reared in fright.

“Those are!” Sora explained simply, getting the point across concisely. He and Kairi summoned their Keyblades while Goofy summoned his shield. Anna stared in wonder as the weapons materialized.

A Winterhorn jumped up, aiming to attack Anna and Kjekk, but Goofy threw his shield at it, knocking it into a tree. The impact caused a branch to break and fall in front of Kjekk. Thoroughly spooked, the horse bucked and threw Anna off, dropping her into the snow. Groaning, the princess pushed herself out of the snow and sat up, only to see her steed running away back the way they had come. Anna called after him, pleading for him to come back, but pretty soon, he was gone.

Kairi helped Anna to her feet, then put herself between her and the Heartless. “Stay back. We’ll take care of these things,” she said.

Anna nodded. “Okay.” She ran to hide behind a nearby conifer.

Sora and Kairi cast Fire spells at the obviously-ice-based Heartless. Goofy blocked a Winterhorn’s charge, holding its antlers back with his shield, then twisted his shield sharply to break the ice antlers. He blocked a Blizzard spell from the Blizzard Plant, then beat the disoriented reindeer Heartless down with his shield. Another Winterhorn leapt up to rain icicles down on them. In response, Sora cupped his hands together and gave Kairi a boost up into the air, where she performed a flaming spin attack which destroyed the antlers in the first strike then vanquished the Heartless in the second. At the same time, Sora threw his Keyblade in a Flame Raid, destroying the Icy Cubes and striking the Blizzard Plant. When he caught the flaming Keyblade, he slammed it down on a Winterhorn’s head, destroying it instantly. Goofy defeated the last Winterhorn while Kairi eliminated the last of the Blue Rhapsodies with Fire spells. Sora cast Agua and wrapped a stream of water around the Blizzard Plant, tricking it into freezing the water surrounding it and trapping itself, then closed the distance and finished it off.

With the Heartless all slain, they went over to check on Anna, who had been watching the fight in awe. “Are you alright?” Sora asked.

Anna nodded. “Yeah. Just c-c-c-c-cold,” she replied, shivering. “So, you have m-m-magic too?”

Sora nodded. “Yeah. Though, Donald said that it isn’t anything on the scale of what your sister was able to do.”

“So, magic really isn’t anything to be afraid of?”

Kairi shook her head. “If you have the strength of will and strength of heart, it’s perfectly safe as long as you wish it to be,” she said.

Anna smiled, feeling reassured. “Good. Elsa’s my sister. She can regain control of her powers and end this winter. I know she can. I just need to be there to help her,” she said to herself. She started to shiver, remembering that she was knee-deep in snow. “Brrr… It’s cold.”

“Here. Let me try something.” Kairi put her hand on Anna’s shoulder and willed the warmth of a dusting of Fire magic to flow through her and herself. Both girls breathed sighs of relief. “That should keep you warm for a little while, I think.”

Anna smiled. “Thanks.”

* * *

Back in Arendelle, the palace guards were shoveling snow out of the street, having returned from a trip to the castle’s winter supplies. Ice was forming over many of the houses and stables. Mickey lit fires with his magic so that the townspeople and dignitaries could huddle around them. Hans carried a stack of cloaks through the crowd. He had changed into a gray cloak that was better-suited to protecting him from the elements.

“Cloak. Does anyone need a cloak?” Hans called out.

“Arendelle is indebted to you, Your Highness,” one of the castle servants said.

“The castle is open. There’s soup and hot glögg in the Great Hall,” Hans announced.

Mickey purchased Blazing Shards and Lucid Stones from the Moogle Shop and passed them out to the townspeople. “If the fire goes out, strike these together to spark it up again,” he instructed.

After passing out all of the shards and stones, Mickey caught up with Hans. “You know, Arendelle’s lucky to have someone like you here to help out,” he said.

Hans smiled. “I am only fulfilling my promise to Princess Anna,” he replied humbly. “What land are you from?”

“Disney Castle,” Mickey answered. “I’m the king there.”

“Oh. Well, then it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Majesty.” Hans bowed.

Mickey chuckled. “Please, you can just call me Mickey. To be honest, I’m not really a fan of the formalities,” he admitted.

“Fine by me. So, Mickey, I’m not very familiar with your ‘Disney Castle’. Is everyone there an… ahem…”

“An anthropomorphic animal?” Mickey finished for him. Hans nodded. “Yup. Though there are some that are just regular animals. But whatever species we are, we’ve developed a society similar to many human worlds.” It felt odd to speak so freely about his world while on another one. Yen Sid had warned him against announcing where he had come from unless it were for important business, which he always felt was an awkward subject to avoid when his duties as a Keyblade Master led him to worlds populated by humans, where it was clear he did not belong. He felt more comfortable when he was being honest with himself and others. Learning that he did not need to be secretive, at least among parties who were in the know, was partially a relief, but it was still unusual, especially as he had never discussed the nature of his own world with humans from another, aside from when he had met Ansem the Wise.

“You said you were from the Southern Isles, right? Where in the sea of worlds are they?” the mouse asked.

“My kingdom is actually on the southern tip of this world,” Hans explained. “It’s roughly a mile from the point where the sea transitions from water to a turbulent ocean of darkness. Oh, excuse me for a moment.” He ran up to one of Arendelle’s guards and handed the stack of cloaks to him. “Here. Pass these out,” he said. The guard nodded and went into the crowd.

“I’d say the Southern Isles will be in good hands when you ascend to the throne,” Mickey complimented.

Hans let out an amused laugh. “Hardly. I have twelve brothers ahead of me.”

Before they could discuss things further, they noticed Rapunzel and Eugene walking toward them. Eugene wore a simple cloak over his dress uniform, while Rapunzel had been dressed in a heavy coat. Rapunzel was wobbling with each step, having difficulty in keeping her balance. When they drew near, Rapunzel tripped and fell, but Eugene and one of the castle servants caught her.

“Gosh, are you alright?” Mickey asked.

Rapunzel groaned. “How do people  _ walk _ in these things?” she complained, tapping her new snow boots.

Hans looked at her with confusion, so Eugene offered to clear things up. “She’s not used to footwear,” he explained.

“Just take it easy, Rapunzel,” Mickey advised. “Easy does it. You’ll get used to it.”

The Duke of Weselton, flanked by his bodyguards, stormed up to Hans, evidently displeased. “Prince Hans, are we expected to sit here and freeze while you give away all of Arendelle’s tradable goods?” he complained.

Mickey, Rapunzel, and Eugene glared at the Duke, not amused by his obviously elevated interests in his economic prosperity over the well-being of his host nation’s people. Hans remained calm and stalwart. “Princess Anna has given her orders, and一”

“And that’s another thing,” the Duke interrupted. “Has it dawned on you that your princess may be conspiring with a wicked sorceress to destroy us all?”

This time, Hans glared coldly at the Duke. “Do not question the Princess. She left me in charge, and I will not hesitate to protect Arendelle from treason.”

The Duke faltered, taken aback and feeling unnerved by the threat. “T-Treason?” he stammered.

Before the argument could deflate or escalate, Shadow Heartless materialized out of the ground, causing townspeople to yelp in fright. The Duke gasped and hid himself behind his bodyguards. “Demons!” he cried out.

Mickey summoned his Keyblade. “Close enough. Get everyone to safety.”

Hans turned to a group of guards and servants. “Bring me a sword,” he ordered. They ran off to find something with which the prince could fight the monsters.

“And a frying pan, too, please!” Rapunzel called after them. Then, under her breath: “Assuming I can fight properly with these things on.” Since she could not defend herself at that time, Eugene stepped in front of her defensively.

Mickey leapt into battle, defeating the Shadows in quick succession. Soldier Heartless appeared after them, followed by a Large Body. The Duke’s bodyguards drew their crossbows, primed them, and fired. The first bolt cut through one of the Soldiers while the other one bounced harmlessly off of the Large Body’s impregnable armor.

Mickey held the Heartless back on his own for the first few minutes before the Large Body managed to get a good hit on him, knocking him down. A Soldier threw itself at him, but Hans appeared, sword in hand, and cut it down mid-leap. Hans offered his hand and helped Mickey to his feet. Eugene yelled insults at the Large Body, goading it to face him. Rapunzel snuck around behind the Heartless and slammed a frying pan into its back, knocking it down. She hit it again, causing it to dissolve.

“Nice swing, Rapunzel!” Eugene commended. The princess grinned appreciatively before striking a Soldier with the frying pan.

As Hans sliced through another Soldier, four Shadows appeared around him. However, rather than try to attack him, they simply stood and cocked their heads in confusion. From what they could tell, there was no darkness emanating in his spiritual aura. They looked around to compare with others, and were able to sense some darkness in everyone else around them, even the mouse with the dark world’s Keyblade and the girl with the frying pan. But there was nothing radiating off of the prince.

Before the Shadows could think of what to do with their curiosity, they were obliterated by two Pearl spells and a few slashes from Hans’ sword.

* * *

At the top of the mountain, just outside the ice palace, Riku, Aqua, Donald, and Elsa sat around a fire that had been lit with Donald’s magic, eating the venison dinner which Riku and Aqua had cooked from the elk that they had hunted that day. The meal was balanced with mushrooms and gooseberries that they had foraged over the course of the day, including when they had sought to sate their immediate hunger that morning. By dinnertime, night had fallen, and the sky was illuminated with the Misty Stream’s nearby Aurora glow.

“Your magic… what forms does it take, aside from fire and creating weapons?” Elsa asked.

“Well, it isn’t exactly ‘creating weapons’,” Aqua corrected. “When we aren’t using them, our Keyblades and Donald’s staff exist in a pocket dimension. We simply call them from that space into this world, and send them back when we’re done.”

“Other than that, we can do a lot with our magic,” Riku said. “We can freeze things, like you, but Donald says that we aren’t nearly on the same level of power. We can also rain bolts of lightning down around us, control wind, freeze or slow time around people or things, manipulate gravity, heal injuries, create barriers to protect against attacks, and generate streams of water.”

“And that’s just scratching the surface of one category of magic,” Donald added. “Religion and scientific practices unlock a bunch of different ways to command the forces around us. Our range of spells is derived from the thaumaturgy of Black and White Magic.”

Elsa blinked in surprise and worry. “Black Magic?”

“It’s just an archaic term adopted into modern connotations,” Aqua assured her. “White Magic allows one to redirect the omnipresent forces of nature, such as bending the winds, distorting time, and hardening air particles into a solid barrier. Black Magic converts your spiritual mana into powerful forces, such as generating fire, ice, lightning, and water out of nothing. I’ve studied the arts in equal measure with my Keyblade training.”

“Huh. You said that you can create ice with your magic, correct? Could my ice magic be the same as that?” Elsa asked.

Donald tapped his foot against the log he was sitting on and thought deeply. “To be honest, your magic isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” he admitted. “From what I’ve seen, it’s far more powerful than the full extent of my Blizzard magic.” Elsa’s face fell, as she worried that her powers were something that her new companions would not be able to help her with. Donald caught on to this and made an attempt to reassure her. “But I read about many other practices of magic, even learned some enchantments outside of my primary field, and the one consistency is that none of them are inherently destructive, although the nature of the spells and the physical effects they logically inflict can lend more toward certain outcomes, and it all depends on the caster’s will and strength of heart.” Riku, Aqua, and Elsa stared at him, amazed and surprised by his insight and vocabulary. Donald noticed how everyone was looking at him, and cleared his throat. “Another thing is, I think my brand of Blizzard magic is generally more ‘offensive’ than your magic. Blizzard just freezes things, and I’ve rarely used it outside of battle. Your magic can be constructive. You don’t just make things cold or make sharp ice, but you make snow, build snowmen, and construct architecturally-sound castles. From what I’ve seen, you’re very capable of using your magic in non-destructive ways.”

“I guess so,” Elsa conceded. “But I’ve always been more worried about losing control and setting the darker part of my magic loose.”

Riku crossed his arms in contemplation. “We can try to help you through it, but ultimately, the answer will have to be up to you.”

Suddenly, Heartless materialized around them. They jolted to their feet, getting in position for the fight. Elsa stared at one of the Soldiers in bewilderment and terror. She vaguely remembered a nightmare that she had a couple years ago where she looked out her window and saw similar monsters swarming the grounds around the castle. “What are these things?” she asked.

“Heartless,” Donald answered. “They’re monsters that go after people’s hearts and are drawn to the darkness within them.”

“Darkness…” Elsa muttered, wondering if the Heartless were drawn to her.

Riku slapped Donald upside the head for his flub. “Almost everyone has darkness in their hearts, and they go after everybody. Don’t take it the wrong way,” he assured her.

Riku, Aqua and Donald jumped into action, circling around the fire pit as they fought the Heartless. The Keyblade wielders used physical attacks against Soldiers and Large Bodies, and used corresponding magic to eliminate the Blue Nocturnes and Turquoise Marches in short order. A Large Body managed to knock Riku down, so Aqua used Cure to heal his wounds.

Elsa saw a Soldier creep up behind Riku to attack. She panicked and blurted “Look out!” At the same time, she instinctively stretched her arms out and shot an ice blast at the Heartless, destroying it instantly.

Riku glanced back and saw the Heartless’ dissolving remains, then saw that Elsa was responsible. “Thanks,” he said before jumping back into action.

Elsa smiled proudly, glad to be able to help. Looking around, she saw more Heartless that were not presently directly fighting the others. She fired ice blasts at them, freezing them solid or simply destroying them. She shot a blast at a Blue Nocturne, but noticed that it did not do any damage. The Heartless threw a spell of its own at her, but it dissipated harmlessly when it made contact. Determining that the cold did not bother it, she wondered if she could do anything to hurt it, then remembered that her powers were not limited to cold blasts that froze on contact. She created an icicle dagger and threw it at the Heartless, striking it and knocking it back. She threw a few more daggers until the Blue Nocturne was no more.

Four Heartless appeared, these creatures resembling puffins with blue capes. Elsa stared at them, her expression a mix of bemusement and disgust. “Now  _ that _ is cold,” she remarked. She then promptly destroyed them with ice blasts.

She looked around as the hearts that had been carried by the Heartless floated off into the aether.  _ I can’t hurt anyone up here, _ she reminded herself.  _ I won’t let the darkness touch me. _

* * *

As they climbed over the next hill, Anna and Kairi were very uncomfortable from the cold. Though she shivered as she trudged through the snow, Anna perked up and picked up her pace when she saw smoke rising through the air beyond the hill. “Look! Fire!” she announced, running up and over the hill to see a wooden house at the bottom. In her excitement, she tripped and tumbled down the hill into a stream. Sora and Goofy ran down to help her up, while Kairi trudged down more cautiously. When they helped her to her feet, the wind chilled the already-cold water on her legs and dress, freezing the bottom hem solid.

“Are you okay?” Sora asked. Anna was only able to repeatedly stammer “Cold”, which served to answer his question quite well. “We need to get her someplace warm,” Sora decided. Goofy pointed to the house that had caught Anna’s attention before, and they agreed that it would be a good place to take her. They looped their arms across her back, and she placed her arms over their shoulders, so that they could help her along. Kairi soon caught up to them, and the group trudged along to the house.

When they reached the porch, Anna tried to step up onto it, only for her frozen dress to bump against it, forcing her to lean backwards to step up. Looking up, they saw that the sign was completely covered in snow. Sora tapped it, causing the snow to fall off of the larger section. “‘Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post’,” Anna read. Goofy tapped a smaller piece of wood that hung off of the larger sign, causing the snow to fall and reveal the rest of the establishment’s name. “Ooh! ‘And Sauna’!”

“That’s convenient,” Sora remarked.

“Let’s go in. I’m freezing,” Kairi said.

All in agreement, they entered. Inside the trading post, the shelves were lined with all sorts of knick-knacks, such as books, bottles, dresses, dishes, bouquets of roses, and cart wheels. There was also some fruit and some bread. It was a quaint shop for travelers to stop in the woods.

“Hoo hoo.” They all turned to the main counter, where a broad-shouldered man dressed in a light sweater and matching hat, with a moustache and sideburns and a friendly smile, sat. “Big summer blowout! Half-off swimsuits, clogs, and sun balm of my own invention. Yah?” the man, who must have been the eponymous Oaken, pitched, speaking in a Swedish accent.

Anna smiled politely, not bothering to point out that such a sale would be unhelpful in the current conditions. “Oh. Great. For now, um, how about boots?  _ Winter _ boots? And dresses?”

“That would be in our winter department,” Oaken said, gesturing toward the back wall. Said “winter department” consisted of a pair of snowshoes, a looped length of rope, two winter dresses, two pairs of boots, and an ice pick. Otherwise, the wall was completely barren.

“Oh,” Anna acknowledged the scene with mild disappointment. Kairi nodded in acceptance, understanding that they were lucky that he had that much prepared in the middle of summer. The girls made their way over to the back wall to check out the selection. “Um, I was just wondering; has another young woman, the Queen perhaps, I don't know, passed through here?” Anna asked. She and Kairi checked the winter outfits, silently decided which ones they wanted, and brought them to the counter.

“Only ones crazy enough to be out in this storm are you, dear,” Oaken answered. Just then, the door opened, and a man stepped in. The man was dressed for winter weather, and he was covered head-to-toe in snow. He stomped snow out of his boots and brushed some off of his coat, although it made little difference. “You and this fellow,” Oaken added. “Hoo hoo. Big summer blowout.” Sora and Goofy stepped aside to let the man past. The man marched up to the counter, right in front of Anna. Anna leaned against the counter casually, trying to not show that she was nervous of the stranger’s presence.

“Carrots,” the man said, his voice muffled by his scarf.

“Huh?” Anna asked.

“Behind you,” the man clarified.

Anna turned around and looked at a shelf in the counter to see some carrots. “Oh, right. Excuse me,” she said as she stepped out of the way. The snow-covered man grabbed the carrots and put them on the counter, then went around to gather other supplies.

“A real howler in July, yes? Where ever could it be coming from?” Oaken asked, trying to make conversation with the stranger.

“The North Mountain,” the man answered, grabbing the rope and ice pick off of the wall and bringing them over to the counter.

“The North Mountain…” Anna parroted under her breath.

“That’ll be four hundred,” Oaken said.

“Four hundred?! No, one hundred!” the man disputed.

Oaken realized to his dismay that business negotiations were going to be difficult. “Oh dear, this is no good. See, this is from our winter stock, where supply and demand have a big problem,” he explained.

“You want to talk about a supply and demand problem? I sell  _ ice _ for a living!” the man shot back. He nodded his head to gesture outside toward his sleigh, which carried several large blocks of ice. Kairi winced, figuring out the logistics pretty quickly.

“Ooh, that’s a rough business to be in right now. I mean, that is really…” Anna joked, trying to ease the tension. The man shot her a look that indicated that he was not amused, causing her to stop immediately. “Ahem. That’s unfortunate,” she said sympathetically.

“Still four hundred. But I will throw in a visit to Oaken’s sauna,” the shopkeeper haggled. He waved to a group of people who were relaxing in the next room, visible through the slightly steamed-up glass window. “Hoo hoo. Hi, family.” His family greeted him in the exact same manner. Anna, Kairi, Sora, and Goofy waved to them as well.

The snow-covered man pulled down his scarf, revealing a youthful but somewhat manly face with brown eyes, dirty blond hair, and freckles across his large nose. “A hundred’s all I got. Help me out,” he pleaded.

“Hold on a second. You need three hundred, right? What currency, exactly?” Sora asked.

“Munny,” Oaken replied. “The shiny crystal kind.” He took a piece out to illustrate what he meant.

Sora smiled, glad to be back on a world where he could use the familiar monetary system. He pulled out a handful of the yellow and blue crystals and showed them to the man. “This good?” he asked.

The man pulled out his own allowance and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks,” he replied, still retaining his gruff tone.

They poured the Munny onto the counter. Oaken stuffed the carrots into a bag and let the man take it as well as the rope and ice pick. “Thank you for visiting. Have a nice night,” he said cheerfully as the man left with his supplies. When the door closed, he turned back to his other customers. “Now then. Just the outfits and boots for you young ladies, yah?”

* * *

After Kairi paid for both sets of clothes and all four of them had spent some time relaxing and warming up in the sauna, the party stepped out of the shop, Kairi and Anna wearing their new winter attire. Anna wore a medium-length dark blue skirt, a black bodice with multicolored rose prints, a light blue long-sleeved blouse, black heeled leather boots with gold linings and magenta soles, a magenta bonnet with lavender fluff, a pair of blue mittens with navy blue palms, and a detachable magenta cape with a matching cap with a silver brooch consisting of a pair of hearts with gray prints attached to her cape. Kairi wore a similar bunad, although the blue was replaced with a deeper purple. Anna had undone her bun, letting her hair fall into twin braids. Kairi summoned her Keyblade and ran around, swinging it a few times to test her mobility in her new outfit.

“Well, it looks like we’re all set for the winter weather,” Sora said, “but it might be better if we knew the terrain so we didn’t get lost.”

“Hey, how about we ask that ice harvester guy for help?” Goofy suggested.

“Good idea, Goofy,” Anna said. She looked around, but the man was nowhere to be found. “Where do you think he is?”

“His sleigh is still here,” Kairi noted. She looked around and saw a stable barn, and pointed at it. “If I were him, I’d want to find a place to sleep for the night.”

They entered the stable and saw the man, who had cleaned the snow off of his black winter clothes and his face, lying on a bed of hay next to an adult reindeer while concluding a song on his lute before settling down to go to sleep.

“Hi,” Anna greeted.

The man sat up with a start, taken by surprise by the unexpected company, but he then sank back down when he realized that it was the people he met in the trading post. “Oh. It’s just you. What do you want?”

“I want you to take me up the North Mountain,” Anna answered.

The ice harvester shrugged, lying back down and closing his eyes. “I don’t take people places.”

Anna, Sora, and Kairi traded glances. “Let me rephrase,” Anna said dryly. Sora filled a small pouch with 2000 Munny and handed it to Anna, who tossed it into the man’s lap. When the man opened it up, he and his reindeer stared in awe at its contents. “Take me up to the North Mountain… Please.”

The ice harvester considered the matter, looking back and forth from the Munny to Anna to the reindeer. He sighed in defeat. He laid back down and pulled his hat over his eyes. “We leave at dawn.”

Anna looked to Sora and Kairi for help, as she did not want to have to wait that long. Kairi straightened her own posture, and Sora tapped the crown printed on his balaclava, silently indicating for her to stand tall and take charge. Anna straightened her posture and cleared her throat. “We leave now. Right now,” she said authoritatively.

They stepped outside to wait. Anna took a deep breath. Sora and Kairi gave her thumbs up, letting her know she did great. The ice harvester sighed. He offered a carrot to his reindeer. The reindeer took a bite, then he took one of the same carrot. He stood up and led the reindeer out of the stable. “Okay. You win. Let’s go,” he said.

Sora grinned. “Great. I’m Sora, by the way.”

“I’m Kairi.”

“Name’s Goofy.”

“I’m Princess Anna of Arendelle,” Anna said with a curtsy.

The ice harvester nodded. “I’m Kristoff. And the reindeer is Sven.” Sven grinned at Kristoff’s new charges. Kairi and Goofy grinned back. “I don’t really have much room to sit. So, Anna can sit up front. You guys mind sitting on the back?”

Sora nodded. “Sure.” With that, Kristoff tied Sven up to drive the sleigh, then untied and removed the blocks of ice with Sora and Goofy’s assistance. With everything else put onto the sleigh, Kristoff and Anna climbed into the seat while Sora, Kairi and Goofy hopped into the cargo bed. Sven guided the sleigh to turn and, spurred by Kristoff snapping the reins, began to run up the mountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was honestly about to let the Oaken's scene play out as it did in the film in full, but then I realized it would be weird for Sora to just let Kristoff have trouble paying for his supplies without stepping in. And he has plenty of Munny, so why wouldn't he?
> 
> It's an "if you know, you know" reference. If you need a hint, watch Olaf's Frozen Adventure.


	131. Chapter 130: Olaf the Snowman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The demo for Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory was released yesterday, and I played it this morning. It's fun and challenging. I had difficulty working with multiple buttons (particularly the three-hitter notes), so I switched to the single-button style after playing the first two songs. And at the same time, I finished my first playthrough of Final Fantasy Type-0 yesterday. It was fun, though the story became a tad confusing at the end due to the shift from the more simplistic war story to the grander lore dump in the final level, and it was kind of annoying how some bosses were designed so that you could not beat them the first time around (particularly in a game that grades you for how many casualties you suffer in each mission).
> 
> Anyway, on with the chapter. Please let me know what you think in a review/comment.

Kristoff snapped the reins, and Sven carried the sleigh along a narrow cliff at a rapid pace. “Hang on! We like to go fast,” Kristoff teased, trying to scare Anna. Kairi shot him a glare, not amused by the fact that he was driving so fast on the edge of a cliff with three of the passengers tied onto the back of the sleigh. They soon turned further away from the cliff and into the woods.

However, Anna was not bothered. “I like fast,” she declared with excitement. She leaned back and put her feet up on the front.

Kristoff saw what she was doing and immediately pushed her feet back down. “Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa! Get your feet down,” he protested. “This is fresh lacquer. Seriously, were you raised in a barn?” He spat on the spot where her boots had been propped, then rubbed at it with his glove, not noticing that some of his saliva bounced off and hit Anna in the face.

Grossed out, Anna rubbed at her face to get the spit out. “No. I was raised in a castle,” she replied.

“So, tell me, what made the queen go all ice-crazy?” Kristoff asked.

Anna sighed. “Oh, well, it was all my fault,” she said regretfully. “I got engaged but then she freaked out because I'd only just met him, you know, that day. And she said she wouldn't bless the marriage—”

Kristoff did a double take. “Wait,” he interrupted. “You got engaged to someone you just met that day?” Sora raised an eyebrow curiously as well.

“Yeah,” Anna replied, not seeming to think that it was a big deal at all. “Anyway, I got mad and so she got mad and then she tried to walk away, and I grabbed her glove—”

“Hang on!” Kristoff interrupted again, utterly incredulous. “You mean to tell me that you got engaged to someone you just met  _ that day _ ?”

“Yes. Pay attention. But the thing is she wore the gloves all the time, so I just thought, maybe she has a thing about dirt,” Anna continued.

“I’m kinda with him on this one,” Sora interjected. Kairi nodded in assent.

“Didn’t your parents ever warn you about strangers?” Kristoff asked.

Anna looked Kristoff up and down, then scooted a bit further away. “Yes they did… But Hans is not a stranger,” she insisted.

“Oh yeah? What’s his last name?” Kristoff challenged.

Anna scoffed. “‘Of-the-Southern-Isles’,” she answered confidently. Sora, Kairi and Goofy could not help but giggle.

“What’s his favorite food?”

“Sandwiches.”

“Best friend’s name?”

“Probably John.” Sora and Kairi rolled their eyes at that, knowing that she was utterly grasping at straws there.

“Eye color?”

“Dreamy,” Anna added dreamily.

“Foot size?”

“Foot size doesn’t matter!” Anna argued. Sora looked down sheepishly. Kairi and Goofy giggled.

“Have you even had a meal with him yet? What if you hate the way he eats?” Kristoff asked. “What if you hate the way he picks his nose?”

“Picks his nose?” Anna parroted, disgusted.

“And eats it,” Kristoff added smugly.

“Excuse me, sir. He is a prince.”

“All men do it,” Kristoff insisted. Kairi gave Sora a playfully-accusing glare. Sora waved his hands up defensively, all while Goofy laughed.

“Ew. Look, it doesn’t matter! It’s true love!” Anna insisted.

“Doesn’t sound like true love,” Kristoff argued.

“This is just my opinion,” Kairi interjected, “but I think you should get to know someone a little better before you think about even dating him.”

“Yeah. You can make a friend in a minute, but it can take a long time and a lot of experience before you know that someone is the person you want to spend your life with,” Sora added. Kairi smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“See? They get it,” Kristoff said.

“What, are you some kind of love expert?” Anna snarked.

“Uh, no,” Kristoff said sheepishly. “But I have friends who are.”

“You have friends who are love experts? I’m not buying it.”

Sven suddenly stopped upon hearing a noise. His ears perked up in alarm.

“Stop talking,” Kristoff advised.

“No, no, no. I’d like to meet these—”

Kristoff covered Anna’s mouth with his hand, cutting her off. “I mean it.” Anna pulled his hand away and opened her mouth to protest, but Sora quickly shushed her, recognizing that something was wrong. Anna quieted down, catching on to their concern. Kristoff took the lantern and looked around, although he could not see very far through the dark woods. Sora, Goofy and Kairi looked around as well. Glancing behind them, Goofy squinted as something caught his eye. Kristoff swept the lantern around, and its light reflected off of several pairs of eyes. Goofy rapped his knuckles against the seat to get Kristoff’s attention and pointed toward the eyes. Some low growls revealed that the eyes belonged to a pack of hungry wolves.

Kristoff’s eyes went wide. “Sven, go!” he called out to his reindeer. Recognizing the danger, Sven broke into a run without hesitation. The sudden movement shook the sleigh.

“What are they?” Anna asked once she regained her bearings.

“Wolves,” Kristoff answered.

“Wolves?!” Anna gasped. The party could see that white-furred wolves were chasing after them. Sora, Kairi and Goofy summoned their weapons. “What do we do?”

Kristoff reached into the back and grabbed a torch, then lit it with the lantern. “I got this. Just don’t fall off, and don’t get eaten.”

“But I want to help!” Anna reached back to find something to use, but Kristoff pulled her back. In the meantime, a wolf caught up to them, but Sora swatted it away. Kairi blasted another one with a Blizzard spell.

“No,” Kristoff asserted.

“Why not?” Anna asked, frustrated.

“Because I don’t trust your judgment,” he said bluntly.

“Excuse me?”

A wolf lunged at them from the side, but Kristoff kicked it away. “Who marries a man she just met?!”

Anna grabbed Kristoff’s lute and held it over her shoulder, preparing to swing it like a baseball bat. “It’s true love!”

As she swung it, Kristoff screamed and leaned back out of the way, but she hit a wolf that had leapt over the others in the back, sending it tumbling out into the snow. Kairi aimed a Blizzard spell, freezing the ground in front of another wolf and causing it to slide and trip over its fallen brother. After processing the incident, Kristoff stared at Anna in amazement. “Whoa.” While he was distracted, however, a wolf bit onto his sleeve and pulled him off, losing its grip as he fell off and they tumbled.

“Christopher!” Anna called as she caught the torch that her escort dropped.

Kristoff grabbed onto a trailing rope and used it to stay connected to the sleigh. “It’s Kristoff!” he corrected, annoyed. Two wolves bit him, causing him to yelp in pain. Sven looked back with concern, then picked up his pace. Sora would have acted in his defense, but he was preoccupied with another wolf that had lunged at Goofy and which the knight pushed over to him with a shield, while Kairi used her magic to pick off predators out in the distance on either side.

Thinking quickly, Anna lowered the torch to the sleeping bag directly behind the seat and set it aflame. Hoisting it over her head, she shouted “Duck!” and threw it. Sora, Kairi and Goofy obliged, while Kristoff lowered his head as much as he could, unable to do much as he was being dragged at a rapid speed. The burning bag barely passed over him and hit the wolves, causing them to fall back.

Freed from the canines’ assault, Kristoff pulled himself up the rope to the sleigh. “You almost set me on fire!” he complained.

“But I didn’t,” Anna remarked. Sora and Goofy helped him climb back into the sleigh.

As Kristoff climbed back into the seat, the whole party, Sven included, saw that they were about to come up to a ravine, with the opposite cliff being at a slightly higher elevation. It would certainly be the end of the chase, but they had bigger concerns than wolves now.

Anna and Kristoff looked back at the others, worried about them. “Don’t worry about us,” Sora assured them. “We need to figure out how to get you across.”

Anna nodded and turned to face forward. “Get ready to jump, Sven!” she told the reindeer.

“You don’t tell him what to do!” Kristoff protested. He grabbed the bag of tools and carrots and shoved it into her arms, then scooped her up and threw her onto Sven’s back. “I do! Jump, Sven!” He cut the reins with his knife, disconnecting Sven from the sleigh. As he approached the ledge, Sven leapt with all his strength, while the sleigh flew off of the cliff. Sven landed safely on the opposite cliff and scrambled further up. Sora and Kairi wrapped their arms around each other’s backs. As the sleigh flew halfway across and was beginning to fall, Sora, Kairi, Goofy, and Kristoff jumped off. Sora, Kairi, and Goofy landed safely, though Goofy nearly lost his footing, but Kristoff barely managed to catch onto the snowy edge of the cliff. The wolves stopped at their cliff’s edge and glared, snarling at their escaped prey.

Kristoff stared down into the ravine and watched the sleigh hit the bottom, then burst into flames. “But I just paid it off,” he lamented. He felt himself slip through the snow, and he realized that he was going to fall. He scrambled to pull himself up, but he was having no luck.

Seeing his predicament, Anna pulled the pickaxe out of the bag, quickly tied Sven’s cut rein to it, and threw it. The pointed end embedded itself in the snow in front of Kristoff. “Grab on!” she shouted down to him. Kristoff grabbed onto the rope, and Anna, Sora, Kairi, Goofy, and Sven pulled, dragging him up to safety. When he was on stable ground, Kristoff rolled over and laid in the snow, spent from the ordeal. The others ran over to check on him. Anna and Goofy looked down and saw the fate of the sleigh. “Whoa. I’ll replace your sled and everything in it,” Anna promised. Kristoff only groaned in response. “And I understand if you don’t want to help me anymore.” She walked off, resolving to climb the mountain and find her sister on her own. Sora, Kairi and Goofy walked with her, though it became clear that none of them knew which way they were supposed to go.

While Anna stumbled around, unable to pick a direction, and the others tried to find some clue to where Elsa had gone with no success, Kristoff discussed with Sven (while speaking for him in a low cartoon-like voice) whether or not to help Anna, before finally deciding that it was better to keep her (and the others who were clearly just as lost as her) from dying (and thus never being able to replace his sled). “Hold up! We’re coming!” he announced.

“You are?” Anna perked up. She then cooled down and tried to project an aloof aura. “I mean, sure. I'll let you tag along.” Kristoff smiled in amusement.

* * *

They trudged on for the next few hours, only stopping for more than a few minutes to hunt and gather food for breakfast. Whenever Heartless attacked, Sora, Kairi and Goofy fought them off and protected Anna, Kristoff and Sven, though Sven helped out by ramming into a Winterhorn with his own antlers, while Kristoff destroyed two Icy Cubes with his pickaxe when they got too close. After one such encounter, they started to pick up the pace when Anna glanced over the cliff, which looked out over the fjord. Her eyes set on Arendelle in the distance, and she gasped. “Arendelle…” she breathed. The castle and village were completely blanketed in white snow.

Her companions went over to see what had gotten her attention and gasped as well. “It’s completely frozen!” Kristoff remarked.

“Gawrsh, it must be pretty cold down there,” Goofy said.

“I hope King Mickey, Rapunzel, and Eugene are alright,” Kairi added.

“But it’ll be fine,” Anna assured them. “Elsa will thaw it.”

“Will she?” Kristoff asked, worried about what would happen if they failed.

“Yeah,” Anna replied, although she did not sound very certain.

“Hey, you’ll work it out with your sister,” Sora assured her, not a doubt in his heart. “And they’ll be fine down there.”

Anna nodded. “You’re right. Now come on. This way up the North Mountain?” She pointed along the path that they had been following.

Kristoff chuckled. “More like this way.” He angled her arm upward, guiding everyone to look at a summit that rose high into the sky. Anna visibly deflated when she saw how far they had left to go.

Noticing her dismay, as well as Kairi’s, Sora decided to encourage everyone. “Well, no time like the present,” he said enthusiastically, patting Anna on the shoulder as he began marching.

Kairi and Goofy giggled. “Let’s get a move on,” Goofy hollered. Anna and Kristoff laughed softly as well. Soon, everyone was moving again.

* * *

They reached a grove of frozen willows, where icy beads dangled from the branches like Christmas decorations on strings. Straight ahead, there was a clearing with a spring, where both pool and waterfalls were frozen solid. Everyone marveled at the beauty of the scene. Kairi brushed her hand against a string of beads, causing it to make a tinkling sound. Excited, Sven shook a bunch of them with his antlers, causing them to rattle like wind chimes. He continued to play with them until they broke off and became wrapped around his antlers.

“I never knew winter could be so beautiful,” Anna mused as they walked through the willows.

“Me neither,” Sora agreed. Kristoff shot him a look of confusion. “I’m from an island,” he explained. “And not an arctic iceberg kind of island; a tropical island. I’ve actually only seen snow a handful of times.”

“Yeah, it really is beautiful, isn’t it?” a soft voice piped in. Everyone looked around to discern where it was coming from. “But it’s so white. You know, how about a little color? Must we bleach the joy out of it all? I'm thinking like maybe some crimson, chartreuse…” As they looked around, they did not notice a snowman walk up behind them. It came up to roughly half of Sora and Anna’s height. Its torso was comprised of two packs of snow, the top one smaller than the other, which sat on two packs of snow that moved as if they were feet. It had three stone buttons on the front of its body parts, a pair of straight sticks with small extensions at the end that resembled four-fingered hands. It had a large, oddly-shaped snowball for a head, with a large mouth that contained a piece of snow that formed a large single upper-jaw tooth. Near the top of its head were a pair of cartoonish eyes that somehow did not look out of place on his form, with some dirt above them forming eyebrows. Three twigs stuck out of the top of its head, giving the appearance of hairs. “How 'bout yellow? No. Not yellow. Yellow and snow? Brrrr… No go!” The snowman chuckled as it walked until it was in the middle of the group, at which point everyone finally noticed him. Anna gasped, and everyone took a step back. “Am I right?” the snowman asked, unaware of the onlookers’ shocked reaction.

Anna screamed and kicked the snowman, sending its head flying up into Kristoff’s arms. “Hi!” the snowman greeted cheerfully.

“You’re creepy,” Kristoff remarked before tossing the head away. Kairi caught it, then let out a yelp and immediately threw it away.

“Is this some kind of Heartless?” Sora asked as he caught and discarded the head.

“I don’t want it!” Anna tossed it to the next person.

“Wha-hoh!” Goofy tossed the head without thinking.

“Please don’t drop me,” the snowman requested.

As the game of hot potato with the snowman’s head went on, the body wandered around, trying to find its head. Finally, Anna caught the head and noticed the body walking toward her. “Ew! The body!” she blurted before she threw the head at the body.

The snowman fell backward from the force. As it pushed itself back to its feet, the party could see that its head had reunited with the rest of its body, but it was upside-down. It smiled, glad to be back in one piece, then frowned as it squinted at the group in front of it in confusion. “Wait, what am I looking at?” it asked, as everything in front of it appeared to be upside-down. “Why are you hanging off the earth like a bat?”

Anna, feeling bad for putting the snowman in such a state, knelt in front of it and reached for its head. “Okay. Wait one second,” she told it as she took its head and flipped it around, righting its position.

“Oh! Thank you,” the snowman said, looking itself over.

“You’re welcome,” Anna replied.

“Now I’m perfect!” the snowman added.

Anna giggled. “Well, almost,” she said, studying the snowman’s features. She turned to reach into Kristoff’s bag.

“You know, he doesn’t seem like any kind of Heartless,” Goofy mused.

“You’re right,” Sora agreed. “He’s a walking, talking snowman. This is so weird, but cool.” Kairi giggled.

Anna pulled a carrot out of the bag and shoved it into the snowman’s face. Using far more force than she intended, the carrot pushed straight through its head, with the fat end sticking out of the back.

“Oh! Too hard! I’m sorry!” Anna apologized. Sora, Kairi, and Kristoff winced.

“Woo! Head rush!” the snowman remarked.

“I-I was just… Are you okay?” Anna asked.

“Are you kidding me? I am wonderful! I’ve always wanted a nose,” the snowman replied. It went cross-eyed as he stared down at the small tip of the carrot that stuck out of the front of its face, cooing as it fiddled with it with its hands. “So cute. It’s like a little baby unicorn.” Sora, Kairi, and Goofy laughed. Anna reached behind the snowman and pushed the fat end of the carrot back through, giving it a large pointed nose. It took a moment to register what had happened, then examined its new nose. “Oh, I love it even more! All right. Let’s start this thing over. Hi, everyone. I’m Olaf, and I like warm hugs.” Olaf spread its arms out to illustrate the point.

Anna blinked. The snowman’s introduction caused something to click in her mind. A memory of her and Elsa playing in the snow as kids flashed before her.  _ They built a snowman, one that looked almost exactly like the one talking to her. “I’m Olaf, and I like warm hugs,” Elsa had said, affecting her voice to pretend to be the snowman while waving its stick arms. “I love you, Olaf!” Anna had then shouted excitedly, tackling the snowman in a hug. _

“Olaf?” She studied the snowman more closely, and she realized that, barring the carrot nose that she had added, he looked exactly like the snowman that she and Elsa had made all those years ago, and she started to piece together exactly where the snowman had come from. “That’s right. Olaf!”

“And you are?” Olaf asked, gesturing with his still-stretched-out arms.

Anna blinked, returning to the present. “Oh, um, I’m Anna.”

Olaf nodded. He turned to address the rest of the group. “And who might you be?” he asked.

“I’m Sora.”

“I’m Kairi.”

“And I’m Goofy. It’s nice to meet you, Olaf.”

“Oh, it is nice to meet you, too,” Olaf replied. He turned to Kristoff and Sven, regarding them with curiosity. Kristoff did not pipe in, still weirded out by the fact that a living snowman was in front of them, while Sven seemed fixated on the carrot nose. “And who’s the funky looking donkey over there?”

“That’s Sven,” Anna answered. Kristoff smirked at the reindeer’s expense. Sora and Goofy chuckled.

“Uh-huh. And who’s the reindeer?” Olaf asked. Everyone adopted confused expressions, identifying the miscommunication and unsure how to properly address it.

“Sven,” Anna said. She looked at Kristoff and shrugged.

Olaf looked back and forth between Kristoff and Sven, slightly perplexed by the fact that they supposedly had the same name, before deciding to simply accept the alleged fact. “Oh, they’re… Oh, okay. Makes things easier for me.” Sven attempted to bite Olaf’s nose, but the snowman jumped back just in time. “Ha. Aw, look at him tryin' to kiss my nose. I like you too,” he gushed.

“Olaf, did Elsa build you?” Anna asked.

“Yeah. Why?” Olaf replied. Sora, Kairi, and Goofy looked at each other in amazement and disbelief. Elsa could create living beings? What kind of power did she possess?

“Do you know where she is?” Anna continued.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Do you think you could show us the way?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Well, it’s because we need Elsa to bring back summer,” Goofy explained. Sora and Kairi grimaced, believing that a living snowman might not care much for the idea of a turn in the climate to summer warmth.

“Summer?” Olaf parroted. Anna grunted in affirmation. “Oh, I don’t know why, but I’ve always loved the idea of summer—” Sora, Kairi, Anna, and Kristoff looked at each other in confusion “—and sun, and all things hot.”

“Uh, really?” Kairi interjected awkwardly. “I’m guessing you don’t have much experience with, ahem, heat.”

“Nope,” the snowman admitted. “But sometimes I like to close my eyes and imagine what it'd be like when summer does come. Imagine doing what snow would do in summer. Oh, my solid water particles tingle with excitement at the thought!”

Anna and Kristoff smiled as they watched him muse, their hearts warmed by his innocence. “I’m gonna tell him,” Kristoff said.

Anna slapped him lightly on the arm. “Don’t you dare!” she chastised.

Sora looked at Kairi and shrugged, then turned back to Olaf. “Okay… So, will you take us to Elsa?” he asked.

Olaf nodded. “Yup! Well, no time to waste!” He hopped and began to march up the mountain, leading the way. However, he stopped and jumped in surprise when he saw some Winterhorns, Blue Rhapsodies, and a Large Body appear out of thin air. After taking a moment to get over his shock, he began to coo at the dark creatures. “Aw, more friends? Hi. I’m Olaf, and—”

Sora, Kairi and Goofy summoned their weapons and stepped in between Olaf and the monsters. “They’re  _ not _ friends!” Sora corrected.

“They’re the Heartless!” Goofy explained.

“Olaf, stay out of danger,” Kairi advised.

“We don’t want you falling apart on us,” Sora concurred.

Olaf regarded the creatures again, which he now realized looked somewhat scary. “Okay, yeah. I don’t want to fall apart either.” He ran back to hide behind Sven.

Sora, Kairi and Goofy fought the Heartless. While they were engaged, Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven huddled together, Kristoff brandishing his pickaxe, ready to protect his friends from any Heartless that snuck past the Keyblade wielders and the knight to attack them. After defeating the monsters, Sora, Kairi and Goofy rejoined the others and made sure everyone was okay.

“Well, now that that’s out of the way, come on! Elsa’s this way! Let’s go bring back summer!” Olaf cheered. He grabbed Anna and Sora’s hands and pulled them along as he led the group up the mountain. Kairi and Goofy laughed as they followed along. Sven happily bounded after them.

Kristoff hung back, watching them run off happily while he wondered why no one seemed concerned with what would happen when summer returned. “Someone’s gotta tell him,” he told himself somberly.

* * *

They continued on. While in an area where windswept icicles pointed horizontally, forcing them to maneuver around carefully, a group of Heartless appeared, but they managed to use their deadly surroundings to their advantage in fighting the Heartless by impaling them onto the spikes. After trekking further, they came up to a sheer cliff, where Kristoff said there were no other branching paths that would lead them further up. Anna attempted to free climb her way to the summit, but she could barely get herself five feet up. Meanwhile, Sora and Kairi were skeptical that Elsa would be able to scale the cliff any better than Anna. It was then that Olaf and Goofy found a cavern passage that led to a corner of the mountain with an ice staircase, which must have been created by Elsa. Goofy also noticed that there was evidence of a campfire in the area, indicating that there were others nearby, whom Sora and Kairi quickly determined to be Riku, Aqua and Donald. Anna gleefully abandoned her futile efforts and rejoined her friends. As they approached the ice bridge, they looked up to see what lay beyond it, and they found themselves staring in awe at the majestic castle.

“Whoa! Did Elsa do this?” Sora asked.

“It’s amazing,” Kairi said.

“Now  _ that _ is ice,” Kristoff remarked. “I might cry.”

“Go ahead. I won’t judge,” Anna replied.

She began to cross the ice bridge, followed by Olaf. Sven attempted to climb, but his hooves started to slip on the ice. Kristoff went to his aid and helped him back down onto the snow. Kairi saw three figures standing on the balcony, staring out into the distance, and waved up to them. Following her gaze, Sora pulled his hood and balaclava down so that they could recognize him as he waved as well. Aqua looked down to check out the movement in her lower peripheral and smiled as she recognized her friends. She tapped Riku and Donald on the shoulders and pointed down, alerting them to the new arrivals. She and Riku jumped over the railing and landed in front of their friends, while Donald climbed over and dropped off, landing ungracefully in the snow.

“Whoa!” Kristoff gasped when he noticed the landing. Anna and Olaf turned around in reaction and saw the strangers as well. “Who are these guys?”

“These are our friends: Riku, Aqua, and Donald,” Sora said, introducing them. “Guys, this is Anna, Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf.”

Riku raised an eyebrow as he looked up at Anna. “Anna? You’re Elsa’s sister, right?”

Anna blinked in surprise. “You know my sister?” she asked.

Riku nodded. “She told us about you, how you were really close as kids,” he explained. “She loves you a lot, but she’s afraid she might hurt you.”

Anna processed his words, then smiled. “Thanks. I’m gonna go talk to her, and let her know there’s nothing for her to be afraid of.”

Donald found himself transfixed on Olaf, staring at him in disbelief. “Uh… What is that?” he asked.

“Hm?” Sora turned to see what had gotten his attention. “Oh, that’s Olaf. He’s a walking, talking snowman.”

Riku tilted his head quizzically upon hearing that. “A… talking snowman?” Riku parroted, apparently unable to quite believe it himself. Sensing that people were talking about him, Olaf turned and waved.

“Elsa made him and brought him to life, I think,” Kairi confirmed.

Donald’s jaw dropped. Aqua gasped and stared at Olaf in wonder. “Brought him… to life?” she parroted.

“That is definitely not the kind of magic I’m familiar with,” Donald remarked.

In the meantime, Anna climbed the stairs up to the ice castle’s front doors. She raised her fist up to rap on the door, hesitated for a moment, then knocked. Each rap echoed through the building, before the doors opened inward all on their own. “Ha. It opened. That’s a first,” she remarked. As she stepped inside, a thought came to her, and she turned to Kristoff, who was starting to follow after her. “Oh, you might want to wait out here.”

“What?” Kristoff blurted.

“The last time I introduced her to a guy, she froze everything.”

“But-But it’s a palace made of ice!” Kristoff protested. “Ice is my life!”

“Bye, Sven,” Olaf said, waving as he started to follow Anna, but she stooped down to grab him by the hand.

“You too, Olaf,” she said, feeling bad for keeping him from joining her.

“Me?”

“Just give us a minute.” She stood up and turned to face the castle’s foyer, but hesitated and turned to her friends for emotional support.

“Good luck,” Sora said.

“You’ve got this!” Kairi assured her.

Anna smiled, appreciating their words, and stepped into the castle, although she was still very nervous.

As the doors closed behind her, Olaf sat down on the stairs next to Kristoff and began counting by the seconds. In the snow, Sora, Kairi, Goofy, Riku, Aqua, and Donald began to engage in conversation.

“I thought you said his name was Kristoff,” Riku said, confused by Olaf’s misnaming of the ice harvester.

“It’s… strange,” Sora replied, unsure how to explain the miscommunication when he was not even sure how to explain it to Olaf.

Riku shrugged, deciding to let the matter go. He looked his friends up and down. “Nice clothes,” he complimented.

Kairi grinned. “Thanks. I got this at the trading post at the bottom of the mountain,” she said. “But those are the clothes Sora was already wearing.” She pointed her thumb at Sora.

Riku took a step back. “What?! Your clothes just changed to fit the cold?” He rubbed his bare arms, somewhat uncomfortable from the cold. Sora simply shrugged.

“So, how are things down in Arendelle?” Aqua asked. Sora, Kairi and Goofy took on somber expressions, and Aqua quickly realized that something was wrong. “What?”

“Arendelle is completely frozen,” Kairi answered. Riku and Aqua gasped upon hearing this. “It wasn’t just the fjord that iced over; the whole area is caught in a snowstorm.”

“That’s awful,” Aqua said sympathetically.

“Oh. That reminds me,” Sora said. Before anyone could ask what he meant, he slapped Donald upside the head.

“Ow! What was that for?” the duck asked.

“That ‘order’ you keep telling me to keep is a load of crock!” Sora all but shouted. “There are people down there visiting from different worlds! People have been traveling between worlds for a long time!”

“What?!” Donald blurted. He had absolutely no idea that was the case.

“Rapunzel and Eugene are even down there with King Mickey,” Kairi added, addressing the situation with less vitriol than Sora.

Riku chuckled. “Well, it’s a good thing you always ignored that ‘order’,” he joked. They all started laughing, except for Donald, who was still processing the revelation.

* * *

As Anna entered the ice castle’s foyer, she looked around in awe, marveling at the architecture. A few steps in, she slipped and nearly lost her footing, but steadied herself. “Else?” she called out. “It’s me, Anna.”

“Anna?” The princess looked up and saw her sister step out from behind a corner at the top of the stairs. Anna stared in awe, seeing how beautiful Elsa looked in her new dress and hairstyle. She practically glowed in the refracted light.

“Whoa… Elsa, you look… different,” Anna said. “It’s a good ‘different’. And this place, it’s amazing.”

“Thank you. I never knew what I was capable of,” Elsa replied.

Anna began climbing the stairs to approach her sister. “I’m so sorry about what happened. If I’d known—”

“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to apologize,” Elsa said, backing up nervously. “But, you should probably go. Please.”

“But I just got here.”

“You belong down in Arendelle.”

“So do you.”

“No, Anna. I belong here. Alone,” Elsa said resignedly. “Where I can be who I am… without hurting anybody.”

It was then that Anna realized that Elsa had no idea what was happening outside of her bubble. “Actually, about that…” she began to say.

However, before she could address the point, they heard a cheerful voice pipe up “58… 59… 60!”

“Wait, what is that?” Elsa asked.

Having waited exactly one minute while Anna went in to talk to Elsa alone, Olaf happily skipped into the castle. “Hi! I’m Olaf, and I like warm hugs,” he announced.

Elsa squinted as she peered down at the snowman, making the connection. Even as she processed it, she could not believe what she was seeing. “Olaf?”

Olaf stopped next to Anna. “You made me. You remember that?” he said bashfully.

“And you’re alive?” Elsa asked, astonished that something that she had created on a whim was walking about, wondering how it was possible.

Olaf looked down at himself and waved his arms. “Um, I think so…?”

Elsa looked at her hands in awe.  _ Am I really capable of that? _ she wondered.

“He’s just like the one we built as kids,” Anna said nostalgically, kneeling down next to Olaf.

Elsa smiled, remembering happier times. “Yeah,” she agreed.

“Elsa, we were so close. We can be like that again,” Anna suggested.

Elsa’s smile faded as a horrible memory flashed in her mind.  _ She used her magic to create snow mounds which Anna hopped across. As her sister went faster, she struggled to keep up with conjuring the mounds. She slipped and accidentally shot an ice blast that hit Anna in the head. Anna fell unconscious and rolled down a pile of snow. Elsa ran to her side, pleading for her to wake up. A lock of her strawberry blonde hair turned a frozen white. _

Returning to the present, she shook her head and took a step back crossing her arms across her stomach. “No, we can’t.” She turned to walk away. “Good-bye, Anna.”

“Elsa, wait!” Anna pleaded.

“No, I’m just trying to protect you,” Elsa called back.

“You don’t have to protect me. I’m not afraid,” Anna assured her. She followed Elsa up the stairs. Elsa continued to flee, running up the next flight of stairs.

**_Anna:_ ** _ Please don’t shut me out again. Please don’t slam the door. You don’t have to keep your distance anymore. 'Cause for the first time in forever, I finally understand. For the first time in forever, we can fix this hand in hand. We can head down this mountain together. You don’t have to live in feeeear. 'Cause for the first time in forever, I will be right here. _

[They are both on the second floor landing now, and Elsa could not flee any further.]

**_Elsa:_ ** _ Anna, please, go back home. Your life awaits. Go enjoy the sun and open up the gates. _

**Anna:** Yeah, but—

**_Elsa:_ ** _ I know! You mean well. But leave me be.  _ [She steps out onto the balcony, and Anna follows her]  _ Yes, I’m alone, but I’m alone and free. Just stay away, and you’ll be safe from me. _

[She recoils at Anna’s proximity and reenters the room. Anna elects to address the urgent problem of which her sister seems to be unaware.]

**_Anna:_ ** _ Actually, we’re not. _

**_Elsa:_** [turns around, confused and concerned] _What do you mean, you’re not?_

**_Anna:_ ** _ I get the feeling you don’t know… _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ What do I not know? _

**_Anna:_ ** _ Arendelle’s in deep, deep, deep… deep… snow… _

[Elsa’s eyes widen in horror.]

* * *

While he waited for Anna, and after Olaf had gone in after her, Kristoff went back down the stairs to rejoin Sora and the others. He smirked and rolled his eyes as he saw that Sven had his tongue stuck to the bridge’s icy railing. “So, you really think she can get Elsa to unfreeze Arendelle?” he asked when he reached the group.

“Aw, I’m sure Anna will get through to her,” Goofy said. “After all, she’s a lot like Sora.”

Sora blinked in surprise. “You think so?” he asked.

Kairi nodded. “I saw it, too,” she agreed. “She’s fearless, quick to make friends with anyone, and she cares a lot about her friends and family.” She giggled playfully. “She also jumps into trouble without thinking,” she teased.

Sora took on an expression of mock offense. “I do think! While I’m jumping in!” They all laughed.

“Then I guess she’s the right person for the job,” Riku said. “Elsa kind of reminds me of myself.”

“It’s a good thing you guys were up here with her,” Sora said. “Alone is the last thing she should be.”

“I hope she can get her magic figured out so she can unfreeze Arendelle,” Donald mused, worried for King Mickey and everyone else down in town.

“I’m sure they’ll work it out. Do you hear that? They’re singing,” Kairi noted.

They chuckled as they listened to the sisters as their voices echoed out of the now-open balcony door. After a moment, however, Goofy looked up and pointed at the balcony in surprise. “Lookie there!” he announced. Everyone turned to see what he was pointing at and gasped at what they saw. Snow was whirling around in strong winds, leaking out of the door for them to see the storm brewing inside.

“That can’t be good,” Aqua said, concerned for Anna and Elsa.

* * *

“What?” Elsa gasped upon hearing what was happening in Arendelle.

“You kinda set off an eternal winter… everywhere,” Anna explained.

“E-Everywhere?” Elsa was horrified at what she had done. So many lives were in danger because of her, and she did not even have any idea that it was happening. In her fear and despair, snow began falling around her.

“But that’s okay. You can just unfreeze it,” Anna assured her.

“No I can’t! I-I don’t know how!” Snow began swirling around her.

**Anna:** [oblivious to the forming blizzard] Sure, you can! I know you can!  _ 'Cause for the first time in forever… _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ Ohhh… I’m such a fool! I can’t be free! _

**_Anna:_ ** _ You don’t have to be afraid! _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ No escape from the storm inside of me! _

**_Anna:_ ** _ We can work this out together. _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ I can’t control the curse! _

**_Anna:_** [notices that Elsa is having an emotional breakdown and that a snowstorm was forming around both of them] _We’ll reverse this storm you made!_

**_Elsa:_ ** _ Anna, please! You’ll only make it worse! _

**_Anna:_ ** _ Don’t panic! _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ There’s so much fear! _

**_Anna:_ ** _ Let the sun shine bright! _

**_Elsa:_ ** _ You’re not safe here! _

**_Anna:_ ** _ We can face this thing together! We can change this winter weather! And everything will be— _

**_Elsa:_** [at the same time, drowning Anna out as the storm intensifies] _No! IIIIII CAAAAAAAAAAAAN’T!_

The snow was absorbed back into Elsa, and as she released everything in a burst of panic and frustration, ice magic was shot out of her in a radial blast. One bolt hit Anna in the chest, causing her to keel over in pain. Elsa took a few deep breaths to calm down. She turned around to apologize, and saw Anna kneeling on the floor. She gasped, realizing that she had just hurt her sister again.

“Anna!” Kristoff called up. He, Sora, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, Donald, Goofy, and Olaf came running in, having entered the castle to check on the sisters after noticing the snowstorm and running up frantically when they felt the final blast reverberate through the air. Coming onto the scene, they rushed to Anna’s side. “Are you okay?” Kristoff asked, concerned.

Anna grunted. “I’m okay. I’m fine,” she replied. She stood up tall, trying to hide the pain.

Sora fished through his pocket and pulled out a Potion. “Here. Drink this,” he said, handing the healing beverage to her, which she took and drank down.

Riku looked between Anna and the scared and visibly ashamed Elsa. “Are you guys alright?” he asked.

By this point, Elsa had lost her composure. Dark shadows began to creep through the icy walls, darkening the room in conjunction with Elsa’s growing panic. “You… You have to go,” she insisted.

“No! I know we can figure this out, together—” Anna pleaded.

“How?” Elsa shot back. “What power do you have to stop this winter? To stop me?”

Riku shivered, feeling a dark aura emanating from Elsa. The aura was not of the fiery kind that he had felt from many of his enemies, but rather it was cold. Frigid. It was as he had suspected: her fear was tainting her magic. She truly believed herself to be a threat to all around her, particularly to her dear sister.

Kristoff took notice of the shadows creeping through the ice and put an arm around Anna protectively. “Anna, I think we should go,” he advised.

“No! I’m not leaving you!” Anna argued.

“Yes, you are.” Elsa shot a spell at the ground, causing a cloud of mist to form. Large clumps of snow grew out of the cloud, forming a bulky figure whose limbs were joined by chunks of ice. Rounded icicles formed its fingers, and icy spikes jutted out of its right knee and left foot. Unlike Olaf, its eye sockets were hollow, and it lacked a snow tooth.

The next thing everyone knew, the giant snowman had picked the unwelcome guests up, throwing some onto its back when they did not fit in its hands, and carried them outside, ignoring their protests. “Go away,” it demanded, throwing them all off and sending them sliding down the steps. It threw Olaf last, pitching him right into a snowbank. Sora, Riku, Aqua, and Kristoff got up and helped the others to their feet. Sora grabbed onto the ice railing and used a touch of Fire magic to melt it enough for Sven to detach his tongue.

Anna glared at the snow monster indignantly. “It is not nice to throw people!” she growled. She packed a snowball together and prepared to throw it.

Kristoff, determining that it was better to not cause any more trouble, grabbed and restrained her before she could do anything drastic. “Whoa! Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa, feisty pants! Okay, relax! Just calm down!” Anna struggled briefly against his grip before she stopped resisting and took a few calming breaths. Riku shot Donald a glare as the duck was preparing his own snowball in retaliation, causing him to drop it.

“All right! I’m okay,” Anna said.

“Just let the snowman be,” Kristoff continued.

“I’m calm.” Anna stood up with a dignified posture and turned as if to walk away, convincing Kristoff to release her, then whirled around and threw the snowball, much to Kristoff’s exasperation.

The snow monster watched the snowball sail toward it. When it collided, the monster roared with anger. Spikes grew out of its back and jaws, and its eye sockets flashed with a pale blue glow for a moment. Its icy protrusions sharpened.

“Oh, great. Now you made him mad,” Kristoff complained.

“I’ll distract him. You guys go,” Olaf said. Anna, Kristoff, and Sven ran off. Prioritizing getting them to safety over dealing with the threat, the Keybearers, Donald, and Goofy fled with them. Olaf’s lower two thirds ran off as well, leaving the head behind. A moment later, however, after the head dropped to the ground, the rest of his body returned and reunited with it, and he ran off after the others as the snow monster began to give chase.

The party fled down the hill as fast as its slowest members could go. Goofy carried Donald on his shoulders so the duck would not get stuck in the snow. As they were concerned more with escaping what was behind them than minding what was in front of them, they slipped at a steep slope and slid down the hill. A tree appeared in front of them, so they rolled to the nearest side to avoid crashing into it. As a result, Sora, Anna, Kristoff, Kairi, and Goofy fell to the left while Riku, Aqua, Donald (who had fallen off of Goofy’s shoulders when they had slipped), and Sven fell to the right, and both groups were pushed farther apart. While the latter group eventually crashed into a snowbank, the former group landed on level ground and picked themselves back up.

As soon as they were back on their feet, the snow monster landed behind them. “Move!” Sora shouted. He and his companions broke into a sprint, running through a maze of conifers. Sora whirled around and cast a Firaga spell at the snow monster, which hopped about in pain after it hit. The spell did no apparent damage to its physical form, but it gave the group room to increase the distance before it recovered and continued its pursuit.

Casting glances around, Goofy saw that some trees were weighed down by snow to the point they were bent over completely. An idea coming to his mind, he split off from the others. “Hey, fellas!” he shouted back. They turned to see that he had grabbed onto the tip of a conifer. Kairi and Kristoff were confused, but Sora and Anna grinned.

“Goofy, you’re a genius!” Anna cheered. She and Sora ran to join Goofy, and their confused companions followed suit. The snow monster marched toward them, coming up on the opposite side of the tree from them.

“Ready? Now!” Sora shouted. He, Goofy and Anna tugged on the tree and shook it, shaking the snow off of it, then released it. Without the snow weighing it down, the tree snapped upright, slapping the snow monster in the face and causing it to fall on its backside. They all cheered at the successful hit, but then started running when the monster began to stir. They fled as fast as they could, but abruptly came to a stop when they approached the edge of a cliff.

“It’s a hundred foot drop!” Anna said as she looked over the edge.

“It’s two hundred,” Sora and Kristoff corrected. Kristoff flashed Sora a smirk of respect.

Kristoff pulled the rope out of his bag and tied it around Anna’s waist, then dropped to his knees and dug a U-shaped ditch into the snow with his pickaxe.

“What are you doing?” Kairi asked.

“I’m digging a snow anchor,” Kristoff explained. He looped the rope into the snow anchor.

“Okay. What if we fall?” Anna asked, unsure if the plan was sound.

“There’s twenty feet of fresh powder down there. It’ll be like landing on a pillow,” Kristoff said. “Hopefully.”

They heard a loud roar coming from the trees. Kristoff threw the majority of the rope over the edge and gripped it tightly.

“We’ll hold him off,” Sora declared. “Don’t worry about us.” He, Kairi and Goofy summoned their weapons.

“Okay, Anna. On three,” Kristoff said.

“Okay. You tell me when,” Anna replied, raring to go.

“One…” Kristoff counted. “Two…”

A tree flew through the sky toward them. Sora slashed his Keyblade through the air, sending a razor wind wave that sliced the tree in half. Both halves fell to either side.

“TREE!” Anna shouted. She jumped off of the cliff, pulling Kristoff with her. They fell, but were brought to a stop as the rope came taut.

While this was happening, Olaf waddled out of the woods, taking a moment to reorganize any parts that were in the wrong place. “Hey, Anna! Sven! Sora! Where'd ya guys go? We totally lost him back there!” he called out. He turned around as the snow monster appeared behind him. “Hey. We were just talking about you. All good things, all good things.”

The snow monster roared and marched toward the party. Olaf gasped and ran after it. “No!” he screamed. He grabbed onto the giant’s leg and tried to weigh it down. The giant marched on as if there was nothing there. “This is not making much of a difference,” the smaller snowman remarked. The snow monster lifted its leg to regard him, then kicked outward, throwing him off and over the cliff edge.

“Olaf!” Anna called out as she watched the snowman fall.

“Let’s scale down,” Kristoff advised. He began to let the rope slip, then caught it every few feet so that they did not drop too fast.

“Hey!” Sora shouted, drawing the snow monster’s attention away from its target. Goofy’s shield became embedded into its head as it turned to see him, Sora and Kairi off to the right, calling to it and challenging it to a fight. Goofy’s shield reappeared in his hands. Irritated, it marched over to them and grew its spikes back for a menacing appearance.

The snow monster marched toward its three adversaries, who were all prepared for a fight. Not being interested in such a match, it looked down and smiled wickedly, then brought its fists down hard to the ground. Sora, Kairi and Goofy stumbled as tremors shook the ground. They heard the earth crack and saw the snow shift. As soon as they were aware of what was going on, the earth beneath them broke apart, and they plunged off the edge.

Anna gasped as she watched her friends fall. “Go faster!” she told Kristoff. Kristoff began to let more rope slip at a time.

They felt a jolt, and they stopped descending. Confused, they looked up and saw the snow monster’s hands pulling their rope up. Anna frantically tried to untie the rope around her waist, but to no avail. Kristoff was left to dangle helplessly, and ended up hitting his head against a rock.

They were lifted up above the cliff edge and found themselves face to face with the snow monster, who lifted them up to eye level. “DON’T COME BAAAACK!” it roared, blasting snow on them with its breath.

“We won’t!” Anna said fearfully. With that, she pulled Kristoff’s knife out of his bag and cut the rope, letting her and Kristoff drop. As they fell, screaming, the snow monster gave a satisfied nod, then turned back to return to its queen’s side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, guys. That's only going to happen the one time.


	132. Chapter 131: Beware the Frozen Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! Huh. October 31st with a full moon with the next day marking the end of Daylight Saving Time... All we need now is a virgin to light the black flame candle for some real hocus pocus. I wouldn't be surprised if 2020 did this to us.
> 
> Well, read on. And please be sure to let me know what you think.

Mickey and Hans made their way through the town, keeping an eye out for anyone who needed help. Two civilians were arguing about the proper way to stack firewood in the cold weather; Rapunzel and Eugene were working with the dignitaries to retrieve supplies from the ships; the Duke of Weselton and the East India Trading Company merchant were in a passive-aggressive debate about commerce. There had only been the occasional Heartless attack in the past couple of days, and beyond that, the main issue to resolve was preventing the people of Arendelle from suffering in the cold.

“Phew. Have you ever had to deal with winters this rough?” Mickey asked when he and the prince of the Southern Isles had gotten a chance to rest.

Hans shook his head to the side. “Generally, we’re well-prepared for the season. But it has never been so cold that the sea freezes over,” he replied.

“Fair point,” Mickey conceded. “Where I’m from, the winters are pretty mild. A few feet of snow at most. And everyone’s homes are well-heated. I haven’t been in too many snowstorms greater than that, and I’ve never been in charge of relief in one.”

“I’ve done my best in certain situations, although my impact has been limited… and discouraged” Hans admitted. He noticed that Mickey was staring at him in shock and curiosity at the statement, and he quickly decided to change the subject. “Well, I’m sure Princess Anna will find Queen Elsa and restore this kingdom,” he said confidently.

Mickey would have pressed further, but his attention was drawn away by the sound of frantic whinnying. Anna’s horse ran through the streets, bucking and kicking. It was not with its rider. Hans quickly grabbed its reins and soothed it to calm it down. Worried chatter rose up as the townspeople began to fear for Anna’s safety.

Hans turned to address the crowd. “Princess Anna is in trouble! I need volunteers to go with me to find her!” he declared.

As people volunteered to accompany him, Mickey stepped forward. “I’m sure that as long as Sora, Goofy and Kairi are with her, she’ll be fine,” he assured the prince.

Hans nodded in understanding. “Even so, we should still ascertain her safety,” he replied. He raised his voice to address the crowd again. “If there is anything you need while we are gone, talk to Mickey Mouse.”

“I volunteer two men, my lord!” the Duke of Weselton called out. Then, in a whisper so that only his bodyguards could hear him: “Be prepared for anything, and should you encounter the Queen, you are to put an end to this winter. Do you understand?” His bodyguards nodded, then stepped up to join the search party.

Mickey had noticed their shifty expressions, though he had not heard the exchange. “Keep an eye on those two,” he advised Hans. Hans nodded.

As he watched the search party gather up supplies and set off, Mickey felt his Gummi-Comm buzz. He took it out and answered it, seeing that Chip and Dale were the ones who called. “Hello?” He listened to what the chipmunks had to say, which caused his eyes to grow wide. “Wait, what?!”

* * *

Anna opened her eyes after having braced for impact, and found that she was unharmed, albeit buried up to her shoulders in the snow. “Hey, you were right. Just like a pillow,” she said.

She turned to see Olaf’s top half reaching out to a pair of boots that stuck out of the snow. “I can’t feel my legs! I can’t feel my legs!” the snowman cried out.

Kristoff sat up right behind him. “Those are  _ my _ legs,” he corrected. As if to confirm Olaf’s mistake, the snowman’s bottom parts ran by.

“Oh. Do me a favor and grab my butt,” Olaf requested. Kristoff did as he asked and put him back together. “Oh, that feels better.” He noticed Sven standing behind him, the reindeer having tracked them down after they had been separated. Sven attempted to bite Olaf’s nose off, but failed. “Hey, Sven! He found us! Who’s my cute little reindeer?” Olaf said, snuggling up to the reindeer.

Kristoff pulled Olaf away from Sven, an annoyed look on his face. “Don’t talk to him like that,” he told the snowman.

Sora, Kairi and Goofy marched over, having survived just as well even with the added risk of the rocks that fell with them. “Gee, that was kinda fun,” Goofy said cheerfully.

“Yeah, well, let’s never have to do that again, please,” Kairi countered.

“Are you guys all right?” Sora asked. He and Kristoff lifted Anna out of the snow.

“I’m fine. Thanks,” Anna replied. She turned to face Kristoff. “How’s your head?” she asked. She touched the spot where he had hit the rock, causing him to wince and groan in pain. He caught himself and smiled.

“I mean, it’s fine. I’m good. I’ve got a thick skull,” he remarked.

“I don’t have a skull,” Olaf interjected. “Or bones.”

Nonetheless, Kairi took a Potion out of her pocket and gave it to Kristoff to drink. After gulping it down, he breathed a sigh of relief as the throbbing subsided. “Thanks.” He shot a glance up the cliff and shrugged. “So, now what?”

“Now what?” Anna repeated, brushing her hair back shyly. Her eyes widened as she registered what had just happened with Elsa. “Now what?” she started to panic. “Ohhhhhh.. What am I going to do? She threw me out. I can’t go back to Arendelle with the weather like this. And then there’s your ice business…”

“Hey, don’t worry about my ice business,” Kristoff assured her. His smile quickly faded. “Worry about your hair!”

“What? I just fell off a cliff. You should see your hair,” Anna retorted indignantly.

“No, yours is turning white!” Kristoff clarified.

“White? It’s… what?” Anna looked at her braid and stared in shock as she saw an entire section turn white. Sora and Kairi winced as they saw hair turn white straight from the roots.

“It’s because she struck you, isn’t it?” Sora realized.

“Can she do that?” Kairi asked in disbelief.

Sora shrugged. “Her magic isn’t like ours. Who knows what she can do?” He had an idea and summoned his Keyblade, pointing it at Anna. “Esuna!” he shouted. A shimmer of magic enveloped Anna, but when it faded nothing had changed. “It’s not a regular status effect. Hmm… Maybe it’s just extra strong, like Kefka’s Mini spell. Kairi, you try it. Put some extra light into it.”

“Esuna!” Kairi called out, lighting her Keyblade up with Princess of Heart-brand light magic. A brighter shimmer enveloped Anna, but her locks did not return to normal. “No luck. Sorry.”

“Does it look bad?” Anna asked.

Kristoff paused for a moment before replying “No.”

Olaf lifted his head up to insert himself into his peripheral. “You hesitated,” he pointed out.

Sora shoved Olaf’s head back down onto his body. “No, I didn’t!” Kristoff protested. “Anna, you need help. Come on.” He turned and began walking through the snow, beckoning the party to follow him.

“Where are we going?” Goofy asked.

“To see my friends,” Kristoff answered.

“The love experts?” Anna asked skeptically.

“Love experts?” Olaf parroted excitedly.

“Uh-huh. And don’t worry. They’ll be able to fix this,” Kristoff assured Anna.

“How do you know that?” Sora asked.

Kristoff turned to his companions as he thought back to an event of magic that he had witnessed thirteen years ago. “Because I’ve seen them do it before.”

Trading glances, Sora and Kairi shrugged and decided to roll with it. As they followed Kristoff, Olaf turned to Sven. “You know, I like to consider myself a love expert,” he commented.

* * *

In her castle, in the same spot where she had dismissed her sister and her friends, Elsa paced back and forth, trying to keep herself from panicking. “Get it together. Control it. Don’t feel,” she told herself. “Don’t feel. Don’t feel!” The icy walls were glowing red, reflecting her emotions. She heard ice crackling and looked on in horror as spikes began to grow in places on the walls.

A crack of thunder rang out. Recovering her wits, she ran out to the balcony to see what had changed in the weather. She realized that the sky had not changed in the last few hours and there was no indication of a thunderstorm. Confused, she looked down and saw Riku, Aqua and Donald. Riku was waving to her with both arms.

“Please, leave me be,” Elsa pleaded.

“We just want to talk,” Riku called up.

Elsa considered for a moment, then sighed as she reached a decision. “Fine. Come on in.” She willed the castle’s doors to open up.

“How’d you get past the giant?” she asked when her guests entered.

“We got separated and he went after the others,” Riku explained. “They’ll be fine. I’d be more worried about the big guy.”

Elsa rubbed her arms nervously. “Why are you here?” she asked.

“We… We want to help you,” Riku replied.

Elsa scoffed. “Help me? Look around. All of this is because of me. I froze my kingdom in an eternal winter. I’ve probably doomed everyone. How can you help me? I’m nothing more than a monster.”

After considering her words for a moment, Riku let out a sigh and shrugged. “You’re not the only one,” he said.

Elsa was taken aback. “What?”

Riku held his hand up and willed dark fire to wrap around it. “I let the darkness into my heart, and I turned on my closest friend,” he told her. “I let horrible people manipulate me, I became a puppet of the Heartless, and I let someone take over my body. I hurt the people I care about.”

“I’m sorry,” Elsa said.

“When I regained control of myself, I spent the following year trying to control the darkness in my heart while helping my friends out in secret,” Riku continued. “I ended up giving up my own form so that I would have the power to help my friend. But even still, I was afraid to face them again after everything I had done. I was afraid to face myself.”

“So, what happened?” Elsa asked.

Riku clenched his fist and caused the dark flame to disperse. “I learned to control my power. The darkness in my heart became mine to use, rather than the other way around. And the lingering voice of the guy who possessed me? It became little more than an annoying buzz in the back of my mind. Then my friends talked me into coming back to them. They never gave up on me.”

“What you did… does it still haunt you?” Elsa asked.

Riku nodded. “Every day. Ansem’s remnant no longer exists in my heart, but the guilt, the pain, it never goes away.”

“How do you deal with it?”

“Therapy. Just talking about what you’re feeling and getting insight can be really helpful. Even just having someone to talk to can take a lot off of your shoulders.”

“Could anyone really help me with my feelings with this?” Elsa quipped, gesturing to the ice spikes.

Riku chuckled and shrugged. “If I can get my therapist to wrap his head around everything I’ve been through, ice magic should be a piece of cake.”

Elsa snickered, then burst out laughing. Riku, Aqua and Donald joined in. A light flurry of snow appeared, and a blue glow poked out of the red in the ice walls to reflect the Snow Queen’s mirth.

* * *

The Misty Stream’s aurora illuminated the sky as Sora, Kairi, Anna, Kristoff, Goofy, Olaf, and Sven hiked across a part of the mountain that was barren of snow. Olaf laid on Sven’s back, watching the aurora with contentment. “Look, Sven. The sky’s awake,” he said.

Anna smiled as she watched Olaf, but then shivered. “Are you cold?” Kristoff asked, concerned.

“A little,” Anna admitted.

“Here. Let’s see if this helps,” Sora said. He put his hands on her shoulder and neck and used faint Fire magic to transfer heat into her. Anna let out a sigh of contentment. “Better?”

Anna nodded. “Toasty.”

They walked on for a few minutes before Sora took his hands away, and Anna felt the cold overtake her again. “Sorry. I had to use up mana to keep us both warm,” he explained. “I’ll need a couple minutes to charge it back up.”

Anna shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m grateful for just a couple minutes.”

They continued on, but soon Anna was shivering again. Sora waved his fingers, impatiently waiting for his mana to recharge so he could start again. Fortunately, Kristoff had an idea. He took Anna’s hand and led her over to a volcanic steam vent. The hot air warmed her up, much to her relief.

“There are some more thataway,” Goofy noted, pointing straight ahead.

Kristoff led them further along, letting Anna stop at steam vents every so often. “So, uh, about my friends,” he started saying as they came up to an area filled with small, moss-covered boulders. “Well, I say friends; they’re more like family. When I was a kid, it was just me and Sven, until they, y’know, kinda took us in.”

“They did?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to scare you. They can be a little inappropriate. And loud. Very loud,” Kristoff continued with a chuckle. “They’re also stubborn at times, and a little overbearing. And heavy. Really, really heavy. But they’re fine. You’ll get it. They mean well.”

“Kristoff,” Anna calmed him down and cut off his rambling with a reassuring touch to the shoulder. “They sound wonderful.”

“I can’t wait to meet them,” Kairi added.

“Okay,” Kristoff said, confidence building. He took a few steps ahead and turned around to face them. “Meet my family!” He spread his arms to gesture to the rocks.

Anna, Sora, Kairi, Goofy, and Olaf’s smiles faded, their expressions morphing into ones of confusion. Sora and Kairi tilted their heads to the side. Kristoff and Sven were ignorant of their bewilderment, running around and greeting the rocks cheerfully as if they were meeting relatives at a Christmas party.

“They’re rocks,” Anna said in disbelief.

“He’s crazy,” Olaf whispered to Anna. They watched as Kristoff commented on the weight that one rock had supposedly lost while Sven jumped around like an excited dog. “I’ll distract them while you guys run.” He took on a big smile and hopped forward, waving as he pretended that he was not bothered. “Hi, Sven’s family! It’s nice to meet you.” He leaned back in an aside to Anna and the others. “Because I love you, guys, I insist you run. -- I understand you’re love experts! -- Why aren’t you running?”

Anna glanced back at Sora, Kairi and Goofy, and they silently agreed that they ought to leave. She turned back to address Kristoff and Sven. “Okay. Um… Well, we’re gonna go…” She began to turn to leave.

“Nonono! Anna, wait!” Kristoff pleaded. Suddenly, the rocks began to move—not just in the clearing they stood in, but all around them. The guests jumped in surprise at the development. Sora took Kairi’s hand as they as well as Goofy tensed up, preparing for anything. The rocks rolled into the clearing and gathered around Kristoff and Sven. Olaf smiled in delight as he watched the rock that he had been talking to roll off as well. When they came to a stop, the rocks unrolled themselves, revealing small, stout humanoids with large ears and noses and eyes with black pupils, who wore cloaks made out of moss and necklaces with colored crystals.

“Kristoff’s home!” a rock creature with a feminine voice cheered. The others cheered as well, happy to see the ice merchant. They all spoke with human-like voices and moved like organic beings, even though they still appeared to have a stone constitution.

Goofy and Olaf ran in to join the fun. “Yay! Kristoff’s home!” Olaf cheered. He stopped dead as he processed the information. “Wait. Kristoff?” he asked one of the trolls. Goofy leaned in and explained the misconception regarding Kristoff’s name. “Oh. Why didn’t you say so sooner?”

Sora, Kairi and Anna gaped in shock while the creatures greeted Kristoff and Sven and played with them. “The rocks… are alive…” Sora breathed.

“What are they?” Kairi asked.

“Trolls. They’re trolls,” Anna said, partly in answer and partly to herself as she understood what she was seeing.

“Trolls?” Kairi parroted.

“There’s a book on legendary creatures in the castle’s library,” Anna explained. “I thought… I thought they were just a fairy tale.” She ran her hand through her hair braid, making a note of her blanched locks. “Shows what I know about the world beyond my door.”

The trolls fell silent and turned to face the newcomers. “He’s brought a girl!” one of the trolls announced. The others cheered. Before anyone could react, the trolls surrounded Anna and picked her up. They bodysurfed her over the crowd and tossed her up, causing Kristoff to catch her.

One of the trolls turned and took notice of Sora and Kairi. “And some friends!” he added (they surmised based on the voice and the blue crystal necklace that it was a “he”). He squinted and saw that they were holding hands. “And I think they’re  _ to-ge-ther _ !” The trolls cheered again, though not with as much enthusiasm as with Kristoff and Anna. The trolls then swiftly turned their attention back to the ice merchant and the princess.

“What’s going on?” Anna asked as Kristoff set her down.

Kristoff shrugged. “I’ve learned to just roll with it,” he admitted.

Two trolls stacked up, with one of them, who appeared to be Kristoff’s mother figure, on top, sizing Anna up like a piece of cattle. “Let me see. Bright eyes. Working nose. Strong teeth. Yes, yes, yes. She'll do nicely for our Kristoff,” she said happily.

They quickly realized what was going on. Kristoff buried his face in his hands. “Wait-wait-wait. Oh, um, no!” Anna protested.

“You’ve got the wrong idea. That’s not why I brought her here,” Kristoff tried to explain.

“Right. We’re not—I’m not…” Anna laughed nervously.

“What’s the issue, dear? Why are you holding back from such a man?” the troll mother asked. She and some of the other trolls took a deep breath as if they were about to break into song.

“She’s engaged to someone else!” Sora called out.

The trolls deflated. The troll mother sighed. “Put away the wedding dresses,” she ordered dejectedly. Some trolls whined as they carried what appeared to be a pile of grass and moss away.

Kairi blinked in confusion. “Wait, were you going to…?”

“He’s only known her for a day. He said you were against that kind of thing,” Sora remarked.

The trolls looked at each other awkwardly. Anna turned to Kristoff and raised an eyebrow, albeit in more of a teasing manner than an accusatory one. Kristoff could only chuckle nervously in response.

The troll mother turned back to her foster son, disappointed. “So you’re saying there’s nothing between you two at all?” she asked.

Anna and Kristoff laughed shyly. “Well, I mean…” “You know… Uh…” “It’s just that…” Neither one was sure how to answer. The troll mother smiled, liking what she was seeing. Sora and Kairi giggled, getting the same idea.

Two trolls turned to Sora and Kairi. “What about you two?” one of them asked while the other made kissy faces.

The teens took a step back in surprise and waved their hands defensively. “Whoa! Hey!” “I don’t think…” “We are not there yet!” “And we’re not here to get anyone married!” they protested. Anna, Kristoff and Goofy laughed as they saw that they were blushing.

Just then, Anna collapsed, forcing Kristoff to catch her before she hit the ground. All eyes turned to her in worry. She was shivering intensely.

“She’s as cold as ice!” Kristoff shouted out.

A new troll rolled through the crowd, which parted to allow him to pass. When he reached the front of the crowd, he unrolled himself, revealing himself to have a mane of dark blond hair and strings of glowing green crystals on his garb. “There is strange magic here,” he remarked.

“Grand Pabbie,” Kristoff greeted.

“Come, come. Bring her here to me,” Grand Pabbie, the trolls’ elder, commanded. Kristoff helped lean Anna over to the old troll and let him take her hands.

“What’s happening to her?” Sora asked as he, Kairi and Goofy reached the front of the crowd.

Pabbie looked into Anna’s eyes and sensed the magic in her system. “Anna, your life is in danger,” he said. “There is ice in your heart, put there by your sister. If not removed, to solid ice will you freeze, forever.”

“What?” Anna gasped.

“But you can remove it, right?” Kristoff asked.

“I cannot,” Pabbie admitted. “I’m sorry, Kristoff. If it was her head, that would be easy.”

Goofy scratched his forehead, confused by the old troll’s wording. “Uh, are we supposed to know about something that happened before?” he asked.

Pabbie sighed. “But only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart.”

“An act of true love?” Anna repeated.

“A True Love’s Kiss, perhaps,” the troll mother suggested. She and her husband kissed to demonstrate.

Anna shivered and collapsed against Kristoff again. A significant portion of her hair turned white. Kristoff looked at her with concern, and he knew what he had to do. “Anna, we’ve got to get you back to Hans,” he said.

“Hans…” Anna repeated weakly, agreeing with him.

They all recognized that they had to move quickly. Sora and Kairi had wanted to ask Grand Pabbie about Elsa’s magic, but they decided to put that off. “Okay, everyone. Clear the way!” Sora called out. The trolls quickly rolled up into boulders and obliged.

Kristoff carried Anna over to Sven and helped her up, then climbed onto the reindeer behind her. “Come on, guys!”

Olaf climbed onto Sven’s back as the reindeer broke into a run. Sora and Kairi ran after them. Since she was not as fast as Sora or Sven, Kairi cast Haste on herself to boost her speed.

“Let’s go kiss Hans!” Olaf cheered. The instant he said that, he realized that he did not know everything that was going on. “Who is this ‘Hans’?” Sora and Kairi would have laughed if they were not too busy keeping pace.

* * *

Riku, Aqua and Donald watched as Elsa leaned against the balcony railing, staring sadly out into the distance. They had gotten dinner earlier, but Elsa had refused to eat.

“Aww, poor Elsa,” Donald lamented. “Isn’t there anything we can do to help?”

Aqua shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s afraid that she can’t control her powers, but I don’t know if we can help her learn, since her magic doesn’t work like ours. And aside from that, there’s her guilt for freezing her home and hurting her sister.”

“It took me months to really recover from that,” Riku noted. “And even then, it was mainly by focusing on something I could do to help, to redeem myself. I don’t know how we can help her along.”

“Elsa…” They turned and looked up at the giant snow creature. It had returned to the ice castle shortly after they had come back, and it had attempted to throw them out again before Elsa had told it that they were allowed to stay. Once they looked past its intimidating physique and scary methods of evicting unwelcome guests, they saw that it truly cared for Elsa.

“You know, you might look mean and scary, but deep down you’re just a big marshmallow,” Aqua told the giant.

The newly-dubbed Marshmallow looked down at her, somewhat perplexed. Sensing something, he turned around and let out a low roar. Riku, Aqua and Donald turned to see what had gotten his attention, and saw that a group of Heartless had materialized.

“Did you not see the ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’ sign?” Riku quipped dryly as he, Aqua and Donald summoned their weapons. Marshmallow pounded his fists together, determining that the creatures were definitely not friends and should not simply be bounced. They all charged into battle, clearing Heartless out of the room.

Glancing back to make sure that Elsa was safe, Riku saw a pair of Crimzon Jazz Heartless floating just off of the balcony. As one prepared to attack, he warped over and blasted it with a Blizzaga spell.

“Elsa, get down!” he warned as he threw his Keyblade, enveloped in darkness, at the other Crimson Jazz, cutting straight through it before finishing it off with a Blizzara spell.

“Just leave me be,” Elsa sighed, barely even reacting to the battle around her.

Riku grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to the ground as the remaining Crimson Jazz released a radial blast of microwave energy. “Elsa! You can’t let the darkness consume you!” he pleaded. He stood back up and summoned his Keyblade back to hand. “Give me a second.” With that, he vaulted over the railing and attacked the Heartless in midair.

Elsa watched as Riku dealt several hits to the large music-themed Heartless, but then it tilted its bottom back and swung forward, hitting him and knocking him out of the air. It took advantage of the opening to conjure several fireball mines around him, which exploded and juggled him all over the place. Elsa gasped. Feeling that she needed to help him, she instinctively shot a blast of magic at the Heartless. The Crimson Jazz froze instantly and dropped out of the air. The last of the mines exploded weakly, and Riku landed safely in the snow. The Heartless, frozen solid and immobile, landed a few feet away from him.

Elsa, Aqua, and Donald ran out to make sure Riku was all right. Aqua cast Curaga on him and helped him to his feet.

“Are you okay?” Elsa asked.

Riku nodded. “Yeah. Thanks for the save,” he replied, casting a glance at the frozen Heartless.

Grumbling, Donald marched over to the Crimson Jazz and whacked it with his staff in frustration. He glared at it for a few more seconds before he was suddenly gaping in surprise as the ice began to crack. The cracks propagated all over until the frozen Heartless crumbled to pieces. Riku and Aqua chuckled in amusement, but then something caught their eye in the pile of ice shards. Donald sifted through the pile and pulled out a large hunk of ice, which was shaped perfectly like a heart.

“Wait. That’s the heart that was inside the Heartless,” Riku realized. “It’s usually released when a Heartless is destroyed.” He took the heart from Donald and examined it to confirm what had happened to it. “It’s turned to solid ice!”

There was a silence as they all tried to make sense of what had just happened. They wondered if Elsa was really capable of freezing someone’s (spiritual) heart solid. Riku gasped as something else occurred to him. He whirled around to face Elsa, his fear and concern plain on his face.

“Elsa, what did you do to Anna?”

Elsa gasped in horror as she realized what she must have done.

* * *

As Sora, Sven, Goofy, and Kairi ran down the mountain, with Olaf sliding on his belly alongside them, Sora felt a vibration in his pocket and heard his phone’s ringtone, which he realized that he would need to get used to. “Hold up!” he called, slowing himself to a stop. Sven and Kairi slowed down as well, and Kairi took the chance to catch her breath and relax, tired from the sprint. The Haste spell wore off and she matched everyone else’s time flow.

Sora took his phone out, pulled his balaclava down, removed his gloves, and answered it after quickly checking to see who was calling. “Your Majesty, what’s up?” he greeted. “How are things in Arendelle?”

“Well, it’s getting colder, but we’re holding up,” Mickey answered. “Glad to hear you’re okay. Everyone got worried when Princess Anna’s horse came back alone.”

“Oh, yeah. He just got spooked by some snow falling on him,” Sora explained.

“Well, listen. I just heard from Chip and Dale not too long ago. They said that they lost the Gummi Ship’s signal.”

“Huh? Did something happen to it? It’s usually perfectly safe while it’s in orbit. Is there some kind of interference?”

“That’s what I thought, too, but if there was, they wouldn’t have been able to call me. They said that the last readings they got from the remote monitor listed its temperature at well below freezing.”

“What?! You mean the Gummi Ship’s frozen? How—” He stopped as he remembered how the seawater in the fjord froze as far as the eye could see, how the atmosphere transformed into a freezing cold winter, how Elsa’s ice magic was far more potent than anything he and his friends had ever seen before. “Was this… Elsa?”

“I think so. I think the winter she caused is expanding farther than we could have ever imagined.”

“Well, we’ll figure that out later. We’re on our way back to Arendelle. Anna got hurt, and we need to take her to Prince Hans.”

“Okay. Wait. How do those points relate?”

“I’ll explain later. We really need to hurry. See you.” He hung up and put his phone away.

“What’s going on?” Kairi asked.

“The Lanes Between are freezing,” Sora told her. “Elsa’s winter, it’s spreading beyond this world’s borders.”

Goofy gasped. “You mean that if we don’t end this winter soon, all of the worlds will freeze, too?” Kairi, Anna, Kristoff, Sven, and Olaf gaped in shock as this news set in (though Sven and Olaf did not understand much, they could tell that it was bad).

Sora nodded. “Looks like it. Come on. We need to get to Arendelle.” He led them into a run, and they continued on their way.


	133. Chapter 132: The Thirteenth Prince

Prince Hans and his rescue party, consisting of soldiers from Arendelle and other nations, approached the North Mountain summit on horseback. Their ascent had mostly gone unimpeded; they had been attacked a few times by Heartless, but every other time they appeared, the creatures simply sat back to observe them, particularly their leader, with curious interest. As the ice castle came into view, Hans turned to address the party.

“We are here to find Princess Anna. Be on your guard, but no harm is to come to the queen.” he reminded them as he dismounted. “Do you understand?”

Most of his entourage voiced their agreement. The Duke of Weselton’s bodyguards, however, shared a shifty look. Taking his horse by the reins, Hans marched toward the castle. As he approached, however, a pile of snow next to the ice bridge turned to reveal itself as Marshmallow, who was not happy with the intrusion. He stood up and roared at Hans. Hans drew his sword, while the Duke’s guards drew their crossbows and the others pulled out spears. Marshmallow swiped at Hans, but the prince ducked to avoid the strike. The soldiers threw their spears at the snow creature and the Duke’s guards each fired a crossbow bolt. Marshmallow braced against the attacks with his arm, then let out a ferocious roar, letting his eyes glow and allowing spikes and sharp teeth to grow to scare his enemies. He then swatted the Duke’s guards, knocking them back against the snow bank.

Regaining their bearings, the guards saw Elsa peek out through the doors and quickly close them. “The queen!” one guard announced to his companion. They picked themselves back up, retrieved their dropped weapons, and ran up the stairs, while Marshmallow swatted the other soldiers and forced Hans to dive clear. Hans watched the guards run up to the castle, their crossbows raised, and realized what they were intending to do.

Elsa slammed the doors shut and made for the stairs, passing Riku, Aqua and Donald. “What’s going on?” Riku asked.

“Arendellian soldiers. And some others from other kingdoms,” Elsa replied. “With Anna’s boyfriend at the lead.”

Riku raised an eyebrow curiously. “The guy with the reindeer?”

Elsa shook her head. “No. A prince from the Southern Isles. She only knew him for a—”

Hearing the scratch of ice as the guards tried to force the doors open, she cut herself off and ran up the stairs. The guards burst through and pointed their crossbows at Riku, Aqua and Donald when they saw them. The Keybearers and the wizard summoned their weapons. “Hold it!” Riku shouted. Before they could engage in a fight, however, Neoshadows and blue versions of Morning Stars, Spiked Crawlers, appeared between them. Riku rolled his eyes at the interruption, then lashed out at one of the Spiked Crawlers.

While the queen’s companions were preoccupied with the monsters, the Duke’s bodyguards saw Elsa running up the stairs and snuck around the fight to pursue her. They cornered her on the second-floor landing, where the walls and floor were beginning to glow yellow, and pointed their crossbows at her.

“No! Please!” Elsa begged. One of the guards shot at her. Elsa raised an icy barrier just in time to stop the bolt, which pierced through the ice and came to a stop an inch away from Elsa’s face.

The guards ran to the side so they would have a clear shot, the second tossing a new bolt to his companion.

“Stay away!” Elsa pleaded. She thrust her arms forward and cast magic, causing ice to sprout from the ground and culminate in a large spike at the end. One of the guards tackled the other out of the way right before the spike exploded upward. They kept repositioning themselves to attack, but Elsa cast more ice bursts to drive them off. With each spell, she became progressively less afraid and more frustrated and angry.

Outside, Hans rolled out of the way as Marshmallow attempted to step on him. As he got back up, he swung his sword at the snow monster’s leg, slicing it right through its ankle. Marshmallow wobbled backward, its left foot completely separated from its leg. As Hans ran past and headed for the castle, the giant hopped backward to try and stop him, but he ultimately hopped too far and lost his balance, falling off of the cliff and into the ravine. As he fell, he struck the bridge with his arm, breaking a piece of the railing off and causing Hans to nearly fall. Hans caught a hold on the edge of the bridge, however. Struggling to pull himself up one-handed, he threw his sword up onto the steps and reached for hand holds with which to climb up. A pair of soldiers ran up to aid him and pulled him up safely.

Hans ran inside and found Riku, Aqua and Donald fighting the last of the Heartless. The final Neoshadow knocked Donald down and prepared to strike him while he was down, but Hans cut it in two with his sword, slaying it. He turned to face Riku. “Where is Queen Elsa?” he asked.

Riku cut down the last Spiked Crawler and turned to Hans. “The guys with the crossbows chased her upstairs,” he replied. While he was not sure if he should consider Hans to be a friend or foe, he knew that he had to keep the thugs from harming Elsa, so he jumped over the banister and ran up the stairs without another word, followed by Hans, then Aqua and Donald.

Having finally had enough of her attackers, Elsa decided to end the fight right then and there. Casting a spell toward one of the thugs, she caused spikes to shoot out from the ground and pin him against the wall by embedding themselves around his shoulders, armpits and waist. Another spike shot up and inched its way toward his neck. Meanwhile, the other thug leveled his crossbow, but Elsa, one hand still controlling the spikes, blasted it out of his hand. He tried to run, but Elsa raised walls of ice to block him in on both sides. She then conjured a tall block of ice and pushed it toward the thug, shoving him against the balcony door. He tried to push it back, but to no avail. Elsa gave another push, and the block pressed against him hard enough that the balcony door cracked from the strain before shattering, its pieces breaking the balcony railing, and sending the man sprawling on the floor. Realizing that he would be doomed if he and the block were to fall off, he stood back up and resumed his futile efforts to push the block back.

Riku and Hans ran in, their companions right behind them, and stopped in their tracks as they saw what was happening. By that point, the walls had turned a bright golden-yellow. They immediately determined what had happened. Her retaliation was not unwarranted, but it was a step down a dark path, one that she should not have to become lost in.

“Elsa!” Riku called out to her. “Don’t be the monster they fear you are!”

Elsa froze as she snapped back to her senses. She ceased her spells, causing the spike to stop growing and the block to stop moving, both just shy of bringing doom to her attackers, and let out a breath that she had not realized she was holding in. She looked back at Riku, terrified and ashamed of herself.

Seeing an opening, the thug who was pinned to the wall raised his crossbow and aimed it at Elsa, preparing to shoot her in the chest. Hans saw this and, casting a quick glance to his surroundings, ran over to intercept him. He grabbed the man’s arm and diverted the crossbow upward just as the man pulled the trigger. The bolt pierced the chandelier near its topmost point.

Hearing the crack of breaking ice, Elsa looked up and gasped as the chandelier started to fall. She ran to get out of the way. The chandelier hit the ground and shattered with a great crash. Thinking quickly, Riku warped behind Elsa and raised a barrier to deflect any shards from hitting her. However, the crash shook the floor, causing Elsa to lose her footing and tumble.

When the ice shards had stopped flying, Riku lowered the shield and turned to check on Elsa. When he saw her lying on the floor, he ran over to check on her. “Elsa! Elsa!” he shouted, gently shaking her shoulder, but he got no response. He checked her pulse and listened, hearing weak breathing. He looked up to Aqua. “I need a light,” he said. Aqua knelt down next to him as he pulled Elsa’s eyelids open, and she used magic to generate a small beam of light from her finger, pointing it into her eye like a penlight. They noticed that her pupil was dilated, and checked the other one, with similar results.

“I think she might have a concussion,” Riku reported.

Donald sighed. “With a blow hard enough to knock her out, a Cure spell would be too disorienting, might cause things to settle wrong, or possibly cause lasting damage. There’s a way to revive someone from such injuries instantly, but it’s incredibly rare, which is why I don’t carry it around. Right now, we’ll have to treat her with care until she wakes up on her own,” he advised.

Riku nodded, understanding. He turned to address Hans. “What were you doing here?” he asked.

Hans cleared his throat. “We were worried when Princess Anna’s horse returned alone, so we came to make sure she was safe,” he explained.

“Anna was here earlier, with our friends, but Elsa had her snowman chase them out. I’m sure they’re fine.” He remembered the incident with the frozen Heartless, but he elected not to voice his fears of Anna possibly being at risk of great harm, not wanting to worry the rescue party any more.

“I see. Then it seems she wasn’t able to get Queen Elsa to lift the winter curse,” Hans noted. “I think it’s best if we bring the queen back to Arendelle with us.”

Riku considered the suggestion, then nodded. “Okay. But we need to be careful with her.” He glanced at the thug who was still trapped on the spikes. “We should probably get these guys free.”

Aqua nodded. She approached the thug and summoned her Keyblade. With a Fire spell, she melted the spikes enough to soften their tips, then sliced them until they fell to pieces. The thug landed on his feet, no longer stuck to the wall. Before he could either thank her or reload his weapon, however, Aqua dismissed her Keyblade and punched him in the jaw, then disarmed him and smashed the crossbow on the ground.

Seeing that the ice block still had not moved, as the other thug had almost no footing and no leverage, Riku warped over and appeared on the ledge of the balcony next to the thug. He extended his hand to the man, who begrudgingly took it. He flashed a mischievous smirk, then threw the man off of the balcony, sending him sailing until he crashed headfirst into the snowbank on the other side of the ravine.

He rejoined the others, addressing their concerns regarding the Duke’s bodyguard with a smarmy “He’ll be fine.” He knelt down beside Elsa and looked up at Hans. “We’ll need to keep her head stabilized while we bring her back to Arendelle,” he said.

Hans nodded. “Understood. Um, I didn’t get your name.”

“Riku.”

“Prince Hans of the Southern Isles.”

* * *

Elsa’s eyes fluttered open. As her vision cleared, she saw that she was in a dark room with stone walls. She sat up, registering that she had been lying on a cot with a blanket thrown over her and a piece of cloth set as a makeshift pillow. She winced at the light that pierced through a window. Still wanting to look through, she ran for it, but stopped as she felt something pull her back by the hands. She turned around and saw that her hands had been sealed in large iron shackles that were connected to the floor by chains. She realized that she was in the castle’s dungeon.

Riku stepped up beside her and rested a reassuring hand on her arm. “Easy. Easy,” he said softly. “Sorry about all this. I asked them not to, but Hans and the others didn’t want to take any risks. How are you feeling?”

Elsa started to bring her hand to her forehead, then realized that would not be feasible. “It hurts,” she replied.

Riku nodded. “You hit your head when you went down. Drink this.” He took a Potion out of his pocket and helped her take a sip, then pocketed it.

Elsa noticed that Riku was rubbing his arms to build up friction, in spite of the cloak that he had donned since returning to the town, and she could see his breath. Realizing how cold it must be in the cell, she approached the window, which looked out onto the fjord, getting as close as she could, and stared outside. She saw that the sea was frozen as far as the eye could see, and the ships were covered in ice and tilted haphazardly.

“Oh, no. What… What have I done?” she muttered, horrified at the damage she had caused with her out-of-control magic.

The door opened, and Elsa turned to see Hans enter, carrying a lantern. He set the lantern down on the second cot and approached Elsa, giving Riku a respectful nod.

“Why did you bring me here?” Elsa asked the foreign prince.

“I couldn’t just let them kill you,” Hans said, a sympathetic tone in his voice. He rubbed his arms to fend off the cold.

“But I’m a danger to Arendelle. Get Anna,” she pleaded.

“Anna has not returned,” Hans told her.

“My friend Mickey said that she and my other friends are on their way back,” Riku added.

Hans gave Riku a look before returning his attention to Elsa. “If you would just stop the winter, bring back summer. Please.”

Elsa sighed and looked Hans in the eyes. “Don’t you see? I  _ can’t _ ,” she admitted regretfully. Hans’ face fell as he realized that she was telling the truth; the best hope of ending the winter curse had just been snuffed out. “You have to tell them to let me go.”

“I will do what I can,” Hans promised. He turned to leave, beckoning Riku to follow him. While Riku did not want to leave Elsa there alone, he knew that he could not do anything to help at the moment, so he left with Hans.

Elsa began to breathe heavily, distraught as the truth of what she had done sank in. She heard the sound of ice cracking, and looked down to see that the shackles were freezing over.

“So, now what?” Riku asked as he and Hans walked down the dungeon’s hallway.

Hans sighed. “We should tell the people of Arendelle the truth,” he said. “After that… I don’t know.”

* * *

Sven (with Kristoff and Anna astride), Sora, Goofy, and Kairi ran down the mountain, while Olaf sledded through the snow on his belly. Goofy stayed ahead, hollering if Heartless appeared so that he, Sora and Kairi would dispose of them before they could slow Sven down, while Kairi kept to the rear for a similar purpose.

Anna shivered in Kristoff’s arms. Kristoff put his hat over her head to add some extra insulation. Sora moved in closer and placed his hand on Anna’s arm, using magic to warm her up for a few seconds.

“Just hang in there,” Kristoff said encouragingly. He then gave Sven a pat on the neck. “Come on, buddy, faster!”

Soon, they reached the bottom of the mountain and ran into Arendelle. Mickey, who had been on a roof keeping a lookout, announced their approach for the guards and civilians who were still outside.

Olaf veered out of control and slid off into town. “I’ll meet you guys at the castle!” he shouted back.

“Stay out of sight, Olaf!” Kristoff advised.

“I will!” The scream of fright that followed a moment later suggested that he failed to do so, however.

They charged through town and skidded to a stop at the castle’s gates. Kristoff climbed off of Sven, carrying Anna.

“Are you g-gonna be okay?” Anna stammered, acting as though she was not the one who was in trouble.

Kristoff smiled. “Don’t worry about me,” he assured her.

The gates opened, and they were greeted by three servants, who had been alerted to their arrival by guards on lookout. Kristoff set Anna down and passed her off to the servants. “Get her warm, and find Prince Hans immediately,” he instructed.

“We will. Thank you,” one of the servants said.

Aqua appeared and beckoned the group in. Sora, Kairi and Goofy stepped through the gates, but Kristoff and Sven stayed outside.

“Make sure she’s safe,” Kristoff said. He watched the servants take Anna to safety until the gates closed. He stood there for a moment longer, wishing that he could be by Anna’s side, wishing that he could do more. But he told himself that he had done all that he could, and all that he needed to do, so he turned to leave. Sven protested, wishing the same, but eventually relented and followed his friend out of Arendelle.

* * *

Hans entered the parlor, joining a group of dignitaries, one of whom was the Duke of Weselton. Riku followed him in, shooting a glare at the Duke as he entered.

“I’m going back out to look for Princess Anna,” Hans declared.

“You cannot risk going out there again!” one of the dignitaries protested.

“He’s right. The storm’s only getting worse. Besides, she’ll be back any minute,” Riku assured him. “As long as she’s with Sora, she’ll be perfectly fine.”

“If anything happens to her—”

“If anything happens to the princess, you are all Arendelle has left,” another dignitary reminded Hans.

This gave Hans pause. Anna had left him in charge, after all. He registered just how much the people of Arendelle and its visitors had come to depend on him.

The servants led Anna into the parlor, drawing everyone’s attention. “Anna!” Hans ran over and pulled her into his arms. “You’re so cold,” he noted with concern.

“Hans, you have to kiss me,” Anna pleaded.

“What?” Hans asked, confused.

The dignitaries traded glances and decided it would be wise to leave. “We’ll give you two some privacy,” one of the servants said. Riku followed the servants and dignitaries out and joined Sora, Kairi, Goofy, and Aqua, and the door was closed behind them, leaving Anna and Hans alone.

“What happened out there?” Hans asked.

“Elsa struck me with her powers,” Anna answered.

“You said she’d never hurt you,” Hans recalled, shocked at the development.

“I was wrong,” Anna lamented. She crumpled, weak from the cold curse. Hans picked her up and carried her to the couch. “She froze my heart, and only an act of true love can save me,” she explained.

Hans processed this information and realized what she had meant a moment before. “A true love’s kiss.” He stroked her cheek. She smiled, believing that it would work, and they both closed their eyes as he tilted her head up by the chin. He leaned in to kiss her, then stopped an inch away from her lips. He opened his eyes and smiled, without any of the kindness that he had displayed before. Anna opened her eyes, confused as to why he was not kissing her. “Oh, Anna. If only there was someone out there who loved you,” he said mockingly. He stood up and walked away from her.

Anna was frozen in shock for a moment, stunned by what he had said. She turned her head to follow him as he approached the window. “Y-You said you did,” she said, shivering.

Hans smirked at his reflection in the glass, then drew the curtains closed. “As thirteenth in line to my own kingdom, I didn’t stand a chance. I knew I’d have to marry into the throne somewhere,” he explained.

“Wh-What are you talking about?” Anna asked. Something had changed with him. He was exuding a coldness that was palpable even to someone who was actually freezing to death.

Hans pinched the candle flame, extinguishing it. “As heir, Elsa was preferable, of course. But no one was getting anywhere with her. But you, you were so desperate for love that you were willing to marry me just like that!” he continued. He grabbed a pitcher of water from a table and poured it into the fireplace. “I figured, after we married, I’d have to stage a little ‘accident’ for Elsa.”

“Hans! No, stop!” Anna pleaded, tumbling off of the couch. She watched as the last of the fire, the last source of soothing heat in the room, died out.

“But then she doomed herself, and you were dumb enough to go after her.” Hans chuckled. “Now, all that’s left is to kill Elsa and bring back summer.”

“You’re no match for Elsa,” Anna spat.

Hans stooped down and tilted her chin up. “No,  _ you’re _ no match for Elsa.” Anna rolled her head off of his hand in disgust. “I, on the other hand, am the hero who is going to save Arendelle from destruction.” He stood back up and walked to the door and opened it.

“You won’t get away with this,” Anna growled.

Hans simply smiled back at her and shrugged. “I already have,” he retorted. He closed the door behind him and locked it.

Using a chair for support, Anna pulled herself to her feet and ran to the doors. She tried to open both, but to no avail. “Please. Somebody, help,” she begged, but she was too weak to shout for anyone to hear her. She collapsed, shivering profusely as the rest of her hair turned white.

Hans walked away from the parlor, slowing his pace and shifting himself to display sorrow, as he left to break the bad news to everyone. Unbeknownst to him, a Shadow Heartless stood several feet behind him and watched him go. It was confused as it saw a change in his aura. As he stepped out of the parlor, it could detect darkness radiating off of him. But as he shifted his pace and posture, the darkness vanished. Curious as to how he was able to conceal his darkness, the Heartless would continue to watch from a distance, in hopes that an answer would present itself.


	134. Chapter 133: Blizzagun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I updated, and a lot sure has happened since. I played _Melody of Memory_ and experienced the great gameplay and plot developments. It became a new year, which will hopefully be an improvement over 2020. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated as President and Vice President, which is automatically an improvement over the last guys. Here's to a more hopeful new year.
> 
> I wanted to only post this after I finished writing my next chapter, wanting to stay a good bit ahead of what I had uploaded. But I won't really be able to write that chapter until I watch a particular movie (due to me not being familiar with the characters and setting of that film that will be featured in the chapter), and I have not yet watched the movie, so that's still delayed. And I kinda left you guys hanging with that last chapter, which I posted over a month ago, so I thought I'd throw you a bone here. While I put off watching that movie ( _Tinker Bell_ , if you're curious), I'll switch over to my other story, _Heart of Steel_ , for a bit.
> 
> Read on, and please let me know what you think in a comment.

As everyone had moved to the council chamber, the party gathered in a corner to discuss the recent turn of events. Mickey had also joined them after they had brought Anna back to the castle. They swapped notes and explained the situation to one another.

“So, if we don’t end this winter, the space beyond this world will freeze, and with it every world?” Riku recapped.

“Sure sounds like it,” Mickey confirmed.

“What are we supposed to do? Elsa’s the only one with the power to undo this, and she doesn’t even think she can reverse what she did,” Kairi lamented.

“I tried contacting Merlin with a Rainbow Message, but it’s too cold to properly generate the mist needed for the spell,” Mickey said.

“We’ll take it one thing at a time,” Sora said. “A kiss from Hans should heal Anna, and then we can try to ease Elsa’s mind.”

As if on cue, Hans appeared, but something was wrong. He was alone, and he stumbled up with a lurch and broken expression as if his world had come crashing down around him. Everyone present took notice and had a sinking feeling in their guts as they gathered around him.

“Hans, what’s wrong?” Mickey asked, concerned.

“Princess Anna is… dead,” Hans said.

Everyone present gasped and let out various expressions of shock and disbelief. Sora and company were at a loss for words.  _ This can’t be happening. This wasn’t supposed to happen. True Love’s Kiss was supposed to save Anna. Why didn’t it work? _ Sora wondered.  _ Could Anna really be dead? _

Hans stumbled forward, so the dignitaries helped Hans into a chair. “What happened to her?” the Duke of Weselton asked.

“She was killed… by Queen Elsa,” Hans told them.

The dignitaries gasped. “Her own sister?” the Duke muttered in disbelief.

“At least we got to say our marriage vows… before she died in my arms,” Hans added, sounding truly devastated.

Horrified by the claim, Sora sprinted out of the room and down the hall. Kairi and Goofy promptly followed after him, while Riku, Mickey, Aqua, and Donald hesitated for a moment.

The Duke stood up straight and clenched his fists. “There can be no doubt now,” he said, turning to the other dignitaries. “Queen Elsa is a monster, and we are all in grave danger.”

“Prince Hans, Arendelle looks to you,” one of the other dignitaries said.

Hans nodded. This was his pivotal moment. “With a heavy heart, I charge Queen Elsa of Arendelle with treason and sentence her to death,” he declared.

Riku, Mickey, Aqua, and Donald looked at each other, then stepped out of the council chamber. “I’ll follow Sora. You go keep Queen Elsa safe,” Mickey said once they were out of earshot. The other three nodded, then they split up to undertake their tasks.

* * *

Elsa began to panic as she watched the snowstorm outside grow fiercer. Hearing ice cracking, she turned to see the walls and ceiling of her cell icing over. Seeing that her shackles had frozen over completely, she tugged as hard as she could, feeling that she had to escape and get far away from Arendelle.

Having tugged until she had exhausted herself, Elsa stopped to catch her breath for a moment. In that moment, she saw a green glow appear in front of her. Curious, she became transfixed on the eerie glow.

_ “Poor child. Such great magic, and yet you fear it,” _ a voice said, speaking with a tone of elegance and reverberating with power and authority. A column of green and black flames appeared in the glow, and a tall figure materialized. The green-skinned woman smiled at the confused queen.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Elsa asked. Few things scared her aside from her powers, and those that did generally did so by tapping into her concern for the well-being of others. But the witch before her genuinely intimidated her on a basic level.

“I simply wish to help you, child,” Maleficent said, somehow making a soothing tone sound menacing, “by releasing your true potential. Your magic is not something that you should fear. It should be yours to control. It should be yours to  _ give you _ control.” She opened her palm, and a dark blue stone appeared in green flame, floating above her hand. A symbol glowed on the crystal, resembling a horizontal line with two outward-facing curved lines—the symbol for Pisces. “Let me show you.” The Auracite began to glow, its blue light reflected in Elsa’s pupils. A shadow spread through the cell as ice spread across all surfaces, expanding and pushing the stones and iron apart.

Riku, Aqua and Donald approached the cell, at which point Riku stopped dead in his tracks. “That smell,” he gasped. A scent of copper sulfate burned in only one person’s dark aura to distinguish its flavor. “Maleficent.”

“What? What does she want?” Aqua asked, concerned that things had just become more complicated (and they were already far more complicated than they would have liked).

They reached the cell door and saw a green glow through the window. Riku tried to open the door, but it would not budge, and he was not sure if the lock had even clicked open when he used his Keyblade.

Four guards, accompanied by Hans, came down the hall. “You there! What are you doing?” one of the guards demanded.

Riku, Aqua and Donald stepped back, not wanting to get into a fight right then. Another guard tried to open the door, but it still did not budge. “It’s frozen shut!” he exclaimed.

“On three,” another guard suggested. Seeing that they were going to try to break the door down, Donald hid behind Riku, not wanting to be caught in the blast when Maleficent would surely retaliate. Fortunately for them, the glow faded, as did the scent of Maleficent’s darkness, but the ever-expanding ice caused the bricks to fall out and collapse the ceiling and walls. The guards charged at the door, breaking it down, and stared in shock at what lay before them. Hans shoved past them and scowled. Riku smelled a new odor of darkness for a moment, and realized that it was Hans’. Electing to worry about that later, he squeezed past the guards to see what they were looking at, and blinked in surprise.

The back wall of the cell had collapsed completely, leading out into the blizzard. Snow blew in through the newly-made hole. Elsa’s shackles lay on the floor, frozen and broken open. The queen herself was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Kristoff and Sven walked up the mountain. Kristoff’s mind was still on Anna, but he believed that it was for the best that he left things as he did. Sven stopped and looked back longingly at Arendelle, then let out a sigh. He looked back up at Kristoff, recalling how happy he was around Anna, and shook his head, steeling with resolve. He ran up in front of Kristoff and faced his friend, standing his ground. He let out a series of pleading grunts.

“What is it, buddy?” Kristoff asked, somewhat disinterested. Sven waved his antlers and marched toward him, forcing him to step backwards. “Hey, watch it! What’s gotten into you?” Sven grunted and brayed with imploring force, but Kristoff was confused. “I don’t understand you when you talk like that.” Kristoff tried to walk past Sven, but the reindeer scooped him up with his antlers and took a few steps in the direction they had come. “Ah! Stop it! Put me down!” Sven obliged, throwing him onto the ground, then let out another grumpy, insisting grunt.

“No, Sven! We are not going back!” Kristoff protested once he was back on his feet. “She’s with her true love.” Sven gave him a “Really?” look. Kristoff sighed, admitting to himself that Sven was right.

Before he could say anything further, however, they felt the wind pick up with great force. Bracing himself against the wind, Kristoff turned around and saw, to his shock, a massive snow cloud forming and swirling around Arendelle castle.

“Anna!” he gasped. Fearing that she was in danger, he started running down the mountain. Sven caught up to him, and he climbed onto the reindeer’s back as they sped toward the kingdom.

* * *

Sora ran to the parlor and fiddled with the doorknobs, but found that the doors would not open.  _ Locked? Why would Hans lock the door? _ he wondered. He put his hand against the doors and, lowering himself to a crouch, felt that the left door was colder than the right. “Anna? Anna, can you hear me?” he asked.

“Sora…” he heard a weak whisper from the other side. “Help…”

Kairi and Goofy caught up with him, accompanied by Olaf, who had finally made his way to the castle. “Oh, hi, Sora!” the snowman greeted. “How’s Anna? Did Hans’ kiss work?”

“She’s locked in here,” Sora told his friends.

Kairi tilted her head in confusion, then decided to worry about the “why” when they were inside. “Well, you can just—” Before she could finish, Sora kicked the right door with all of his might, blasting it off of the hinges and sending it flying across the room, while holding the handle of the other door to keep it steady. “...Do that…” Kairi said, bemused by the action that Sora had taken.

Sora stepped into the parlor, looked around to see that the fireplace and candle had been extinguished, and saw Anna curled up against the door. Her hair was entirely white, her skin was pale, and her internal body temperature was so low that her breath did not condense when she exhaled. “Anna!” he gasped. He scooped her up in his arms, feeling just how cold she had become, and set her down in front of the fireplace. Taking a step back, he summoned his Keyblade and pointed it at the logs. “Fire!” he shouted, igniting a flame with the spell. Since he still had plenty of mana, he expended it to transfer heat from himself to Anna. Goofy threw some fresh firewood into the fireplace. Kairi lit the candle.

Olaf approached the fire, transfixed. “Whoa! So this is heat… I love it!” he mused.

“Olaf, get away from there!” Anna pleaded, concerned for him.

Olaf reached out to feel the heat source, only for the tip of his arm to catch fire. “Ooh! But don’t touch!” He shook his hand until the small fire went out. He turned to Anna and frowned, worried to see that she was still freezing. “So, where’s Hans? What happened to your kiss?” he asked.

“I was wrong about him. It wasn’t true love,” Anna replied.

“But we ran all the way here,” Olaf said, dismayed that their efforts had not panned out.

“Please, Olaf, you can’t stay here. You’ll melt,” Anna warned.

“I am not leaving here until we find some other act of true love to save you,” Olaf asserted stubbornly, sitting down behind Anna.

Mickey ran in and blinked in surprise when he saw Anna huddled in front of the fireplace. “Anna!” He ran over to check on her. “Hans said you were dead.”

Sora shook his head. “He locked her in here and left her to die,” he told the mouse. Clenched his fists in a cold rage, he stood up and made his way to the door, summoning his Keyblade.

“Sora, where are you going?” Mickey asked.

“I’m going to cut off Hans’ head,” Sora answered, seething.

Mickey, Kairi and Goofy flinched in surprise. That was a dark intention, particularly for Sora. Mickey wondered how he could have gotten to that point. However, Kairi and Goofy, while still shocked that he would ever consider it, understood; they both knew full well how protective of his friends he could get; they had seen how incensed he was when Mother Gothel had stabbed Eugene, and how fiercely he had fought against Saïx, who had held Kairi captive for weeks. Goofy also knew full well that there was a lot of darkness in Sora, which he saw on the occasions when his use of Drive power backfired and put him in Anti-Form. They supposed that he did have it in him to become angry like this, and they were concerned for him.

Goofy ran to him and grabbed him by the arm. “Sora, you can’t go and do that!” he protested.

“He’s right,” Kairi agreed. “No matter what Hans did, killing him won’t do you any good. Besides, we need to worry more about saving Anna.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea anyway. Hans has the other dignitaries deferring to him for leadership. If you attack him, everyone will turn on you,” Mickey warned. Sora sighed, frustrated. “Sora, listen to me. I know that sometimes you get the urge to get revenge, and sometimes the guy might really deserve it. But you need to be able to keep a cool head. We need to focus on what good we can do now, and deal with the bad guys later when we can think clearly about the situation.”

Sora stood unmoving for several seconds, leaving his friends unsure of what he would do. Finally, he let out a sigh and dismissed his Keyblade. He turned to face his friends. “You’re right. We should help Anna first. Then we can help Elsa, and then we can stop whatever Hans is trying to do,” he said.

Mickey, Kairi, Goofy, and Anna each breathed a sigh of relief, glad that he had calmed down and dialed back his plans of retribution to merely stopping him. “Okay. The only way to lift the frozen heart curse is an act of true love, and since True Love’s Kiss has been ruled out, we need to figure something else out,” Kairi said.

“We can do it!” Olaf declared confidently. He considered possibilities for a few seconds, but came up empty. “Do you happen to have any ideas?” he asked Anna.

Anna sighed. “I don’t even know what love is,” she lamented.

Sympathizing with her, Kairi sat down and hugged Anna. “That’s okay. We do,” she said. She stroked her hand through Anna’s hair. “Love is wanting what’s best for someone, and wanting them to be happy and healthy. It’s putting someone else’s needs before your own.”

“Yeah,” Olaf agreed, putting a soothing hand on Anna’s shoulder, “like how Kristoff brought you back here to Hans and left you forever.” Sora could not help but chuckle at the unfortunate way Olaf had worded it.

Anna blinked as she came to a realization. “Kristoff… loves me?” she asked, turning to Olaf.

“Wow. You really don’t know anything about love, do you?” Olaf said bluntly.

His face began to sag as he started to be affected by the flame’s heat. His nose slid down his lip, but he pushed it back into place without paying attention. “Olaf, you’re melting,” Anna told him.

“Some people are worth melting for,” Olaf said empathetically. Anna smiled sweetly in response. Olaf’s structure collapsed further, and he realized that he actually was starting to dissolve. He quickly held his cheeks up to keep his head from falling off. “Just maybe not right this second.”

He let out a yelp as a strong gust of wind blew the window open, letting cold air into the parlor. Anna shivered, so Sora, who had recharged his mana, began to transfer heat into her again. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it,” Olaf assured her. He and Goofy ran over to the window and grabbed the panes to close it, before stopping as they noticed something. “Oh, wait. Hang on. Getting something.”

Olaf broke off a piece of an icicle and bit the tip off to make a flat end, then peered through the icicle as if it were a telescope. Goofy squinted and perked an ear up to make out what they had seen in the distance. Noticing that it was too far off, he pulled a pair of binoculars out of his pocket and looked through them. When they did so, they gasped in delight. “A-hyuck! It’s Kristoff and Sven!” Goofy announced.

“They’re coming this way!” Olaf cheered.

“Th-They are?” Anna asked.

“Wow. He’s really moving fast.” Olaf lowered his makeshift telescope and turned to Anna. “I guess I was wrong. I guess Kristoff doesn’t love you to leave you behind.”

Olaf’s words registered, and Anna knew what she needed to do. “Sora, Kairi, help me up, please,” she said. They obliged and wrapped their arms around her back to support her.

Olaf saw that they were trying to move Anna and ran over, repeating “No” in protest. “You need to stay by the fire and keep warm!” he insisted.

“I need to get to Kristoff,” Anna said.

“Why?” Olaf asked, clueless. Anna and Sora each gave him a look that said  _ Use your brain _ . He did so and did a happy dance as he figured it out. “Oh, I know why! There’s your act of true love right there, riding across the fjord like a valiant, pungent reindeer king! Come on!”

They heard the crack of ice and looked up to see that the walls and ceiling were freezing over, icicles growing out of certain points.

“This way!” Sora called. He and Kairi led Anna out of the parlor, with Mickey, Olaf and Goofy right behind them. They ran down the hallway, but came to a stop as ice spread around the walls and expanded into massive icicles that blocked the way in front of them. They turned around, but saw that icicles blocked the way they had come as well.

“W-What’s going on?” Anna asked. “W-Why is Elsa’s m-magic growing icicles?”

“Well, Hans just ordered her execution. Riku, Aqua and Donald went to keep her safe, but she’s probably terrified,” Mickey explained.

“HANS WHAT?!” Sora and Kairi blurted.

“Later. We need to get out of here!” Mickey scanned around and saw that they were in front of a window. “This way!” He pointed his Keyblade and fired a beam at it, causing the window to open up. The strong winds caused the panes to break right off, but he was not in a position to complain.

“It’d be faster if I carried you,” Sora suggested. Anna nodded, giving him the go-ahead. Sora pulled his hat on and his balaclava up and scooped her up in his arms. He leapt through the window and slid down the roof just outside, with Mickey, Kairi, and Olaf right behind them. They dropped off onto the ground and ran out to the edge of the icy fjord, stopping to brace themselves as strong winds blew biting snow into their faces.

“I’m going to use my old Aero spell to shield against the blizzard,” Sora told his companions. They nodded, though Anna and Olaf did not know what he was talking about. “Wind!” he shouted. The force of the wind eased on them, as a miniature tornado swirled around each of them, though some wind and snow still broke through. The burden eased, they trudged forward, squinting to make anything out in front of them, as the thick snow beyond their funnels was still blinding.

* * *

“Queen Elsa must be found!” Hans shouted over the roar of the wind. He stepped through the hole and out into the storm, followed by his retinue of soldiers. Riku ran out after him, bracing himself against the wind and snow. Aqua hoisted Donald up and threw him over her shoulders before following them out.

Riku warped in front of Hans, catching the prince by surprise. “What do you plan to do once you find her?” he asked.

“It has become clear that she cannot stop the winter herself. In order to end her curse, I fear she must be slain,” Hans told him.

“What if you’re wrong?” Riku challenged.

Hans shook his head. “I wish there were a better way, but there are no other options.”

Riku would have accepted that he truly did believe that, but he had sensed his aura of darkness in that earlier instant. Plus, the circumstances surrounding his claim of Anna’s death were suspicious, given what Sora and Kairi had told him about her condition. He could not determine his intentions, but he was smart enough to tell that Hans was not being honest.

“I can’t let you hurt her,” Riku declared.

Hans became agitated. He had tried encouraging cooperation as he had done for his entire time in Arendelle, but this time Riku was not budging, and he really did not have the time to be patient with this. “Get out of my way!” he demanded.

Riku summoned his Keyblade and brandished it defiantly. Hans glared at him and gripped his sword tightly. Riku caught a whiff of dark aura.  _ There’s his darkness. He can’t hide his true colors forever. _ The soldiers took a step forward to support Hans, while Aqua and Donald came up to support Riku.

Before anything could come of the confrontation, however, a pillar of black mass shot up between them, causing them to stumble back. Aqua stared up at the writhing pillar, her eyes wide with horror. “It… can’t be!” she gasped. The pillar was formed of several small creatures, their solid black skin and glowing yellow eyes identifying them as Shadow Heartless. The tower of Shadows spun around wildly, occasionally dropping Shadows which quickly crawled back up into the tower. Hans, perceiving the mass as a threat, slashed at it a few times before he elected to flee. Just as quickly as it had appeared, the tower of Shadows vanished into the ground.

Riku scanned the area for Hans, seeing him run off into the storm. He turned back to the soldiers, who stood in shock and shivered with cold and fear. “Go back into the castle!” he advised. Accepting that they were in over their heads, they turned and stepped back through the hole in the cell wall, deciding that they would do their part by ensuring that everyone inside stayed safe.

When the soldiers were gone, Riku turned to convene with Aqua and Donald. “What in the worlds was that?” he asked.

Aqua steadied her breathing, coming down from a traumatic flashback. “A tower of Heartless. I faced several of those when I was in the Realm of Darkness,” she explained. “The demons were more powerful than the ones that appeared up here, and they were mobilized.”

“We completely missed them when we went to rescue you,” Donald remarked. “And they don’t really cooperate like that up here.”

“Something’s gotten their attention,” Riku surmised. “We’ll worry about why they’re acting like that later. We need to find Elsa and stop Hans.”

Aqua and Donald nodded in agreement. Donald waved his vegvisir-tipped staff and aimed it in the right direction. “This way!” he announced. Turning to face in the direction that the staff pointed, they pressed on.

* * *

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” Kairi asked.

“We’re going in the direction that we saw Kristoff and Sven coming from. I think,” Olaf replied.

“We have to follow our hearts. Mine’s saying we’re going the right way,” Sora said. He had remained quiet up to that point, focusing on maintaining the Aero protective spell and generating heat for Anna.

They pressed on, figuring that they had no better way to be sure, but stopped when they heard a deep roar rumble in the distance. Sensing that something was ahead, Sora squinted and Goofy pulled out his binoculars. While the snow still obscured anything in the distance, a large shape slowly became visible a few hundred feet away. They watched the shape draw closer, and soon saw a faint glow of yellow, surrounded by glowing points of purple. Soon, the shape became clearer, and they felt a mixture of fear and confusion, as they thought they recognized the figure.

“Is that Elsa’s snow bouncer?” Sora asked. True enough, the creature approaching them looked exactly like Marshmallow, save for some noticeable differences: its eyes glowed yellow and some of its icy protrusions were purple rather than a pale blue. It seemed to have a darker air surrounding it, enough so that Olaf, who had briefly become cheerful at the sight of his “little brother”, lost his smile. Sora set Anna down and took a defensive position in front of her.

Goofy marched toward the snow creature, the knight and guardian stepping forward to engage and gauge the possible threat ahead of his companions. When they were ten feet apart, they stopped and stared each other down. Then, the monster let out a frost-breathed roar and grew spikes in the same manner that Marshmallow had done, except some of the teeth and back spikes were what was now clearly a darkness-infused purple rather than blue. It swiped its arm at Goofy, who tanked the blow with his shield and the degree of protection granted by the Aero spell. He rolled out of the way as the giant tried to stomp on him and pushed himself to his feet.

Sora, Kairi and Mickey summoned their Keyblades. “We’ll handle this thing,” Mickey said, stepping up with Kairi to join Goofy in front of the monster. “You get Anna to Kristoff.”

“Got it,” Sora confirmed. He scooped Anna back up and ran around the Dark Marshmallow, followed by Olaf. Kairi blocked an ice-clawed swipe with her Keyblade, ducked under its arm, and slashed at its leg.

“Let’s go, Sora!” Olaf cheered. He waved good-bye to Kairi and Goofy. Kairi cast Fira at the monster’s face and Goofy pushed against its foot to disrupt its balance. The monster swiped its arm, but Mickey jumped up onto it and leapt over the creature, swinging his Keyblade and breaking some of the spikes.

Sora, Anna and Olaf continued running through the blizzard until they heard a louder, deeper version of Olaf’s chuckle. Sora and Anna looked down at Olaf in confusion, but the snowman shrugged. They walked forward nervously, waiting for the next roadblock to make itself known. When a shape appeared and became clearer to see, they were not sure what to make of it. The monster was another snowy construct with yellow eyes, but this time it resembled a giant clone of Olaf, with hexagonal blocks of purple ice in place of buttons, arms made of ice rather than wood, a jagged ice block in place of the snow tooth, and bent pieces of ice in place of the twig hair (two of them being a darkness-infused purple). It also lacked a nose, which made sense as it was only something that Anna added after the original was created. The dark giant version of Olaf smiled sadistically and chuckled as it approached them.

Sora set Anna down and summoned his Keyblade. “Well, I guess there’s no getting around this. What is this even supposed to be?” he asked, bewildered.

“This one looks like me, and the last one looks like the big guy, but they both remind me of the Heartless things that you had been fighting,” Olaf mused.

Sora’s eyes widened in horror as he realized the one thing that could mean. “The darkness got ahold of Elsa,” he muttered. “I don’t know how bad it is. I hope Riku can get to her before it’s too late.” Staring up at the Olaf clone, he stepped forward and put an arm in front of Anna. “Anna, get behind me. Olaf, watch our six.”

“Watch your what?” Olaf asked, confused.

“I mean protect us from behind,” Sora explained. Olaf jumped up happily and took a position behind Anna.

“What’s he going to do?” Anna asked.

“I just wanted him to feel like he’s helping,” Sora admitted. He ran up to engage Dark Olaf. It tried to slam its clawed ice hand down on him, but he rolled out of the way, then slashed at its arm as he came back up. It used its hand as a pivot to hoist its upper body up and let its “butt” and feet charge into Sora, knocking him down, then dropped its upper part back onto its butt.

“You want to play it that way, huh?” Sora remarked as he picked himself back up. He cast a Firaga spell up at Dark Olaf’s face and threw himself at its torso, bashing at its dark ice buttons.

* * *

“The signal’s getting stronger, like when we got to the ice castle,” Donald said. “We must be close.”

“I can still see Hans. I can’t smell his darkness, but I smell something else. It’s like… fish?” Riku mused.

Aqua gasped and pointed at something in the air. “What is that?” Riku and Donald looked up to see what appeared to be a large Heartless floating fifty feet off of the ground. The most eye-catching part was a large shield made of blue ice, which the Heartless symbol seemed to be etched into in a paler shade of blue. A dark blue torso sprouted out of the back of the shield. The torso had noodly arms that led into enormous sleeves that came into points far above where the arms connected. Four-fingered hands that seemed to be made of ice with cracks at the joints floated in front of the open ends of the sleeves. In its right hand it held a metal rod with a round ice crystal on the bottom and a larger metal ball on top, out of which four ice spikes sprouted on the sides and a part of a stylized snowflake stuck out of the top. It had a large pair of simple blue-gray pauldrons on its shoulders. Wrapped over its solid black head with glowing yellow eyes, it wore a blue parka hood with ice crystals lining the opening rather than fur. On its torso, the Pisces symbol glowed pale blue.

“There’s something different about this one,” Donald said. “Isn’t that one of the Zodiac symbols on its chest?”

“Something’s… off.” Riku closed his eyes, opening himself to see on the plane of dark energy like he had when he operated with a blindfold. He sensed a trail of energy—not just darkness, but something else—streaming from the Heartless to…

“That thing’s connected to Elsa!” Riku told his companions. “We need to help her.”

The Heartless waved its scepter, casting a Blizzard spell at them. Riku and Aqua jumped back to avoid the spell as it hit the ground and burst into spikes radiating out of the point of impact, which dissipated after a moment. Donald looked down to see that Aqua’s feet were not deep in the snow, so he had her put him down, since he would not get stuck.

“We’ll have to take care of that thing first,” Donald said. He followed that statement up by casting Firaga at it.

Riku looked around, hoping to locate Elsa. He saw her a ways off, and he also saw Hans making his way toward her. “Keep it busy,” he ordered. Aqua jumped up to clash her Keyblade with the Frostking’s scepter while Riku ran past it.

Elsa stumbled around, unaffected by the blizzard and its ferocity but blinded by the whirling snow. Not only did she have no idea where she was going, but she was disoriented by the spell that the witch had cast with the Pisces Auracite. She felt as though she was being smothered. All of her fear was crashing down on her, and she had to escape. She had no idea that this was because the Frostking was fueling and feeding on her darkness and magic.

“Elsa!” Hans called out to her. He struggled to press on as he pushed his way through the storm. As he was a normal human who had never faced the conditions that Riku and the others were familiar with, he was having a more difficult time withstanding the elements.

Elsa spun around to face him. “You shouldn’t be out here. It’s not safe,” she warned.

Hans gestured about. “Nowhere is safe! Look at what you’ve done. This has to come to an end.”

“I-I can’t…” Elsa stammered. She backed away, wanting to put as much distance between him and herself as possible. The ice beneath her feet darkened, her footsteps marked with the transformation that had illustrated her turmoil in her ice castle.

“Elsa!” Riku called as he caught up with them. “This storm can stop, but only if you take control of it and yourself. It’s your power, and even if it might be darkness, it’s still  _ your _ darkness. Don’t let it consume you. Take charge, and let it know that enough is enough!”

“Take charge?” Hans scoffed. “You think this storm would be here if she wanted it? There’s only one way this can stop.”

“Leave her alone!” Riku charged at Hans, but before he could tackle him, the Demon Tower shot up and knocked him down. Still unaware that it was actually trying to keep him from harm, Hans drew his sword and attacked the tower.

Aqua blasted the Frostking with a Flame Salvo Shotlock when she saw the Demon Tower appear. “Riku!” she gasped. She ran to assist him, but something massive barreled into her, slugging her and sending her flying. When she regained her bearings, she looked up and saw a darkness-infused facsimile of Marshmallow, separate from the one that Kairi, Mickey and Goofy were fighting, glaring down at her. It tried to stomp on her, but she rolled aside, picked herself up, and jumped back.

“Conjuring corrupted versions of Elsa’s creations to spread your evil? You will release her and end your terror,” she declared. She flicked her Keyblade out to her side as she stared the Dark Marshmallow down. The monster roared and ran toward her. She blasted a string of Firaga spells at it. When it closed the distance, it tried to swat at her, but she double-jumped above it and landed behind it. Charged up, she cast Firaza at its back, destroying the ice spikes and knocking it flat. It pushed itself to its feet and let out a frost-breathed roar at her as she closed in for a close-range attack. The frost enveloped her and knitted together over her skin and winter clothes. To her surprise, she was immobilized. She struggled to break free, but Dark Marshmallow swatted her aside, sending her tumbling away while breaking the frost at the same time.

Donald ran around to avoid Frostking’s ice spells, casting Fire magic all the while. He quickly determined that the shield protected it from damage, even from its elemental opposite, so he focused on targeting its head and arms. He grumbled as he realized that he would have to be mindful of his mana, as he was sure that it was well below the freezing point for his Ethers and Elixirs. If he used it all up, he would have to avoid the Heartless’ attacks and wait until it recharged.

Frustrated at the idea, he shot a Firaga spell at the Frostking’s face, chuckling to himself when he hit a bullseye.

Riku quickly recovered, having expected the Demon Tower to make an appearance. He summoned his Keyblade and cast a volley of Dark Fire at the swarm of Shadows. “Got you now. You’re not going anywhere,” he taunted.

As Riku engaged in fighting the Heartless pillar, Hans backed away, not wanting to be hurt by the Heartless or any of Riku’s stray spells (with good reason, as Riku would not complain if he were to suffer collateral damage). He then set back to locating Elsa, who had run off in the confusion. Fortunately, Riku would not lose his trail, as the Shadows, in their curiosity regarding his ability to hide his darkness from them, followed after him, even while fending Riku off.

* * *

Kairi ignited her Keyblade with fire like she had seen Sora do and threw it at her Dark Marshmallow, aiming for its joints. Her Fire Raid carved and melted through its upper arms, severing them and leaving them to fall. With the final throw in the raid, she lobbed the spinning Keyblade through the snow monster’s mouth. The head lost its shape, many of its spikes had either melted away or collapsed off of the body, and it looked as though the monster could not take much more.

“Go help Sora and Anna,” she told Mickey and Goofy. “I’ll finish this thing off.” They nodded and obligingly ran in the direction that Sora, Anna, and Olaf had gone.

When they were out of sight, Kairi took a deep breath.  _ I’m ready this time. I can feel it, _ she thought. She pointed her Keyblade forward as Dark Marshmallow began to march toward her, aiming to tackle her. She would not give it the chance.

“Firaga!” she shouted. A large ball of fire shot out of the tip of her weapon, larger than the Fire spells that she had been using previously. Snow vaporized on contact with the fireball, which flew through the air and collided with Dark Marshmallow, exploding on contact. When the flames died down, Kairi saw that she had obliterated much of the monster’s upper body. It did not even have a face anymore. Dark smoke melted off of it, and Kairi knew that it was just about finished. Smiling with pride, she considered the means by which she would finish the job, before she settled on gloating about her growth in ability by repeating the attack. “Firaga! Flame on! Burn!” Three Firaga spells hit the remains of Dark Marshmallow head-on, blasting more pieces off of it until there was nothing left save for some stray snow blobs and ice shards, water puddles that quickly froze to ice after the spell dissipated, water vapor, and dark smoke. The severed arms dissolved into water particles as well, snow blown into the wind.

She giggled as she wiped melted snow off of her face and ran to rejoin Sora, Anna and Goofy. As she caught up to where they were, she saw Olaf blowing away in pieces. The Aero spell had worn off on him, and the storm’s growing winds were carrying him away. She jumped into the air and used Magnet to pull his pieces toward her. She caught him in her arms and dispersed the spell, dropped to the ground, and put him back together, creating a new protective wind funnel around him.

“Thanks, Kairi,” Olaf said. “But the big me is keeping Anna from getting to Kristoff!”

Kairi turned to see the Dark Olaf that was fighting Sora, Mickey and Goofy. They had managed to destroy one of the ice buttons and break off a few of its fingers, but it was still putting up a fight while Anna stood several feet away, shivering.

Beckoning Olaf to follow her, Kairi went over to Anna and threw her arm over her shoulders. “I’m going to get her to Kristoff!” she shouted to her friends.

Sora parried a strike and sliced between Dark Olaf’s foot and its butt. Mickey cast a Fire spell at the gash, melting a larger split when it burst on impact. With their opponent off-balance, Mickey turned to Goofy. “You go with them. We can take this thing,” he told him. Goofy nodded and joined Kairi, Anna and Olaf as they shuffled past the fight. Dark Olaf tried to turn to chase after Anna, but Sora shot a Fire spell up at its face, and he and Mickey continued their attack to get it to focus solely on them.

Kairi, Anna, Goofy, and Olaf trudged on, the wind pushing them around and making them stumble. Kairi cast a protective Aero spell over the four of them so they could at least walk straight. Unfortunately, Anna grew weaker by the second; she had become so cold that her hands were frosting over.

Seeing this, Kairi squeezed Anna’s hand. “Sorry. I can’t do what Sora can. But we’ll get you to Kristoff,” she assured her.

It occurred to Anna that Kristoff would not know that she is out in the storm, nor how to locate her. “Kristoff!” she called out to him.

A few seconds later, they heard a reply. “Anna!” Kristoff had heard her. But a moment later, they heard a grunt from what sounded like Sven, followed by a loud, reverberating whinney.

Confused by the noise, Kairi and Goofy traded questioning glances. “I’ll check up ahead,” Goofy said. He broke off from the group and marched ahead. Kairi made sure that the Aero magic split off and enveloped him separately.

Goofy ran as best he could in the weather conditions and soon came across Kristoff, who was marching across the ice on his own. Several feet behind him, atop a section of broken ice, Sven appeared to be fighting a blue horse with darker blue markings and an icy mane, tail, and hooves. The horse had solid yellow eyes and a Heartless emblem on its face, between its eyes. The horse shoved at Sven, but Sven pushed it back with his antlers. It generated ice crystals to fire at him, but he swatted them aside with his antlers as well and continued to push against the Heartless.

Kristoff blinked in surprise when he registered the knight’s appearance. “Goofy? Where’s Anna?” he asked.

Goofy pointed back the way he had come. “That way! She needs your act of true love!”

Kristoff would have wondered what had happened to their original plan, but he was too concerned that Anna was in danger to focus on that, so he set off in the direction that Goofy had pointed.

The Heartless horse noticed his march and broke away from its fight with Sven to try to pursue him. However, Sven was not having it. He galloped after the Heartless, jumping between pieces of ice. He came up beside the horse and shoved against its flank. As the Heartless stumbled, Sven reached the edge of the ice and leapt across to join Goofy on solid ground.

Regaining its footing, the Frostmane let out an angry whinney and exhaled a jet of icy air from its nostrils. Goofy threw his shield at it, only for the strong wind to carry it away. He gave an aside to Sven and shrugged, then summoned it back to his hand. Adjusting his aim, he threw it against the wind and watched as it sailed back and successfully hit the Heartless in the head. Enraged, the Frostmane leapt over to their position and lashed out, thrashing, kicking, and generating icicles to fly at them. Goofy and Sven closed in on the horse. Sven shoved against it and locked its head in place with his antlers while Goofy delivered precise and powerful blows with his shield. The Frostmane was trapped and unable to properly retaliate; it could not angle its head to breathe any frost mist, it could not escape and thrash to the side or aim its kicks properly, and its attempts to use icicle projectiles were easily blocked. With the Heartless helpless, Goofy continued to bash it until it finally began to dissolve into dark smoke and water vapor. Sven stepped back, and they watched as the Frostmane buckled and collapsed. It let out a final choked whinney before it faded into snow that blew away in the wind. Its captive heart floated into the sky, then vanished back into the darkness.

With that fight over, Goofy and Sven turned to head back and help Kristoff get to Anna.

* * *

“Sora!” Mickey called out. Orbs of light from a Faith spell floated around Mickey. Sora ran over to join him and they began swatting the orbs like baseballs at Dark Olaf. The orbs exploded on impact, one of them shattering the ice tooth.

“Like this, your Majesty!” Sora shouted as he stabbed his Keyblade at an orb and shot a beam of light through it. The orb exploded into smaller orbs that flew around and homed in on Dark Olaf.

The light show and energy bursts stunned Dark Olaf, so Sora and Mickey charged in to take it down a peg. Sora struck the left arm, causing the hand to break off. Mickey attacked the torso, breaking an ice button into pieces with a combo finisher.

Once it regained its bearings, the snow monster kicked Mickey away and picked Sora up by his coat with its remaining hand. Sora struggled to get free, but he could not escape its grip. Dark Olaf chuckled at his predicament as it held him above its head. Reminded of the original Olaf’s own whimsical chuckle, Sora had an idea.

“I bet you like warm hugs,” he said. He wrapped his hand around Dark Olaf’s wrist and transferred heat into the icy limb. The outer layer began to melt and the ice softened. The creature’s sadistic smile faded as it felt a part of itself melting away. Letting go, Sora brought his Keyblade up and down on the wrist, breaking it clean off. Free, as the hand lost its hold on him, he threw himself at the creature’s face and shoved his hands into its mouth. Burying them in its snowy jaw, he cast Fire through them, causing its head to begin to melt. At that time, Mickey recovered and leapt at Dark Olaf, shoving his Keyblade into its chest, straight through the remains of a shattered button. Sora smirked as he remembered an amusing incident that had befallen Olaf on the way up the mountain. “Oh, look at that. You’ve been impaled,” he taunted. Mickey cast Firaga, blasting the snow monster to pieces.

Sora dropped to the ground next to Mickey. “Nice work,” the mouse commended. Sora grinned behind his balaclava and crossed his hands behind his head. They did not notice a piece of Dark Olaf’s blasted body shoot up into the air, then fall back down. Before they knew it, they had been buried in a pile of snow.

* * *

Aqua performed a backflip as she rolled with the Dark Marshmallow’s punch. The snow monster roared. Over the course of the fight, Aqua had chopped off most of the fingers on its left hand and melted a significant portion of its right foot. On the other hand, it had smacked her around and thrown her about several times.

Looking around, Aqua saw that no one else was within visible range; Dark Marshmallow had carried both of them away from her allies. “Looks like you’ve got us all alone,” she remarked. Dark Marshmallow let out a low growl and marched toward her. She smiled and shot it a confident glare. “Right where I want you,” she added. She took a deep breath and gathered a significant amount of her energy together, pointed her Keyblade at the monster, and released her magic. “Mega Flare!”

A ball of fiery energy shot out of the tip of Master’s Defender straight toward Dark Marshmallow. Before it could process what was happening, the ball burned into its chest and burst in a massive explosion. Aqua was unaffected despite being caught in the blast, although she was temporarily blinded by the flare’s brilliant light, and she felt the warmth of superheated water vapor on her skin. When the flare faded, she saw that the darkness-infused snow creature was no more, a crater had been blasted out of the frozen surface of the fjord, and the area that the explosion had encompassed was filled with steam.

She took a few deep breaths as she began to recover the energy that she had turned into that spell, one of the most powerful that she knew, and she enjoyed the reprieve from the raging blizzard. She had no time to bask in her victory, though; Riku, Donald and Elsa still needed her help. She ran through the steam bubble, through a transitional area of rain, and back into the storm.

Riku carved through several Shadows with each hit. He was surprised at how ferocious the creatures were when they were mobilized into a single unit. The pillar had gotten several good hits in, but he had returned in kind with his own devastating attacks. This time, the tower leapt up and dove top-first into the ground, bursting into a radial wave of scampering Shadows that tripped and scratched at Riku. The tower reformed, and before Riku could recover, it dove straight at him and caught him in its funnel.

Elsa glanced back and saw the Demon Tower snare Riku. She gasped, horrified at his predicament. Just then, the strong winds swirled around the pillar, wrapping the Heartless swarm in a tornado of snow. Frost formed on the Shadows, and their movements slowed as they became encased in a thin layer of ice. Riku was able to get room to breathe and find solid footing as the revolving assault slowed to a crawl. He twisted, pushed off of the ground, and spun as he leapt into the air, firing dozens of Dark Fire blasts. The fireballs exploded against and pushed through the immobilized Shadows, and the entire funnel burst into dark smoke and ice shards as he shot out of the tower’s apex. He landed as the last remnants of the Demon Tower faded into the aether, but dropped to his knees in exhaustion.

Donald timed his spell so that he hit the Frostking in the face just as it was casting a spell of its own so that it misfired. He continued casting Firaga, channeling his rage into power. Finally, he reached the tipping point. He pointed his staff at the Frostking’s head and invoked Grand Magic. “Firaza!”

The Frostking was stunned by the powerful blast of fourth-tier Fire magic. The stream of energy linking it to Elsa weakened as it lost focus.

“Great job, Donald!” Aqua commended as she ran up beside him. Not wasting a second, she leapt up over the Heartless’ head and unleashed a Flame Salvo at its back, then sliced down through it. With that mortal blow, the Frostking convulsed. The ice shapes on its scepter shattered, and it dropped the rod, which faded into nothing. Its connection to Elsa dissolved, and the glowing Pisces symbol on its chest turned dull. It shimmered and faded as its body turned into snow and dark smoke. Soon, it dissolved completely, its captive heart floating off and vanishing.

Elsa stopped and looked around, regaining her bearings. The crushing panic subsided, and she no longer felt an overwhelming fear for herself. She was relieved to see that Riku was safe, but she then remembered that she had created a devastating blizzard, so she felt that she had to get away from everyone.

“Elsa! You can’t run from this!” Hans told her, shouting over the roar of the wind.

Elsa sighed and turned to face him. “Just take care of my sister,” she pleaded, backing away from him.

“Your sister? She returned from the mountain weak and cold. She said you froze her heart.”

“No…” Elsa gasped. She flashed back to the moment when, in her turmoil, she blasted Anna in the heart with her magic. She remembered freezing the Crimson Jazz and seeing its frozen body crumble to pieces, leaving only a heart that had been turned to ice.

“I tried to save her, but it was too late. Her skin was ice, her hair was white,” Hans continued. “Your sister is dead… because of you.”

The fateful night from her childhood flashed before Elsa’s eyes, when she accidentally blasted Anna in the head, then once again saw present-day Anna keel over after being blasted in the heart. Devastated, she turned to Riku. “Is it true? Is Anna… dead?” she asked, silently begging for it to be anything but.

Riku believed that Hans was not being honest, and he wanted to have faith. But Anna had not looked good when he had seen her, and the situation as described by Sora and Kairi seemed dire. Even if she had not died when Hans had left her, he had no way of knowing if the situation had changed. Also, it was possible that, as far as anyone present knew, the only part that Hans had lied about was trying to help Anna.

Riku sighed. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

_ No… Even after everything… I still killed her. _ Elsa broke down, dropping to her knees in tears. The snowstorm responded to her despair radiating out across the fjord, coming to a dead halt. The wind ceased, and the snow hung still in midair. Further away, the wind died down more slowly around the castle. As the storm calmed, the dignitaries, as well as Rapunzel, Eugene, and some guards and servants, stepped out onto the balcony outside of the council chamber, gaping in awe as the snow flurried about until it fell motionless, floating in the air.

The group looked down at the scene on the fjord, squinting to make out the figures on the ice. “There’s Queen Elsa. And Prince Hans,” one of the dignitaries called out, pointing to them.

“It just… stopped…” the Duke of Weselton muttered, shocked. “She just… stopped the storm.”

“Riku’s down there, too,” Rapunzel added. She peered about and saw some more familiar faces. “And there’s Kairi. Where’s Sora, though?”

His attention drawn, one of the dignitaries studied the gathering to the left. “Wait, that cloak. That’s Princess Anna!” he noted.

“Hoho! She’s alive!” Eugene cheered. “But geez, is everyone changing their hair?”

“But wait. Prince Hans said that she was dead,” another dignitary said, musing about the discrepancy.

With the snow immobile, Anna was able to see far ahead of her. “Kristoff…” she whispered as she saw him a few hundred feet away.

“Anna!” Kristoff called. He broke into a sprint. At the same time, with Kairi’s help, Anna shuffled toward him. This was it. They would meet, and then an Act of True Love would save her.

Anna stopped dead when she heard the sound of a sword being drawn. “No!” Riku cried out, getting Kairi’s attention as well. They turned to see Hans approach the kneeling Elsa, his sword in hand. Riku wanted to intervene, but he could barely hold himself up with his Keyblade.

“Elsa?” Anna gasped. She turned uncertainly back to Kristoff. He could reach her and save her, but then Elsa would…

She broke out of Kairi’s hold and ran to Elsa. Kristoff stopped, confused, and watched her go. Hans raised his sword and swung it down at Elsa. Anna arrived just in time and put herself between the sword and her sister, letting out a cry of “No!” as she held her hand out to block the blade.

At that instant, her body turned to ice, spreading from her chest and out to her extremities. Even her clothes were petrified. Hans’ sword fell on her outstretched hand just after it was frozen, and the steel blade shattered. A force blast sent Hans flying back. He hit his head as he landed and was knocked out. Anna’s body exhaled a final frosty breath.

Elsa looked up, wondering what had just happened, and cried out her name in horror as she saw her frozen sister. She stood in front of her, crying, and reached out to touch her icy face.

Sora dug himself out of the snow pile and reached back in to pull Mickey out by the scruff of his cloak. Realizing that the storm had halted, he looked around to see what was going on. He gasped when he saw Elsa and her frozen sister. “Anna!” he cried out. Clambering out of the snow, he sprinted over to them. As he drew near, he was joined by Mickey, Kairi, Goofy, Olaf, Kristoff, and Sven.

Welling with guilt over what she had done but mainly sorrow for her sister’s fate, Elsa hugged Anna’s frozen body, crying as she wrapped herself around her.

Aqua and Donald caught up to Riku. Aqua cast Curaga on him and helped him to his feet. Everyone present looked upon the scene sorrowfully. Up on the balcony, the guests and staff bowed their heads in mourning. All was silent, save for the sound of Elsa’s weeping.

There was a shimmer on Anna’s chest, and it expanded outward, pulling the ice back with it. Her clothes regained their normal color rather than the crystalline blue that they had become just moments before. The shimmer moved away from her chest, going up her arm and face and down her torso and cape. Her clothes became fabric and her body became flesh. Goofy and Olaf were the first to notice, and they gasped in delight as they saw the transformation take place. Sora, Kairi, Mickey, Riku, Aqua, and Donald registered the change as well and smiled, relieved. Kristoff’s gaze was downcast, so he did not see at first. Sven nudged against him to attract his attention, and he gasped when he saw what was happening. The shimmer reached Anna’s extremities, and her body finally returned to normal, no longer frozen. As the last of the ice left her fingertips and feet, she took a breath and relaxed.

Feeling her body move and realizing that it was no longer ice, Elsa looked up and saw her sister smile down at her. “Anna?” She shot back up and hugged her sister tightly, who embraced her in kind. They were glad to have each other back.

“Oh, Elsa,” Anna said.

They pulled apart, though still held each other’s hands. “You sacrificed yourself for me?” Elsa asked.

Anna nodded. “I love you,” she affirmed.

Olaf gasped as he understood what had just happened. “‘An act of True Love will thaw a frozen heart’!” he recited.

“Love will thaw,” Elsa mused. She considered his words and had an epiphany. “Love! Of course!” She took a step back and spread her hands, finally understanding what she had to do.

“Elsa?” Anna said in an inquisitive tone, wondering what she was doing.

“Love!” Elsa repeated. She waved her hands, and a six-pointed sigil lit up beneath her. As she worked her magic, she thought back to her childhood and how she would use her powers playfully with Anna. She remembered creating sledding mounds and snowball fights, how she and her sister laughed as they had fun together, how she used her budding abilities to cheer her parents up with a snow flurry, and how she got rid of all of the snow so that she and Anna could go to bed and continue their wintry misadventures in their dreams. The troll was right: fear had been her enemy—her own fear. Trying to restrain her powers out of fear only let the darkness in and caused her to lose faith in herself in the first place. The way to control them was the same way she had controlled them when she was a kid: with love. Love for her family, her friends, her kingdom, and her sister.

Snowflakes floated up from the ground. All of the ice magic rose into the air, separating itself from the fjord, the barges, and everything around them. The fjord turned back into seawater, and a submerged barge floated back up from beneath them. Sora was silently thankful that the barge just happened to be there. The dignitaries and townsfolk looked on in wonder as the magic carried the snow away, melted the ice, thawed the fountains, and carried away all evidence of the winter that had smothered Arendelle for the past few days. The temperature rose in the air, and everyone basked, but also began to sweat, in the warmth. Sora’s clothes reverted from heavy winter layers to their usual state, much to Kristoff’s bafflement. Mickey noticed that magic snow was pulled from the sky and he knew that the Lanes Between had to have also been unfrozen. Elsa gathered all of the magic snow into an enormous snowflake sigil high in the air, then spread her hands back out to disperse it.

Anna smiled at Elsa and put a hand on her shoulder. “I knew you could do it,” she said proudly.

“You always had it in you,” Riku agreed. Elsa smiled at him over her shoulder.

“Hands down, this is the best day of my life!” Olaf cheered. He quickly realized that he was melting in the summer heat, his snow constitution liquefying and his arms and nose falling out. “And quite possibly the last.”

“Olaf! Hang on, little guy,” Elsa chuckled. She waved her hand, and magic snowflakes swirled around Olaf, gathering his body up and solidifying it into a construct of frozen snow, even lifting the carrot nose and stick arm back into place. A cloud popped into existence above his head, snow falling over him in a localized area that stayed cold for him.

Olaf looked up and gasped in delight, enjoying the cloud and snowfall. “Oh, my own personal flurry!” He let out a joyous chuckle. Anna, Kairi and Goofy giggled as well.

Hearing groans, they turned to see Hans use the side of the ship to bring himself to his feet. Clenching their fists, Sora and Kristoff moved to lay into him, but Anna held her hand in front of them to stop them while Riku and Kairi restrained Sora. She smiled at them to let them know that she would handle it. Standing up straight, she marched over to confront him.

Hans looked up at her in surprise. “Anna? But… she froze your heart,” he said, confused as to how she was still alive.

“The only frozen heart around here is yours,” she calmly retorted. She turned around, as if to leave him there, but then whirled around and punched him in the face hard enough to send him tumbling over the side of the ship and into the water.

The dignitaries and staff on the balcony cheered as they saw Hans meet his comeuppance. “Boom! Had that coming!” Eugene remarked. He paused and looked at the others uncertainly. “Did he have that coming? I might have missed something.”

Sora, Riku and Donald laughed at Hans’ predicament, then watched happily as Anna and Elsa hugged once again.


End file.
